LOCALS
THE RIGHT POET Jaki Shelton Green becomes N.C.’s poet laureate by CHRIS VITIELLO
F
or North Carolina’s new state Poet Laureate, the literary life started while squirming in her Sunday best on a church pew. “I was not unruly, but very fidgety, in church because I was fascinated by people and I wanted to turn around and stare at them,” Jaki Shelton Green says. “I wanted to ask my grandmother and my mother a thousand questions, and they were like ‘Shhhh! Be quiet!’ So my
grandmother gave me these tiny tablets, and they had little pencils that came with them. My grandmother literally had a score of them. And that was my Sunday treat. That and a stick of spearmint gum, and I was good for hours.” Scribbles turned into letters and words. Green wrote descriptions of women’s hats and stories about church elders. Her fascination with the act of communion, and the resonance between
the words “blood” and “bread,” found its way into nickel notebook after nickel notebook. Green, 65, is North Carolina’s ninth poet laureate, and the first African American person to hold the position. She grew up in Efland, North Carolina, in Orange County, and is one of the most travelled and decorated poets in the state, serving as the first Piedmont Laureate in 2009 and winning the North Carolina Award
photography by S.P. MURRAY JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019 | 49
