Mebane, NC
H: 919-304-5893
Wildwoman46@hotmail.com
Travel Regions: 3-11
Jaki Shelton Green is the author of the poetry collections, Conjure Blues, Dead on Arrival, Mask, and Dead on Arrival and New Poems (Carolina Wren Press). She serves on numerous boards that combine her interests in art, literature, and social-justice issues, and is a literary consultant. Ms. Green teaches creative writing to marginalized populations such as the homeless, the newly literate, the incarcerated, and the writer-as-survivor. In 2003 she received the North Carolina Award in Literature.
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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 presentation explores and celebrates the shapes, colors, and musicality of stories--often unspoken--that serve as symbols and myths for communities. Ms. Green asks that we consider ways to build on the foundations of folklore buried in the past. She demonstrates how her poetry has become a shovel, "digging up" and "unearthing" these precious treasures that inform and link generations in a community.
Culture and Personal Experience Inform a Writer's Work
This program examines oral traditions in Ms. 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, Ms. Green discusses stories, icons, and idioms as a way of preserving the history and culture of her community, and invites the audience to recognize our shared humanity.
Requirements for Program: lectern, microphone
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