Governor Roy Cooper today announced that poet, teacher, and community arts advocate Jaki Shelton Green will serve as NC's ninth poet Laureate and the first African American to serve.

“Jaki Shelton Green brings a deep appreciation of our state’s diverse communities to her role as an ambassador of North Carolina literature,” Governor Cooper said. “Jaki’s appointment is a wonderful new chapter in North Carolina’s rich literary history."

Green is the first African American and the third woman to serve as the state’s ambassador for poetry and the spoken word. She will be installed during a public celebration later this summer. Green succeeds Shelby Stephenson, who was named poet laureate Feb. 2, 2015.

A native of Orange County, Green has been active in North Carolina’s literary and teaching community for more than 40 years. She has penned eight books of poetry, co-edited two poetry anthologies and written one play. She is a 2014 North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame inductee and was the recipient of the North Carolina Award for Literature in 2013.

“Jaki is an award-winning poet with a strong commitment to use poetry as a platform for building bridges across race, religion, age, gender, and identity,” said Susi H. Hamilton, secretary, N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. “What a welcome addition she is to the tradition of poet laureates in North Carolina.”

Green currently teaches Documentary Poetry at Duke University Center for Documentary Studies. Over the last 40 years, she has taught poetry and facilitated creative writing classes at public libraries, universities and community colleges, public and private schools and with literary organizations across the U.S.

“I am deeply touched to be named poet laureate,” Green said. “To serve as North Carolina’s representative for poetry and the spoken word is a tremendous honor.”

She plans to focus her efforts on the creation of documentary poetry, working with North Carolina communities to explore the ways they document their unique regional histories and significant historical events.

As a community arts advocate, Green has created and facilitated programs that serve various audiences and populations, including the incarcerated, homeless, chronically and mentally ill, victims of domestic violence, public and private schools, literacy programs, immigrants, and community economic development and social justice nonprofits.

“The Poet Laureate program is one of the most important ways that we celebrate and share our state’s literary heritage with the people of our state,” said Wayne Martin, Executive Director, N.C. Arts Council. “The Poet Laureate is a symbol of North Carolina’s achievements in poetry and our writers’ contributions to our national cultural legacy.”

Green’s awards also include a 2017 Duke University Faculty Travel Grant to the Alhambra Cultural Center International Prose Poem Symposium in Marrakech, Morocco, and the 2016 Kathryn H. Wallace Award for Artists in Community Service, through the Triangle Community Foundation.

She was named inaugural N.C. Piedmont Laureate in 2009, and won the Sam Ragan Award for Contributions to the Fine Arts of North Carolina in 2007. She has judged poetry for schools, anthologies, and celebrated prizes such as the Julie Suk Poetry Award, North Carolina Poetry Society, the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Festival, and Poetry Out Loud.

Green’s poetry has been widely choreographed by dance companies including the Chuck Davis African American Dance Company in conjunction with the Kennedy Center and the Nasher Museum at Duke University; Murmurations Dance; Two Near the Edge Dance Company; Danca Nova Dance Company, in collaboration with the Colorado Naropa Dance Institute; and Miami City Ballet.
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Source http://bit.ly/NCpoetlaureate2018
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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-

Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../shelton-green-poet.../...
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As Poet Laureate, Jaki Shelton Green Wants to Amplify North Carolina’s Muted Voices
By Jameela F. Dallis - Sept 12, 2018

Update: Jaki Shelton Green's induction ceremony, previously scheduled for Sep. 19, has been delayed. A new date will eventually be announced at www.ncarts.org.

On September 19 at the state capitol, North Carolina native Jaki Shelton Green will officially become the state's ninth poet laureate—only the third woman to hold the post, and she is the first African American. Her contributions to local literature are substantial: Green has published eight books of poetry and a play, and she has co-edited two anthologies. In 2014, she was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame after being named the first Piedmont Laureate in 2009. She teaches writing at Duke's Center for Documentary Studies, and she is the founder of SistaWRITE, which brings "women and spaces together for writing, community, sisterhood, and shared experience."

In addition to teaching, mentoring, and collaborating with diverse communities of writers in North Carolina, Green facilitates writing courses throughout the country and as far as Brazil, France, and Morocco. She is an awe-inspiring woman: Even her speaking voice is poetic; it soothes and enthralls, and her propensity for storytelling is arresting.

As we talked for two hours on a hot, humid summer day in Hillsborough, Green guided me through threads of stories that led back to my initial questions and left me both satisfied and hungry for more. She is a fierce, passionate advocate for the arts, dedicated to holding space for others to share their words, and she especially encourages people who have been silenced to tell their stories through creative writing. We talked about a wealth of subjects, laughing and wiping sweat from our faces, and listening to each other with attention and intention. These are some of the highlights.

