Northland College is honored to welcome North Carolina Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green, who will kick off our Martin Luther King Jr. Service Day. She will talk about growing up in the segregated south and the importance of the Civil Rights Movement and community service—apt themes for grounding ourselves in the history and purpose of this day.
This event is open to current Northland College students, faculty, and staff.
Jaki Shelton Green, the ninth Poet Laureate of North Carolina, was appointed in 2018 as the first African American and third woman to serve in the role. She was reappointed in 2021 for a second term by Governor Roy Cooper.
She is a 2019 Academy of American Poet Laureate Fellow, a 2014 NC Literary Hall of Fame Inductee, held an NC Piedmont Laureate appointment in 2009, and is a 2003 recipient of the North Carolina Award for Literature. Jaki Shelton Green teaches Documentary Poetry at the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies and was the 2021 Frank B. Hanes Writer in Residence at the University of North Carolina at 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, published by Blair Publishers; Feeding the Light and i want to undie you, published by Jacar Press; and i want to undie you English /Italian bilingual edition, published by Lebeg Publishers. On Juneteenth in 2020, she released her first LP poetry album, The River Speaks of Thirst, produced by Soul City Sounds and Clearly Records. She released a CD, i want to undie you, in 2021.
Jaki Shelton Green is the owner of SistaWRITE, which provides writing retreats for women writers in Sedona, Arizona; Martha’s Vineyard; Ocracoke, North Carolina; northern Morocco; and Tullamore, 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. She serves as the poetry editor for WALTER Magazine and holds an appointment as the Poet Laureate in Residence at the North Carolina Museum of Art. Additionally, she has been recognized on the Forbes Magazine 50 Over 50 Lifestyle List for 2022.
