NC poet laureate to visit
Mar 20, 2024Jacki Shelton Green, North Carolina’s poet laureate, will visit Rockingham Community College on Tuesday, April 9 at 1 p.m.
She will share her poetry, discuss her writing process, and talk about being appointed poet laureate. The event will be held in the Gerald James Library, located at 315 Wrenn Memorial Road.
Green, appointed in 2018 by Gov. Roy Cooper, is the first African-American and third woman to be appointed as the North Carolina Poet Laureate since the honor’s inception in 1948. She was reappointed in 2021 for a second term by Gov. Cooper.
She is a 2019 Academy of American Poet Laureate Fellow, 2014 NC Literary Hall of Fame Inductee, 2009 NC Piedmont Laureate appointment, and 2003 recipient of the North Carolina Award for Literature.
Green teaches Documentary Poetry at Duke University Center for Documentary Studies and was appointed 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,” and “breath of the song,” all published by Blair Publishers; “Feeding the Light” and “i want to undie you,” both published by Jacar Press; and an English/Italian bilingual edition of “i want to undie you,” through Lebeg Publishers.
On Juneteenth 2020, Green released her first LP, poetry album “The River Speaks of Thirst,” produced by Soul City Sounds and Clearly Records. A year later, she released a CD of “i want to undie you.”
Green is the owner of SistaWRITE, providing writing retreats for women writers in Ocracoke, Martha’s Vineyard, Arizona, Northern Morocco, and Ireland.
In 2021, The Arts Club of Chicago premiered a commissioned body of work in collaboration with Flutronix for the “Black Is Series” which was performed in April 2022 by Flutronix and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
Green serves as the poetry editor for WALTER Magazine, and was appointed as the Poet Laureate in Residence at the North Carolina Museum of Art in 2022. Additionally, she has been recognized on the Forbes Magazine “50 Over 50 Lifestyle List” for 2022.
