Whispers of History and Healing: A Conversation with J. Chester Johnson

The GAB TALKS recently had the privilege of sitting down with acclaimed poet and author J. Chester Johnson, whose latest work, Reading Whispers: Book of Triple Haiku, offers a strikingly original take on poetic form. The collection explores themes of love, politics, race, aging, and mortality through an innovative structure that expands the traditional haiku into something more layered and resonant.

Johnson is no stranger to weighty subject matter. His widely celebrated nonfiction book, Damaged Heritage: The Elaine Race Massacre and A Story of Reconciliation, earned the 2025 Independent Press Award for Nonfiction. Blending memoir, history, and social commentary, the book uncovers the largely overlooked 1919 Elaine Race Massacre in rural Arkansas—one of the deadliest racial attacks in American history—while weaving in a deeply personal narrative of friendship and reconciliation.

With a literary career spanning decades, Johnson’s work has been published internationally and translated into multiple languages. His poetry collections include Now and Then: Selected Longer Poems and St. Paul’s Chapel & Selected Shorter Poems. The latter holds particular historical significance: its signature poem remains a memento card for visitors to St. Paul’s Chapel, which famously survived the 9/11 attacks at Ground Zero. His writing, which has appeared in more than 50 journals and publications, and innumerable presentations related to his writing include venues like The New York Times, Literary Matters, Best American Poetry Blog, Poets House, Harvard College, Trinity Church Wall Street, Troubadour (London), and the BBC. 

Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Johnson spent his formative years in the Mississippi River Delta in Southeast Arkansas and later built his life in New York City, where he resides with his wife, Freda Stern Johnson. Beyond literature, his career includes leadership in finance and public service. Johnson owned and operated a financial advisory firm that concentrated on debt management. He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury during the Carter Administration and was educated at Harvard College and the University of Arkansas. 

In this candid interview, Johnson reflects on his life, his work, and the enduring power of poetry.

Roots and Reckoning

GABBY: Tell us about your background and how it shaped your voice as a writer.

CHESTER: I've had an amazingly abundant life.  I've had the experience of participating in some important work during my life. I'm currently involved in a number of projects that continue to reflect the life that I've lived. I grew up in a small town on the cusp of the Mississippi River Delta. It was a very racist area. very racist community, and within a racist family. The texture of racism has been an important component of my life. I've worked in the area of racial healing for much of my life. Beginning soon after I graduated from college, I taught in an all black public school in the Mississippi River Delta, all the way up to writing the Litany of Offense and Apology when the Episcopal Church formally apologized for its role in transatlantic slavery and related evils, to my non-fiction book “Damaged Heritage, the Elaine Race Massacre and A Story of Reconciliation,” and up to my series of articles on racial healing that are distributed to thousands of people. 

Unearthing the Past

GABBY: Your book “Damaged Heritage” reveals something deeply personal about your family.

CHESTER: As I was doing the research for the litany when the Episcopal Church apologized for its role in slavery, I came across a document written by the iconic, Black historian Ida B. Wells, and she talked about an event called the Arkansas Race Riot of 1919. I had heard in family lore that my maternal grandfather had participated in a major race riot in southeast Arkansas.  I was ultimately able to coalesce what I had heard when I was growing up about my maternal grandfather participating in this race riot and this event called the Elaine Race Massacre, which arguably is the largest attack by whites against blacks in our country's history. There's been a very positive response to the book. Recently, the Library of Congress shop, which chooses very few books to have in their shop for sale, chose Damaged Heritage.

Reconciliation and Human Connection

GABBY: Your book also led to a powerful personal relationship.

CHESTER: The second part of the subtitle, A Story of Reconciliation was extraordinarily important for me because I became close with a descendant of victims in the massacre, Sheila L. Walker. Our two families became very close as we went through the process of racial healing. After a long illness with cancer, Sheila passed away in 2021.  I was asked to give the eulogy at her memorial service. I've given over a hundred presentations since that book came out in 2020 on racism and racial healing. So much of it dealt with the relationship that I had with Sheila Walker, who incidentally wrote the introduction to “Damaged Heritage.”

The Shift to Poetry

GABBY: Your latest book, “Reading Whispers: Book of Triple Haiku,” returns to poetry. Why make that shift?

CHESTER: I have written poetry since I was in high school. One of my important elements in my poetry resume is that I became the poet for the retranslation of the Psalms that are part of the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church back in the 1970s. 

Reinventing Haiku

GABBY: What exactly is a “triple haiku”?

CHESTER: The traditional haiku is a three line poem. Five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second line, and five syllables in the third line. We have incorporated this approach over time from the traditional form, a very ancient form of Japanese poetry. We've taken it and restructured it. The Japanese version doesn't use syllables. It measures sound rather than the use of syllables. Ours with syllables ends up being a little bit longer than the traditional haiku.  I wrote a poem a long time ago about how poetry is a function of not just the brain and heart; it's also a function of energy.

The Spark Behind Reading Whispers

GABBY: What inspired this particular collection?

CHESTER: I was in England in 2019 talking to a large number of institutions about my book, “Auden, the Psalms and Me,” which is the book about the retranslation of the Psalms for the Episcopal Church.  An artist, James DeWoody, needed a nine-line poem to place in an artwork. I didn't have time to write a nine-line poem. I had brought my portfolio of poems I was working on. I had three haiku that I thought were very similar and I sort of merged them. The response to it was very good. I continued to write in this triple haiku ever since. 

The Power of Compression

GABBY: Did the brevity of haiku ever feel limiting?

CHESTER: I felt that a single haiku was very limited for our American way of thinking. When I was able to put three of them together, they were almost individually purposeful. There was  a conclusion that one could reach about the poem in its entirety. It didn't come by my sitting down and writing three stanzas at once. I wanted to have a mystery of tying pieces of it together. It was a way of taking either a different view or a different aspect of what the first stanza had done and then lead into something later. 

What Is a “Whisper”?

GABBY: What does “whisper” signify in your work?

CHESTER: Poetically to me, it means if you separate haiku individually, not even mentioning the three stanzas, it is a bit of a whisper. I wasn't trying to force the idea of a triple haiku in the title. I was trying to give the sense of drawing someone to the haiku. So “Reading Whispers” is you're reading something sensory. You hear a whisper that's sort of an image, emblematic of what a haiku is.  It's very short; you barely hear it. 

Advice for Aspiring Poets

GABBY: What would you say to emerging poets?

CHESTER: Unless you feel completely compelled to do it, don't.  It's a struggle. Poetry changes you. The poems that you write change you, and the poems that you read have an amazing way of altering your perspective and altering the way in which you see the world. Poetry is dangerous. Both the writing of it and the reading of it. Poems become reflective of historical events. People want poetry to say something that reflects the way they see something and the way they feel about something. It's really a significant responsibility. Don't expect it not to bore into your soul and affect virtually every part of your life. 

A Line That Endures

GABBY: Is there a line of poetry that stays with you?

CHESTER: I know one that does come to me because I wrote it: 

“All history is a struggle between what we must end and what we must begin.”

Through both poetry and prose, Johnson invites readers not just to observe, to reflect, reckon, and ultimately, to heal.

 To listen to and watch the full interview……To learn more about  J. Chester Johnson and his work visit https://jchesterjohnson.com/.