Reuben Jackson has been the host of Friday Night Jazz on Vermont Public Radio since 2012, a job he has just announced that he will leave in 2018. Before this, he was curator of the Duke Ellington Collection at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. for 20 years. Jackson is also an accomplished poet and an educator with the Young Writers Project. Jackson discusses his poetry, jazz, and his experience as an African American in one of America’s whitest states. He also reads his poem, “For Trayvon Martin.” (November 8, 2017 broadcast)

Reuben Jackson, poet, VPR jazz host