Jerl Surratt’s poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Hopkins Review, Kenyon Review, Literary Imagination, The New Criterion, PN Review, and in other journals and anthologies in the US, Canada, the EU and the UK.

A native of Electra, Texas, Jerl lives and works in upstate New York. Previously he lived in New York City where he was a writer for and advisor to nonprofit educational, medical, social service, cultural and LGBTQ+/AIDS organizations. He is among those featured in Jonathan Lee’s documentary, “Paul Goodman Changed My Life” (Zeitgeist Films), and his essay on the unpublished love poems written by Ned O’Gorman in the last decade of the poet’s and educator’s life is included in “Ned O’Gorman: A Glance Back”, edited by Elizabeth Howard (Easton Press).

“If a poet writes a poem in the first person we neither know nor care if he be actually telling the truth about himself; we only ask: ‘could this have happened to or been felt by someone?’”

W.H. Auden

Copyright © 1948 by The Estate of W.H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. All rights reserved.

A brief interview with Jerl on Oyster River Press.