WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR POETRY

The Tradition by Jericho Brown, is a cutting and necessary collection, relentless in its quest for survival while revelling in a celebration of contradiction.

A Poetry Book Society Choice

'To read Jericho Brown's poems is to encounter devastating genius.' Claudia Rankine

Jericho Brown's daring poetry collection The Tradition details the normalization of evil and its history at the intersection of the past and the personal. Brown's poetic concerns are both broad and intimate, and at their very core a distillation of the incredibly human: What is safety? Who is this nation? Where does freedom truly lie? Poems of fatherhood, legacy, blackness, queerness, worship, and trauma are propelled into stunning clarity by Brown's mastery, and his invention of the duplex - a combination of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues - testament to his formal skill.

Our Booksellers Say...

"Jericho Brown’s poems are like surprises that then feel inevitable, just right. ‘A poem’ he writes, ‘is a gesture toward home’. His sentences delight in going where you don’t expect, changing direction, doubling back on themselves, and every word, however simple, is carefully chosen and weighted, in poems as strong and beautiful as psalms."

Emily, Bookseller (Broad Street)

View all of Emily's recommendations