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Jaki Shelton Green, M.A. Award-winning poet, author Mebane, NC H: (919) 304-5893
About Jaki Shelton Green: Jaki Shelton Green was the 2003 recipient of the North Carolina Award for Literature. Her poetry has appeared in such publications as “The Crucible,” “The African American Review,” “Obsidian,” “Poets for Peace,” “Immigration, Emigration and Diversity,” “Ms. Magazine,” “Essence Magazine” and “KAKALAK.” Her publications by Carolina Wren Press are Dead on Arrival and Masks in 1977, Dead on Arrival and New Poems in 1983, Conjure Blues in1996, singing a tree into dance in 2003, and breath of the song in 2005. Green is also the author of the 1994 “Blue Opal, a Play.” She was the 2006 writer in residence at the Taller Portobelo Artist Colony in historic Portobelo, Panama.
Building Community Through Writing and Art
Who told you that story? How do you remember the tales about relatives? Where did that vase come from? The answers to such questions suggest the ways communities have survived through the art, music, stories, and crafts produced by its members. This program explores and celebrates the shapes, colors, and musicality of stories—often unspoken—that serve as symbols and myths for communities. Jaki Shelton Green asks that we consider ways to build on the foundations of folklore buried in the past and demonstrates how her poetry has become a shovel, digging up these precious treasures that inform and link generations in a community.
Program requirements: lectern, microphone
Culture and Personal Experience Inform a Writer’s Work
This program examines oral traditions in Jaki Shelton Green’s own family through a variety of aspects including sources of transmission and legacy from baptisms to weddings to funerals. Reading from her poetry, Green discusses stories, icons, and idioms as a way of preserving the history and culture of her community, and invites the audience members to recognize their shared humanity.
Program requirements: lectern, microphone
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