Edward Julian Sr. embraces poetry as a means to release and reflect

Edward Julian Sr. credited his deep appreciation for poetry to the years he spent incarcerated, recalling how the form allowed him to process his anger, his grief, and his shame, helping him to establish a toehold from which he could begin to rebuild.

“Poetry, for me, has always been about release and reflect,” said Julian, the current Ohio poet laureate, who will read as part of the Poetry Festival from 6-9 p.m. at Urban Arts Space tonight (Thursday, Sept. 24), with the event continuing through the weekend at Thurber House (1-5 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26) and the Grange Insurance Audubon Center (1-5 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 27). “When I was incarcerated, I needed another outlet, even though I was working out and doing other things. … It’s a coping mechanism for me, like reading, exercising, cooking, listening to music. It’s a way to get through what you’re going through. It could be a failed marriage. It could be failing in school. It could be loneliness, anger, distrust, abandonment. I use my poetry as a way of releasing that frustration.”

While poetry didn’t become a balm until early adulthood, Julian traced his introduction to the form to the time he was cut from the basketball team in seventh grade. In the immediate aftermath, his mother directed him to the Edgar Albert Guest poem “Don’t Quit,” which presses readers to trudge forward no matter what obstacles life might present. “And that poem stuck with me throughout childhood and into prison,” Julian said.

Most of the poet’s earliest verses rippled with an anger he described as rooted in the sense of loneliness and abandonment he then felt, along with the racism he experienced navigating the world as a young Black man growing up in an impoverished area of east Cleveland that changed dramatically amid drug epidemic of the 1980s.

“Growing up, it was the kind of community where it was either you go to school, get a job, or go to the army. And then crack cocaine hit and it changed the dynamic,” said Julian, who added that he “always had that hustle” in him as a teenager. Beginning at age 13, he would accompany his mom on weekends to her job at Cuyahoga Community College, getting paid under the table to rake leaves, mow grass, and do other odd jobs. “And a lot of the dudes I met while incarcerated … had that same entrepreneurial spirit, but we all just went about it the wrong way. And the way [crack cocaine] got introduced, it just got placed in our laps. Still, we had a decision to make, and I know some guys who grew up in my neighborhood and never turned to drugs, never sold drugs. They made a different decision.”

At the Poetry Festival, Julian plans to read a trio of poems that cover a wide swath of this terrain, including one specifically centered on the years he spent incarcerated and another titled “Misconception” that sprouted from the reinvigorated Black lives matter movement and touches on everything from gun violence and segregation to the ongoing scourge of racism that leaves many Black Americans running from behind. “It’s bigger than racial profiling and police brutality,” Julian recites in the spoken-word piece, which clocks in just shy of four minutes. A few beats later, he adds, “100 years of Jim Crow morality, 75 years of miseducation and abuse, over 30 years of mass incarceration, just to name a few.”

While much has changed for Julian in the years since his release from prison, he hasn’t lost that youthful hustle, describing the months since he was named poet laureate in April as a blur of speaking engagements, events, and Zoom meetings – this in addition to his usual work teaching, working with incarcerated people, and attempting to carve out time to write. (Julian released his latest book, the memoir From Inmate to Advocate: A Journey of Transformation, in June.)

“I tend to be one of those people who takes on everything, and I have a friend who was just telling me, ‘Man, you stay busy. You got a lot of energy.’ And I do have a lot of energy,” said Julian, who then acknowledged there are times in this rush when writing can fall by the wayside, since for him the practice requires a measure of stillness. “At some point, I really do need to slow down and gather my thoughts, because I love writing and I need to make that space for it.”