To celebrate National Poetry Month, the State Archives of North Carolina will host History in Verse, a virtual program on documentary poetry featuring N.C. Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green Thursday, April 7, at 7 p.m.
This online event will explore Green’s work in documentary poetry—poetry that captures a historical moment by combining primary source materials with verse. Green will discuss the relationship between the art form and historical events and read some of her own works. In addition, this program will highlight poems hidden in the archive, written by ordinary and extraordinary North Carolinians across centuries. Archivists will provide further insight by sharing historical context and information on how these poems found their way to the State Archives of North Carolina.
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 is 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; and 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. In 2021, The Arts Club of Chicago premiered a commissioned body of work in collaboration with Flutronix for the Black Is Series. In April 2022, the poem will be performed by Flutronix and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. In 2022 Jaki Shelton Green appointed as the Poet Laureate in Residence at the North Carolina Museum of Art.
All are welcome to this free virtual event. Registration, https://www.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_F4dDOb9cRnaZeU_9eMQDeQ.