The North Carolina African American Heritage Commission (AAHC) is pleased to announce the continuation of its initiative “Africa to Carolina.”
NC AAHC welcomes NC Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green to host the “Africa to Carolina” community poetry workshop. This workshop will be held in the Wilmington Community. She will workshop with participants to write prose in response to the "Africa to Carolina” Inclusive Public Art project with the artist team David Wilson and Stephen Hayes. This workshop continues her practice of calling to remembrance of ancestry.
All ages are invited for a collective poetry writing workshop to identify, acknowledge, and mark sites in North Carolina where enslaved Africans disembarked directly from the African continent. We invite you to join us as we share more information about the initiative and gather feedback, suggestions, and workshops with the communities.
Jaki Shelton Green, the 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 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
- Feeding the Light
- I want to undie you
- I want to undie you English /Italian bilingual edition
Juneteenth 2020, she released her first LP, a 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 and was performed in April 2022 by Flutronix and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. She serves as the poetry editor for WALTER Magazine and has 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.