Politics & Poetry Episode 5 ~ Part 2: Jaki Shelton Green

Politics & Poetry Episode 5 Part 2 ~ Jaki Shelton Green

Ron Campbell:

We are excited to continue our conversation with Jaki Shelton Green, the Poet Laureate of North Carolina.  Welcome to the 5th Episode - Part 2 of Politics & Poetry, where we continue our discussion with Jaki Shelton Green, exploring the dark spaces in our shared history.  We’ll also discuss the  courage of those who walk and talk through poetry to engage more fully in our communities, and in our politics as we lift up each other with respect and dignity. We invite you to listen closely as she tells us the intimate story of her ancestry and invites us to remember that  "we are all the poems."

Jaki Shelton Green 

That's right. We're all, yeah, we are the poems. And, and sometimes they're, you know, I have a poem, “No Poetry,” sometimes there is no language. Sometimes I can't, I can't find the language for the depth of, you know, I just, I just feel like anything that I would say sometimes was just empty for some of what we witness as human beings. 

Sometimes there's no poetry, you know, there is no language for…

there's a poem by Kwame Dawes, it's called, “Mother of Mothers.”

It's about the Haitian, it's about the Haitian earthquake and the Haitian AIDS epidemic. And there's a line in the poem that “A mother knows the weight of the casket in her hand of her child.” And I always come back to that line, you know, like, how do you talk about the weight of a casket? You know, in the palms of a mother who's bearing her child, you know, how do you even think about that? Or, when we've seen, you know, refugees losing children crossing oceans? You know, there is no language for that father holding his three year old, who's drowned,  you know, that, that, you know, what is the language? What is the language of those children and cages? But what is the language of a people who allow that to happen? What is the language of the people who allow that to happen? You know what, I'm, I'm abroad. And, you know, when people realize I'm American, they're like, “What is wrong with you people?” Like, you know, some of the things that are happening in your country to your educators, we'd be in the streets striking, you know, or there would be no school there would be… so I don't want to get too political. But but sometimes, you know, sometimes things have to collapse, totally collapse so we can rebuild them. And I'm sad to think that we may be in the middle of that.  

Lisa Campbell: Well, and you have a poem entitled, “Things Break Down.”

Jaki Shelton Green:

Oh, that's an old one, it's an old one!

Lisa Campbell:

But as soon as you said that, the idea of things breaking; I really loved that poem.

Jaki Shelton Green:

Yeah, it's a bad girl poem.  My mother would sometimes say, do you have to use those words? I was like, sometimes like they're the only ones that will do. You did, you didn't want me to read that right?

Lisa Campbell;

I would love it. Yes. 

Jaki Shelton Green:

Oh, what book is it? I may not have it. You know what? It's in Conjure Blues, right? Yeah. (Abdul, can you get me Conjure Blues?)  I'll have to wait for my assistant to get me a copy of my book. 

Lisa Campbell:

Is there another poem that you like, especially as we think about politics and poetry and change, and what we are challenged with, here in America today? 

Jaki Shelton Green:

Well, you know, this is a historical poem point, but I'll read it because we are back to a time when people are being lynched again. And I'm using that word lynch very widely, because I believe that it's not always the rope or the bullet. You know, sometimes it's the lack of healthcare. That's lynching too. You know, you know, children being kicked out of school. because they're, because the school system doesn't like their hair, because their hair is in braids, or their hair is too wild, whatever that means. Yeah. So I wrote this poem, because my question for myself was, what does it mean when we asked the ecosystem around us to speak about what it has witnessed? 