INDY: You are the first black poet laureate of North Carolina and the third woman. What does that mean to you?

JAKI SHELTON GREEN: It means a lot. Obviously, it's overwhelming in a very joyous way. I am used to being overwhelmed with sorrow, and I am used to being overwhelmed with the challenges of living in this culture. But this, I feel like I'm holding it not just for myself, but for many generations before me. I am holding it from the ancestral perspective that this is what my ancestors were preparing me for. This is the "make us proud" message that my grandmother was giving me as a little girl.

It's not just the pride and joy that my family is holding with me. I've had black women, Asian women, Native women, and other women of color—women from all over North Carolina—write me, call me, and say "You don't know me, and I don't really know you, but when I saw you on TV, when I heard this, I cried. I wailed with joy."

With that comes a lot of responsibility. I can be bold enough to say, I know what Obama felt. For me, it's that big in this state, given what I know about North Carolina, our history, our shared past. What's happening right now is a divided Southern legacy. This crisis in Southern amnesia that some of us are allowing ourselves to get caught up in—this joy has transcended that. Friends of mine have said, "You know, we're on social media, and it's one scary story after another. One sad story, one intrusive story about the brutality against us, and here's a story we can celebrate. Here's something that makes us smile. Here's something that we can be joyous about, that we can hold, and it's a live thing."

So that is a kind of buoyance, because I do feel like I'm being lifted by people I don't even know. I was in Winston-Salem, and I had to speak to the North Carolina Arts Council Board of Directors, and I remember that some of the women in the room came up to me and said, "You have no idea what this means to me." I do have an idea, because I know, if it weren't me, how I'd feel for any of us to be in that space.

To be a black woman in this culture, we have to have so many masks, and we have to be able to spin so many veils. There are the veils that we hide behind; they are the veils for our protection. And then there are the veils that we are lifting all the time, to show people who we really are. I think we are probably the only people on the planet that have had this task of renaming ourselves over and over again. I always tell my students that if you are going to be an artist, you need to have a museum full of interchangeable masks you can reach for and say, "Oh, I need this one for tonight and this one for the morning," and yet [you should] know who you are at your core and not get lost. It's not about becoming the mask but understanding how utilitarian it is for us to know the masks that we need. I always think of Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem, "We Wear the Mask." And we're still wearing the mask.

And that's a beautiful thing, the way we come together and support each other.

Right, it's about how we invest in legacy and how we construct legacy. I tell my students at Duke, "I can care less about what you learned about poetics—if there's nothing else, you will know that in this class, you learn self-respect, compassionate listening, and how to be in community with folk." And they sit there, and they get it—they have to get it.

[As poet laureate], I want to make sure that I am opening spaces where those muted voices and those silent voices, and those in small communities, can be heard. In promoting, expanding, and celebrating literacy and literature, I want to make sure that I'm just not lecturing to people who are going to always show up at writers' conferences or The Regulator, but also people who've never thought of themselves as writers. Where are these voices in North Carolina? They're everywhere, and I want to help dig them out. As a sociocultural activist, that's part of my work. One poem, one story at a time—it's liberating.

In several interviews, you say that you did not intend to become a writer. Rather, you dreamed of becoming an oceanographer. What does the ocean represent to you—now, as adult, and then, as a child who'd never seen the ocean? When I think about the ocean, I can't help but think about the Middle Passage, and the depth of memory and history that's held in that space. There's this longing for something you've never seen, but you know exists, and you feel connected to it in some way.

Good question. So, as a child, I had never seen the ocean. I was obsessed with the Jacques Cousteau stories that came on TV all the time about him exploring the bottom of the ocean, and the ocean represented this whole other universe. And there was a pull to that. It was like there was some kindred-ness with this foreign space that I felt like I was supposed to go and explore. I felt like some piece of me was there that I didn't know about, some knowledge that would inform more of the life that I was leading as a child or was meant to live.

Of course, now, as an adult, the ocean is a part of my DNA. I understand the historical ramifications of why I identify so much with water and all that is there. The ocean is such a sacred space for me. In all of my times of trouble, sorrow, pain, despair, I run to the ocean; I run to the ocean. Because those bones in the Atlantic do speak to me. They do raise up when I come, and it doesn't matter whether I'm at the ocean in Brazil, in Ocracoke, or Carolina Beach, or this summer in Morocco—it's the same Atlantic. For me, it's another home. It fertilizes my creativity. I go there to be renewed, resurged, cleansed, healed, to make communion. It's a form of benediction, and it's a place of grace for me.
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Source:https://www.indyweek.com/.../as-poet-laureate.../Content...