North Carolina Miscellany
For the inaugural Jaki Shelton Green Performance Poetry Prize, Redmond selected Allan Wolf’s performance of his poem “To Leo,” “calling it “a master class on how to take a well-crafted poem and deliver it with both passion and intention.” She added, “He draws the audience in with his direct gaze and expert pacing. ‘To Leo’ is a palpable tribute poem in which Allan creatively resurrects his grandfather, Leo Vernon Wolf. Because of this lovely homage, we are better for having met Leo.”3
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Onyx Bradley’s “A Letter to the Girl I Used to Be” and “To the Monster Under my Bed” both received Honorable Mention, Redmond appreciating how the poet “weaves engaging stories and uses direct address in both poems as an effective craft element.” The audience, she says, “is invited into the poet’s world and made insiders. With a conversational and casual delivery, they carry us and set the mood. These poems are charged. They strike chords, resonating with both welcome and warning.”
“ a master class on how to take a well-crafted poem and deliver it with both passion and intention.” —Glenis Redmond
PHOTOGRAPH BY JON GARDINER/UNC CHAPEL HILL
“ the poet weaves engaging stories and uses direct address in both poems as an effective craft element.” —Glenis Redmond
ALLAN WOLF’s picture books, poetry collections, young adult novels, and nonfiction celebrate his love of research, history, science, and poetry. This versatile writer is a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, two-time winner of the North Carolina Young Adult Book Award, and recipient of New York’s Bank Street College Claudia Lewis Award for Poetry. Booklist placed his The Watch That Ends the Night on its list of the 50 Best YA Books of All Time. Wolf believes in the healing powers of poetry recitation and has committed to memory nearly a thousand poems. In 2023 he has performed poetry in person for over ten thousand children. ABOVE Alan Wolf performing his winning poem, “To Leo” ABOVE RIGHT Onyx Bradley performing their poems, selected
for honorable mention 3
This and other quotations from the judge are cited from “Allan Wolf Wins Inaugural Green Performance Poetry Prize,” NCLR 4 June 2023: web.
ONYX BRADLEY was born in Charlotte and grew up in Pikeville, NC. While they enjoy poetry a great deal, their main focus lies in writing stories featuring LGBTQ+ characters in the fantasy and science fiction settings they had always been drawn to as a child. They graduated with a BA in English from East Carolina University in 2023.