And I was thinking about the, the lynching of my great uncle, who's a brother of Caswell Holt, and they were the first Reconstructionist black sheriffs for Alamance County. And one day they were in downtown Burlington, and arrested a white woman for public drunkenness. That night, the Klan or whoever came and dragged them out. They were hung. But my great grandfather survived. And there are many stories around how that happened. That after they were lynched, you know, they leave them in the woods, people, the family went and found them. He was still alive, and they secretly kept him alive. They nursed him back to health. We know he survived that, because hem public record historical documents, record that he testified at an anti-lynching an anti Klan activity hearing in Washington, DC in the 1800s. But I became obsessed with the story. It's a lot, it's, this is a rabbit hole. I'm going down after my Poet Laureateship to write, to write a book about this. But I found that space, the general space where the lynching  happened, and standing in it. You know, I wasn't so much. It wasn't the act of the lynching. But it was what did this forest? How did it respond? The trees, the grass, the birds, as a witness, so I'm very, very much always thinking about our kinship with land and the earth and Mother Nature. I even think that COVID-19 people are not paying attention. I think that, you know, Mother Earth has been screaming at us, and I'm getting off a little bit, screaming at us for generations, telling us that she can't breathe. And she's been saying this, I can't breathe, please let me breathe, and we we wouldn't stop. So what does she take from us-our breath? I just thought it was just very metaphorical that that's what's happened in COVID-19. 

Lisa Campbell:

Absolutely. 

Jaki Shelton Green:

So having said that, I have always had this just urgency and immediacy, to be in conversation about this witnessing. 

“I Wanted To Ask The Trees”

By Jaki Shelton Green

I wanted to ask the trees. do you remember. were you there. did you shudder. did your skin cry out against the skin of my great uncle’s skin. was the smell of bark a different smell from the smell of meat flesh. human meat flesh. beloved father husband lover friend man flesh. could the air discern burning tongue from burning arm. does the neck bone stay intact or grizzle like the shaft of toes fingers ears.

I wanted to ask the trees. were you there. did you shudder. are you an elder that wailed out loud when they strung him up on your youngest branch. no mercy even for the lynching of new sprawling birch limbs just learning themselves how to crawl towards an un-emancipated sky. are you a grandchild or great grandchild of the tree that drank his blood. the tree that cried tears into the rope around his neck. his arms. his legs.

I wanted to ask the trees. but the ground spoke first. annoying perfectly manicured azaleas. annoying perfect graves of perfect skeletons. whose blood-stained hands are forever etched on the hearts of my ancestors who cry out to me. plantation ground scratches the soles of my feet. ancestors beg me to lie down. be still. they waited so long for this day. when someone would come and dance with their spirits. they are everywhere whispering. holding up this house that dares to ignore them. holding up a sanitized history and herstory. one for the trees. one for us.

I wanted to ask the trees. do you remember. did you refuse to hold his weight. did your branches crackle. did you refuse to hold him. did you feed his blood to your roots. who are these new trees. look how they glisten against an unshackled firmament. did you tell them that his blood was the only nourishment you could provide that entire season. did you tell them it was a winter of blood. no rain. no snow. blood storms. lightning and thunder lifting other names onto the wind’s tongue. so many names for the wind to carry. so much hair teeth bones for the ground to gather.

I wanted to ask the trees. who will carry your stories. who are your historians. who will measure the rings of ropes that wrapped around your waists. your shoulders. under your arms. beneath your head. I wanted to ask the trees. did you forget to breathe when the red thunder inside you painted everything the color of love.

I want to ask the trees. do you remember. do your branches still crackle with his weight. do you shudder. do you know mercy.

Lisa Campbell:

Wow.

Jaki Shelton Green:

Every time I go to this historical site, which is my paternal, My father's maternal side of her family comes from. Yeah, it's you know, the ancestors are still there. They're there. And I have so many questions for them. Like, where are you buried? Like this was a lot one of the largest plantations in the southeast, a plantation that became the first tier of labor for their infamous textile factory, their first year where they’re enslaved people. And they credit themselves for introducing Glynn Plaid to the Americas. So I've met with these trust fund heirs. It's very interesting. Very, very interesting how they have silenced the history of the people who actually are the reason that they have the wealth that they have. So it's very interesting. But inside of this house is my great grandfather's bill of sales. He was purchased for $700 and his photograph lives under a glass case in that room. But I tell the story because I think someone has to remember. Someone has to be the one who dares to remember. And who dares to tell-that story again. So that dying is not just an act. So the poem you wanted me to read was… Tell me again? Or do we have time 

Lisa Campbell:

Well, I would love to have weeks and months and years to talk with you. But before you move on to “Things Break Down,”  thank you for sharing that poem with us, “I wanted to ask the trees.”  It's so powerful and moving. 

