Harvard Authors Profile: Leila A. Jackson ’26 on ‘Exit Wound’ and the Power of Documentary Poetry

For Leila A. Jackson ’26, poetry presents an opportunity to convey meaningful stories and powerful emotions.

Jackson’s recent poem “Exit Wound,” which won the 2024 Academy of American Poets Prize, explores the story of Jesse Owens, the American track and field athlete who won four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics in 1936. Owens, despite his success, returned to poverty in America shortly after. In an interview with The Crimson, Jackson shared how her thoughtful undertaking of the story came about as a way to honor the untold aspects of Owens’s journey.

“I thought if we start in a historical place, maybe that could prove fruitful,” Jackson said. “Italicized parts of ‘Exit Wound’ are taken from various articles that talked about how amazing Jesse Owens was.”

However, Jackson felt there was a larger, more critical aspect regarding Owens’s story that she needed to convey.

“The middle text is meant to signify: ‘What is less written down, but must have been more experienced?’ I didn’t know until I started researching in the archives that Jesse Owens returned to poverty. I thought that was a very poignant fact that people should know about. I was thinking, ‘How do we engage with what that must have felt like?’” Jackson said.

To convey these emotions, Jackson brought intentional language to the single-sentence, prose style of the narrative. This prose format presented her with unique challenges.

“When you’re writing a prose poem, it feels like there’s almost less significance attached to each word for the reader, so I felt like I had an extra responsibility to make each word purposeful,” Jackson said.

Jackson uses symbolism across the entirety of the poem, drawing parallels between Owens’s time as an athlete and the challenges of poverty later on — even racing against horses to earn money. She made creative use of his nickname at the time, “The Buckeye Bullet,” to convey this message.

“I thought about: ‘What’s the arc here? What references can I make?’ I wanted to play around with the symbolism of the word ‘bullet,’ the starting gun, but also ‘bullet’ as in the man himself, but also as in something that wounds,” Jackson said.

Jackson’s writing allows Owens’s story to extend beyond the surface level. For this deep dive into Owens’s story, Jackson won the 2024 Academy of American Poets Prize. She credits her professor, Tracy K. Smith, for pushing her to submit the piece, and she recounted the thrilling experience of discovering she had won for work she was proud to put out into the world.

“I got the email while I was driving, and I had to pull over, because I had to read it. I was just not expecting it at all,” Jackson said.

Originally, Jackson was unsure her submission would receive any attention. After rereading her piece and finding a new appreciation for it, she realized she had “undercut” herself at the beginning.

“I was really, really excited, and I was glad that they had seen something in me, and specifically in that poem, that I hadn’t really seen,” Jackson said.

Within the poetry scene, Jackson is fervently paving her own path, notably through combining her appreciation for the humanities and biology. As an English concentrator, Jackson has grown to appreciate the freedom poetry provides; as a pre-med student, the life sciences have provided a new perspective through which she writes. Jackson has found an intersectionality through the courses she has taken, referencing the “theory about the body” that she is frequently faced with in her studies.

“I feel like a lot of the English classes that I’ve taken have engaged with it [this theory] in some way or another, and so doing that alongside pre-med has gotten me to think in different ways about the body, in a humanities sense and a biological sense,” Jackson said.

While at Harvard, Jackson hopes to continue her artistic journey, aiming to put together a creative thesis within the next two years. She holds many aspirations for her future, all with the intention of keeping poetry in her everyday life.

“I think doing a poetry collection would really excite me. I feel like it would be a fitting capstone for my time here at Harvard,” she said.

In the long run, Jackson is also preparing to go to medical school. Between college and professional school, she also intends to move into literary and artistic spaces like publishing.

This passion for literature and creative writing began in Jackson’s childhood. What started as a “hobby” ultimately led her to involve herself in poetry in high school, and eventually to land her where she is today: a prize-winning poet. For aspiring writers, particularly first-years, Jackson offered some valuable advice.

“Just show up to whatever. Like they say, ‘try everything out,’” Jackson said. “For writing, it’s not ‘one size fits all,’ and sometimes spaces appeal to some people but don’t appeal to other people. You’ll never know what fits you until you [get] the lay of the land.”

Trying new things has worked wonders for Jackson. “Exit Wound” represents only the most recent piece in Jackson’s portfolio, demonstrating the power of poetry as an equally archival and creative art.