Surge | Two Poems by Jay Bernard | Granta

Surge

Jay Bernard

‘The black is coming in from the cold,
rolling up the beach walls, looking for light.’

Two poems by Jay Bernard, from their debut collection Surge, shortlisted for the 2020 Young Writer of the Year Award.

Jay Bernard

Jay Bernard is the author of the pamphlets Your Sign is Cuckoo, GirlEnglish Breakfast and The Red and Yellow Nothing, which was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award 2017. A film programmer at BFI Flare and an archivist at Statewatch, they also participated in ‘The Complete Works II’ project in 2014, in which they were mentored by Kei Miller. Jay was a Foyle Young Poet of the Year in 2005 and a winner of SLAMbassadors UK spoken word championship. In 2019 Jay was selected by Jackie Kay as one of Britain's ten best BAME writers for the British Council and National Centre for Writing's International Literature Showcase. Surge is Jay Bernard's debut collection, for which they were awarded The Sunday Times / University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award in December 2020. Photograph © Joshua Virasami

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