Portrait of Jaki Shelton Green
North Carolina’s First African American Poet Laureate
Photographer: Samantha Everette.
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Older and wiser: A poet found solace in writing and now hopes to share joy
Jaki Shelton Green, North Carolina’s first African American poet laureate, discusses life, loss, joy and sometimes being mistaken for the hired help.

By Steven Petrow / WaPo
December 14, 2024 at 7:00 a.m. EST-Today at 7:00 a.m. EST.

“As a child, I was just fascinated by the world around me, and I always felt weird,” said Jaki Shelton Green, now 71 and North Carolina’s first African American poet laureate. “I would sit and think to myself, ‘Is there another girl sitting on the steps a thousand miles away, looking at the same clouds?’ I would write letters to these imaginary people. Writing was a wonderful way of capturing and saving these cloudbursts, these thoughts about the world and about people around me.”

Shelton Green, born in rural North Carolina, still lives only miles from her birthplace. In 2019, she was recognized nationally by the Academy of American Poets. Her eight books of poetry are raw with emotion about life, love, loss and race. They include “Dead on Arrival,” “Masks” and “I Want to Undie You.” This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q. You’ve been writing your whole life. I’m curious about how your process has changed as you’ve become a more mature or experienced poet.

A. To be honest, I really started writing seriously out of a container of survival. My first marriage was not healthy. I turned to writing. Writing was a keyboard instead of a switchblade to my wrist. And then when I had two small children, writing became this tool, almost a weapon for me in terms of how I insulated myself. My first book was about a lot of pain and a lot of knee-jerk, reactionary responses to being mistreated and abused [emotionally and physically]. When I look back on it now, I see it wasn’t about craft. It was my release. Back then, it was a courageous book of poetry for women of a certain age who did not talk about abuse, who were hiding and, like me, who were living these double lives.

Q. What have the years taught you?

A. As I’ve become older, I’m learning more about what grace really means, and what it means to be able to bring a slice of joy to somebody. At the end of the day, I’d like to think, “What did I do today that was beneficial for somebody?” I know I can’t change the world, save the world, but I believe if all of us scratch hard enough in the same little spots where we occupy time, where we live, play and die, that we can effect change.

Q. You’re the first African American poet laureate in this state. How do you understand being Black amid all of this?

A. The book I really should write is “Poet Laureate Black.” I’ve got stories — the level of disrespect, the level of folks gatekeeping me and trying to invisible me. But there’s that old saying, “We were born for times like these.” I think about the African American Black elders that walked before me who were also first. I think about my mother, I think about my grandmother. I think about my mother’s sister, who has a PhD. She would be 100 and some years now, but she went to [New York University] and Columbia at a time when very few women went to college. So many ancestors made sacrifices just so I could be the first, just so I could be in some spaces.

I’d never been invited to speak at Duke before I had any accolades, but since then I’m invited all the time. Whenever I would go into some of these rooms, I would wear my grandmother’s brooch. It was my way of honoring her, of saying, “I’m in a room, with the paintings of all the dead white men all over the place. We’re going in a room where your granddaughter is actually the guest of honor at this luncheon. However, I know that if you had been here, you would’ve been the one serving the lunch. You would’ve been the one pouring the tea, you would’ve been the one cleaning up afterwards.”

You’d be surprised how many spaces Abdul, my husband, and I move in, when people run up to us, “Excuse me, are you still serving dinner?” This happens all the time where people look at us like, “Well, what are they doing here?” What I realize is the struggle is never over. It just looks very different.

Q. Do you have a personal philosophy about life?

A. I come from a family who’s very service-oriented, and I remember my grandmother saying to me as a teenager, “It’s always a wonderful thing when you find out why you’re here.” I’m very service-oriented. I also feel that as creative makers, creative beings, we are all making those bridges where people can get past all their otherness and differences and connect through the writing. They see themselves, they hear their humanity. It’s the humanness that connects us inside of that language.

Q. Tell me more about how you’ve changed.

A, Now I really do want to be a good writer, and I really do pay attention to craft. I am my best critic, and I’m also one of my best editors. I have been very intentional about seeking the creative and intellectual expertise that I needed to be able to thrive in a competitive literary environment. That’s been the change, and it’s wonderful to see that the evolution of the books I’ve created reflect more and more of this journey of becoming a seasoned elder.

Q. Do you have any regrets?

A. I don’t have too many. If I could go back, the only thing I wish I could do is bring my daughter back from the grave. And I can’t do that.

Q. Since you’ve mentioned your daughter Imani, tell me about her. How old was she when you found out her cancer had returned?

A. This was 2009 and she was 38. For the next two weeks, we never left the hospice center. Imani was very alive until she wasn’t alive, right up until the day before she died. She was clear, funny, talkative, and making jokes. It was not until several weeks after she died when I started unraveling.
I wanted to write because writing has always been where I turned in moments of crisis. But I couldn’t write at all. And I had to make peace with that. I also had to make peace with getting angry — at my faith, at my god — since I grew up in a family where anger was not an acceptable response to anything. I went to see a therapist who told me I needed to get mad and angry. It was not until 2017 that I could write about her. And then I wrote the book “I Want to Undie You.”

Q. That book may be your best known because your words of loss and grief are universal.

A. Most of us don’t have the language for those feelings. Since then I’ve talked to so many parents who have lost a child. We did an exhibit of photographs of Imani at a gallery in Chapel Hill. The first night there were over 400 people that came through, and women were walking up, hugging me, whispering, “Welcome to this sorority.” There was a young couple that just stood in front of the poem for 45 minutes. When they finished, they just stood in the middle of the floor, holding each other, crying. I went over to them and they told me they’d just lost a 2-month-old baby.

Q. Oh my.

A. I am honored and humble that I’ve been able to write a book that just crosses, cancels out any boundaries of race or age or gender. Of everything. Creativity for me should always be good medicine, and it should also help erect this incredible bridge.

-End of interview-

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