Jay Bernard (writer)

Jay Bernard (born 1988),

Bernard was named a Foyle Young Poet of the Year in 2005.^[3] Bernard was selected for The Complete Works programme in 2014.

Bernard's pamphlet The Red and Yellow Nothing was shortlisted for the

Bernard won the 2017 Ted Hughes Award for their multimedia performance work Surge: Side A,^[6] that includes the film Something Said, inspired by the 1981 New Cross house fire^[7][8][9] and archives held at the George Padmore Institute, where they were the first poet-in-residence.^[10] The 2014 novel A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James, and Twilight City, a film produced by Reece Auguiste for the Black Audio Film Collective in 1989, also provided inspiration for the work.^[11]

Bernard was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018.^[12][13]

Bernard's poetry collection, Surge, published by Chatto & Windus, was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2019,^[14] for the 2019 Costa Book Award (for Poetry),^[15] for the 2020 Dylan Thomas Prize,^[16] and the 2020 RSL Ondaatje Prize.^[17] It won the 2020 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award.^[18]

Work

Pamphlets and single-author collections

• Your Sign is Cuckoo, Girl (Tall Lighthouse, 2008,
  ISBN 978-1904551416
  )
• English Breakfast (Math Paper Press, 2013)[19]
• The Red and Yellow Nothing (Ink, Sweat and Tears Press, 2016,
  ISBN 978-0992725310), pamphlet^[20]
• Other Ubiquities (2017)[21]
• Surge (Chatto, 2019,
  ISBN 978-1784742614
  ).

• Surge: Side A (2017), a multimedia performance piece that won the Ted Hughes Award for new poetry. The work was performed at the Roundhouse, London, during The Last Word Festival 2017, and was produced by Speaking Volumes.^[6]
• A Toast to the People (2021) Jay Bernard also performed at the Edinburgh International Festival, a spoken word event with Debris Stephenson.^[22]

Films

• Something Said, screened at
  BFI Flare (2018).^[23]

• City State (2009)
• "Black Britain: Beyond Definition", Wasafiri, Issue 64, Winter 2010.^[24]
• The Salt Book of Younger Poets (Salt 2011)
• Ten: The New Wave (Bloodaxe 2014)

Residencies

• 2010: artist in residence at StAnza Poetry Festival.^[25]
• 2012: fellow at the National University of Singapore, and curated a graphic arts and poetry exhibition I SEE YOU at The Arts House.^[26]
• 2013: CityRead resident at the London Metropolitan Archives.^[26]
• 2015: commissioned with artist Yemisi Blake as part of Transport for London’s Year of the Bus celebrations. Their work 100, which featured one hundred one-line poems, was displayed at North Greenwich Bus Station between January and September 2015.^[27]

Further work and collaborations

• 2022: After Work, made in collaboration with Céline Condorelli and Ben Rivers focuses on the building of a children’s playground, which Condorelli was commissioned to create in South London.^[28]

Personal life

Bernard grew up in