Catawba County News

North Carolina Poet Laureate to Visit the Library

North Carolina Poet Laureate to Visit the Library

Published: March 31, 2022

We are so excited to host North Carolina Poet Laureate, Jaki Shelton Green, at the St. Stephens Branch Library this Saturday, April 2nd! We’ll start with an author talk and book discussion, before moving into a writing workshop for adults. 

Experience the magic of Green’s storytelling and discover your own storytelling voice. 

North Carolina Poet Laureate, Jaki Shelton Green will facilitate a creativity salon focused on What We Keep Keeps Us: Exploring Our Human Museums. As we think of ourselves as our own curators or personal anthropologists, we will explore what's in our human museums and how these primary sources shape our lives, our values, and our creativity.

Workshop participants are invited to bring artifacts, photos, objects, heirlooms, or stories that hold special meaning for them. This session will include a writing exercise and discussion that examines the many narratives, memoirs, stories, poems, novels, and legacies that are hidden in full sight... just waiting to be written.

Jaki Shelton Green, ninth Poet Laureate of North Carolina appointed in 2018, is the first African American and third woman to be appointed as the North Carolina Poet Laureate and reappointed in 2021 for a second term by Governor Roy Cooper. She is a 2019 Academy of American Poet Laureate Fellow, 2014 NC Literary Hall of Fame Inductee, 2009 NC Piedmont Laureate appointment, 2003 recipient of the North Carolina Award for Literature. Jaki Shelton Green teaches Documentary Poetry at Duke University Center for Documentary Studies and the 2021 Frank B. Hanes Writer in Residence at UNC Chapel Hill. Additionally, she received the George School Outstanding Alumni Award in 2021. Her publications include: Dead on Arrival, Masks, Dead on Arrival and New Poems, Conjure Blues, singing a tree into dance, breath of the song, published by Blair Publishers. Feeding the Light, i want to undie you published by Jacar Press, i want to undie you English /Italian bilingual edition published by Lebeg Publishers. Juneteenth 2020, she released her first LP, poetry album, The River Speaks of Thirst, produced by Soul City Sounds and Clearly Records and released a CD, i want to undie you in 2021. Jaki Shelton Green is the owner of SistaWRITE providing writing retreats for women writers in Sedona Arizona, Martha’s Vineyard, Ocracoke North Carolina, Northern Morocco, and Tullamore Ireland. 2021, The Arts Club of Chicago premiered a commissioned body of work in collaboration with Flutronix for the Black Is Series. April 2022, the poem will be performed by Flutronix and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. 2022 Jaki Shelton Green appointed as the Poet Laureate in Residence at the North Carolina Museum of Art.