JJJJJerome Ellis

JJJJJerome Ellis is the author of Aster of Ceremonies. He is an animal, proud stutterer, and artist. JJJJJerome was born in 1989 to Jamaican and Grenadian immigrants, and lives in Tidewater, Virginia with his wife, ecologist-poet Luísa Black Ellis.



His diverse body of work includes: contemplative soundscapes using saxophone, flute, dulcimer, electronics, and vocals; scores for plays and podcasts; albums combining spoken word with ambient and jazz textures; theatrical explorations involving live music and storytelling; and music-video-poems that seek to transfigure archival documents.



His debut album, The Clearing (2021),  an audio-textual project that investigates how stuttering, blackness, and music can be practices of refusal against hegemonic governance of time, speech, and encounter. The Clearing  was called “an astonishing, must-listen project” (The Guardian). It was co-produced by NNA Tapes and The Poetry Project, and it was released with an accompanying book published by Wendy’s Subway. Poet/essayist/playwright Claudia Rankine said of the book: “The Clearing is many things: a lyrical celebration of and inquiry into the intersections of blackness, music, and disabled speech; a restless interrogation of linear time; an intimate portrait of the author’s real-time experience of his stutter; a baptism in syllable and sound; and a manuscript illuminated by The Stutter. At its core, Ellis’ metaphor of the clearing becomes a place of possibility and “momentary, transitory, glimpsed liberation.” He invites us to meet him there.” The Clearing won the 2022 Anna Rabinowitz Prize. JJJJJerome dreams of building a sonic bath house!