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NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y R E V I E W
Fall 2023
POETRY OFF THE PAGE: PREMIERE JAKI SHELTON GREEN PERFORMANCE POETRY PRIZE CONTEST While Green doesn’t consider herself a performance poet per se, on Juneteenth 2020, Soul City Sounds released her spoken word album, The River Speaks of Thirst. Green has performed and taught around the globe, and her laureate duties have had her on stages (or video online) from Murphy to Manteo. The audience for her readings (performances) are typically mesmerized by her presence and command of her artistry. Her commitment to community, advocating for inclusion and diversity, resonates throughout her mission: “what’s really at the core of doing the public work is helping young people understand that they are worthy of their own stories: to be able to see them and read them or dance them, to see them into being,” Green has stated.1 NCLR accepted video submissions to the inaugural Jaki Shelton Green Performance Poetry contest in April 2023. The contest’s first judge was Glenis Redmond, an accomplished spoken word poet, currently serving as the inaugural Poet Laureate for Greenville, SC, and an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. She has also been a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist and traveled internationally performing and teaching poetry. Redmond says she began her poetry career during her years living in Asheville, NC, in the 1990s. In her 2019 NCLR interview, Redmond said, “I appreciated the call-and-response aspect of poetry, creating spaces with live poetry, having a conversation with the audience.”2 PHOTOGRAPH BY B. KNOX PHOTOGRAPHY; COURTESY OF GLENIS REDMOND
The North Carolina Literary Review has long championed our state’s poets sharing their verse on the printed page: the early issues under Alex Albright’s editorship published new poems by National Book Award winner A.R. Ammons of Columbus County. After Editor Margaret Bauer developed a similar relationship with James Applewhite, we started the James Applewhite Poetry Contest in 2011 and over the years have published numerous winners, honorees, ad finalists in our print and digital pages. In 2022, in collaboration with the North Carolina Poetry Society (NCPS), we expanded our support of North Carolina poets to include the oral tradition of poetry: performance poetry, spoken word, praise poetry, slam poems. As is the case with our other competitions, NCLR’s new Jaki Shelton Green Performance Poetry Prize competition is open to any writer who fits the NCLR definition of a North Carolina writer: anyone who currently lives in North Carolina, has lived in North Carolina, or uses North Carolina as subject matter. This contest is the brainchild of longtime member of NCLR’s editorial board Celestine Davis, who first asked the editor some years ago how NCLR might include spoken word poetry. “Then in spring 2022, it occurred to me that answering that question is exactly the kind of project development we should apply gift funding to,” reported Bauer, who, providing a summer stipend from NCLR’s Foundation account, invited Davis to develop her idea into another contest for North Carolina poets. Upon doing so, Davis, then President of the NCPS, brought her project (and Bauer) to that board to propose a collaboration. Davis regards this “support and collaboration with NCLR for this contest as an essential step toward the more inclusive and extended vision of the North Carolina Poetry Society.” The NCPS sponsors the contest, providing the prize money and judge’s stipend. Jointly, NCLR and NCPS determined that the current North Carolina’s Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green would be the natural namesake for this new contest. Current NCPS President Alana Dagenhart notes, “To have a performance poetry prize that honors our vibrant Poet Laureate, Jaki Shelton Green, and gives a stage to new voices is thrilling. It makes me feel like we are on the cusp of dynamic growth in North Carolina poetry, and The North Carolina Poetry Society is delighted to be a sponsor.”
ABOVE Glenis Redmond performing at Greenville Jazz Fest, Greenville,
SC, June 2023 1
Liberation Station Bookstore, Full Interview with NC Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green, Youtube, 6 June 2023: web.
2
Lisa Sarasohn, “Glenis Redmond: Poet, Teaching Artist, Griot,” NCLR 18 (2019): 47.