Chatham Community Library will commemorate National Poetry Month with a presentation by NC Poet Laureate, Jaki Shelton Green.  The virtual Zoom event, entitled “An Evening with the North Carolina Poet Laureate”, will take place at 6:00 PM on Saturday, April 24, 2021. 

Jaki Shelton Green is the first African American and third woman to be appointed as the North Carolina Poet Laureate. She is a 2019 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, 2014 NC Literary Hall of Fame Inductee, 2009 NC Piedmont Laureate appointee, and 2003 recipient of the North Carolina Award for Literature. Green, a professor of Documentary Poetry at Duke University Center for Documentary Studies, has been named the 2021 Frank B. Hanes Writer in Residence at UNC Chapel Hill.

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, and i want to undie you. On Juneteenth 2020, she released her first LP, poetry album, The River Speaks of Thirst.

National Poetry Month was introduced in 1996 and was inspired by the success of Black History Month, held each February, and Women's History Month, held in March. In 1995, the Academy of American Poets convened a group of publishers, booksellers, librarians, literary organizations, poets, and teachers to discuss the need and usefulness of a similar monthlong holiday to celebrate poetry

To register for this event and to receive virtual meeting instructions, please send an email to rita.vanduinen@chathamlibraries.org.

This event is free and open to the public and made possible with the generous support of the Friends of the Chatham Community Library.