Jaki Shelton Green, Poet Laureate of North Carolina
Creatives in Conversation: I believe that we can learn so much from each other and I am fascinated by the ways in which artists of all mediums move through the creative process. Each interview features a different local artist as we discuss the challenges and joys that come from accessing and living with their creativity.
Jaki Shelton Green at the Hillsborough River Walk (Photo credit: Sandra Davidson)
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 Poets Laureate Fellow, 2014 NC Literary Hall of Fame Inductee, 2009 NC Piedmont Laureate appointment, and 2003 recipient of the North Carolina Award for Literature. Jaki Shelton Green teaches Documentary Poetry at Duke University Center for Documentary Studies and was appointed 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, and breath of the song, published by Blair Publishers. Feeding the Light, I want to undie you published by Jacar Press, i want to undie you English /Italian bilingual edition published by Lebeg Publishers. On 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.
What does living a creative life mean to you?
Well, it's funny you ask. I'm 68 years old and I have grappled with that question most of my writing life. It wasn't until 2004 that I left my day job to become a writer. I'd already published six books, but I was having a little bit of imposter syndrome. It was not until 2004 that I really stepped inside of what it means to be truly present [to my creativity].
My time management skills were probably most actively honed when I was raising small children and learning how to be a creative inside of the liminal spaces. So I I'm very good at balancing and I'm very good at time management. When I meet my current husband who – I don't like that word “soulmate,” it's overused – but truly, the universe just really aligned us. His first question to me was, if money and time were not barriers, what would you do? And I said, I would come home and be a writer. He said, you are a writer. And I said, I write at writing. I have never had the financial security to walk away from a job. In my 20’s and 30’s I’d look at celebrated writer friends I admired and I’d say, I don’t have a beach house or a cabin in the mountains [to write in], I don’t get to run away [and write]. And I realized over the years that I never needed that. [It] sounded glamorous. I thought every artist had to have another house. But I realized you create that space. It comes from inside of you.
I love that.
“Writing sometimes is not even about the creative process. Sometimes it’s about saving somebody’s life.”
And I now create that in my home and in other spaces I occupy. I know how to carve out that room of my own, even if it’s in a corner – I know how to own that corner and claim that corner. Once I got over trying to model my writing life after other people's and accepted that I had accomplished a whole lot as a working-class divorced mother, putting kids through college, I was like, you go girl. Look at you. This was in 2004, the end of 2005. I published another book. I went on a huge book tour around the country. And it's like, once I decided I'm going to live the life of a writer on my terms ... once I claimed that it was just like a rollercoaster.
You set things in motion.
Yes. Creativity is everywhere. I don't judge myself if I'm not writing. I know that creativity is also at the bottom of a salad bowl. I have one girlfriend and she comes a lot for dinner and she always says what should I bring? So in the summers, I say bring one of your magical salads because she grows all of these edible flowers. Her salads, they just look like something out of a fairy tale. And I always tell her, you know, you're such an artist when it comes to your salads. Art is everywhere. It's cooking. It's how we arrange our homes. It's gardening. It's our yard. It's how we dress ourselves. I believe you can train your muse. I believe that we have to wait on her. I do believe that she's very jealous; I used to tell men when I'm in my writing zone, I'm not available. ... The muse is jealous. She wants you, when she wants you. And you have to be available.
Yes, you might have to drop everything!
Right. But I've also been known to tell her, like, girl, not now, can't you see I'm busy? (laughs) We all have artifacts and things that we keep. So I do this workshop called "What We Keep, Keeps Us." In my home there are a lot of hand me down things that I've kept, like I have this aluminum flower pitcher that used to sit on my grandmother's back porch. Well, it's all dented. And my husband was like, what is this? Can I throw this away? I was like, no, - we have a relationship, this silver pitcher [and me]. So he said, well, one day I'm going to get the dents out and maybe can put flowers in it. But it's the story, it's the story of the story that's inside of that pitcher. Where did the pitcher come from and who first owned her? So I always tell people to walk through their house -- what's on your fireplace? What's in your drawer? What's around your neck? What's in your pocket? What do you keep? If we've put it in our house, there's a reason it's there. I think that's kind of the beauty of [being] a teacher of creative writing: people have all these stories, but sometimes they don't even know their stories until somebody brings them out of them.
