Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown served as the keynote speaker for The Hill School's 2026 Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration, offering students an intimate and powerful reading of his work alongside candid reflections on poetry, identity, and the craft of writing. Brown, who won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection, The Tradition, read selections spanning his career, from his first book, Please, to recent unpublished work, creating what he described as his own "Martin Luther King Day celebration."

Brown's reading explored deeply personal and political themes, from childhood memories and family relationships to police violence and Black identity in America. Other poems explored the complexities of father-son relationships, LGBTQ+ identity, and moments of tenderness, demonstrating what Brown sees as poetry's essential nature: holding opposites together. "If the poem were all dark, it wouldn't be a poem. And if it were all light, it wouldn't be a poem," he explained.

During an extended Q&A session, Brown spoke candidly with Hill students about his creative process, discussing everything from overcoming writer's block to the invention of his signature poetic form, the duplex, a hybrid of ghazal, sonnet, and blues poem. When asked about writer's block, he emphasized the importance of embracing failure: "You have to have a good relationship to failure," he said, comparing the writing process to physical training.

He encouraged students to read voraciously, explaining, "If you can learn the language of poetry, whenever you want to write, it's there for you. It's at your fingertips." Brown also urged students to let go of external pressures and timelines, offering perhaps his most powerful advice: "Something feeling good to you is reason enough to do it. And don't let anybody ever tell you different. It's very important that you do what feels good, what you're passionate about, what you love."