I was thinking back to when you were saying about how as you've gotten older, you've learned to conjure the muse. Are there any sort of rituals that you do or is there a method to it that you can share?
“I’m fascinated with historical and current events and how we create a space for them and reimagine them and reframe them through poetics. Which means that poetry literally is everywhere every day. It’s a happening. It’s liquid, it’s current, It’s flowing, it’s vibrant, but most of all it’s accessible. ”
There is. I have to clear the deck. So this week is not a writing week because I've had three interviews, I have an appointment today and tomorrow. So I clear the deck first. I have to make myself available. Once I've met those obligations [such as meetings with students and other appointments], once I've taken care of my responsibilities and what has been required of me by others ... then I can give myself permission to only require myself for myself. I believe that one has to make a space for the muse to come, and if you haven't cleaned up the room she can't find a place to sit down! I'm a little nerdy that way. Like everything else has to be done, the laundry has to be done, the house has to be in order, so subconsciously that undone stuff is not pulling me.
What has been your biggest creative challenge and how do you move through it? Or is it something that you're still navigating?
I would say right now as the Poet Laureate of North Carolina, it's kind of tricky sometimes when I'm teaching or facilitating workshops and I want to be doing my own work. Because as I am teaching I am energizing myself. So I've to learn how to surrender … the blessing is when someone comes to me crying at the end of a workshop and says, I have never written a poem in my life ever. And I don't even know why I came to this workshop. It just looked interesting and I'm so glad I came because, oh my God, once you gave us the prompt and you talked about it, I couldn't stop writing. This is not my ego talking, but I really do believe we are each other’s keepers. Writing sometimes is not even about the creative process. Sometimes it's about saving somebody's life. Sometimes it's about finding a strength that you didn't know you had, sometimes it's about the validation of self, people who've been beat down so low and suddenly they hear their own words, and they realize they are very worthy.
What or who are some of your creative influences?
Rumi, Hafiz, Neruda, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker. Some of my Duke student writers who don't even know how amazing they are. Women who have gone on to the next life, who influenced me tremendously with their own stories. My grandmother, my mother - they continue to do that. People who are trailblazers regardless of what they're setting the bar for. It's not always someone famous.
I used to think all writers had to be alcoholics or, you know, had to have some serious neurosis, so thank God that I met some healthy people.
I read everything. I've been doing this since my twenties -- every summer I choose a different country. So one year I read all Chilean fantasy. Another year I read all Moroccan women writer poets. One year it was Appalachian writers. It was Italian novelists one year, then Irish novelist. So just being intentional about wanting to hear the global diversity of voices. The continent of Africa is just bursting with creativity in terms of the poets and story writers and novelists, many of them very young and just genius. There is a globe out there to play on.
There’s a movement of desert poets in Morocco. And there’s a woman I’ve been trying to trace down for a few years now every time I’m in Morocco, her name is Al Khadra and she’s a poet of the desert. She's probably in her nineties now, if she’s still alive. And she walks across the Moroccan desert from one refugee camp to the next. And she's a walking historian poet of lamentation for what has happened to the desert people of Morocco. So because of her there is a resurgence of younger desert poets who have picked up the mantle of being truth tellers and documenting history through poetry. I'm fascinated by all of these different genres of poetry, which is why I teach documentary poetry. I'm fascinated with historical and current events and how we create a space for them and reimagine them and reframe them through poetics. Which means that poetry literally is everywhere every day. It's a happening. It’s liquid, it's current, It's flowing, it's vibrant, but most of all it’s accessible.
This interview has been condensed and edited.