Ron Campbell: 

You've dug deep to ferret out the truth and to share that, it also reminded me and the connection is on my mind, because I, within the last week, have just seen your interview with Freeman Vines, and the Hanging Tree, and the commonality there is rich, and deep and painful. And you've helped share that story.  It needs telling.

Jaki Shelton Green:

Yeah, Freeman's, wow, that collection, if you have an opportunity to see the exhibit, you should see it. It's very, very powerful. And his stories are so powerful. I've had so many long, long…Freeman is a person, when I call him we're on the phone for like four hours. You know, and it's like, and I keep like, who is, like, who is recording? Gathering all these stories?

Lisa Campbell:

So very powerful to think about our ancestors as well. And, and to want to, to hear and to dig deep and to think about our shared ancestry, as you said. Our shared our lives together and the distinct differences.  And, keep working to make the stories real today. To keep them vibrant and upfront today, and kind of linking back to the conversation we were having a moment ago about being able to tell the truth in our educational systems in our classrooms.  And to be able to have the desire to keep, to keep going to have this energy to keep, keep, keep standing up and not being silent and not being complicit. And having the courage to examine, examine what we don't know, what we think we know, to re-evaluate, you are asking the questions of your ancestors, I want to ask the questions of your ancestors.  I want to pose the questions of my ancestors. And that's hard. And it's, it's hard to, to love family and to examine critically, our individual behaviors that were shameful, that were horrific, and our collective behaviors that were horrific. And do that in a place as you described, where we can learn, and we can really hear and we can use that to spur us on to more inclusivity and greater respect and greater equity and equality and all those things. 

Jaki Shelton Green:

And one thing that poetry cannot do is make laws to protect. And, you know, I'm thinking about standing inside of this historical house now with the white ancestors of the slaveholders. And I was looking at all of these photographs, they have like so many photographs. And there's a photograph where it looks like it's the 20s or 30s, and this huge house, and I said, so what is where's this house? And they're like, Oh, that's Great Grandpa. That's Grandma's that's Great Grandma, so and so's house. The house that used to be on this street, beautiful, antebellum, gorgeous home. I said and who are those people? I said and who were the women below with the children? Well it was a group of black women pushing carriages with little white children, you could see their blonde hair, and they were like, there are no other people in that. And they're like, they're no people in here. Like it's and they were like what are you seeing?  And I'm like, there are people in the photograph you all.  I was going to ask you who the babies were and like with those babies, some of you, because these people in their 70s 80s and are like we don't see them. And I'm standing there with the docent, the historian, he's actually the historian of this plantation. And I'm standing there also with a crew of New York City documentarians who are making a documentary on me, and that's why we're there. I wanted to go there. And they will not allow me to be there by myself. So they showed up, and it was very interesting how the narrative that they were attempting to impose over my narrative. It was very, very interesting. You know, I mean, having standing upstairs with my cousin was in his 70s. And he's just weeping. Because he'd never seen this photograph of our great great grandfather. And he'd never seen, I'd seen this bill of sales that he was sold for $700. I have a copy of it. 

First of all, they were they told me I couldn't go upstairs. And I was like, why? I said, I've been upstairs 1,000 times in this house. While you're taking a camera crew up. I said, lucky you. And I said, first of all, I don't need your permission. I am going upstairs. I'm going to visit my great grandfather. And yes, I'm going to actually open the glass case and take him out. Well, you can't do that. I was like, Okay. And I said, Okay, let's go up the steps. So we go up the steps, and they follow us. And we're standing there, and I'm holding the photograph, and I'm looking at the bill sales. And my cousin is just looking at me, he can't stop weeping. And he's wearing Glynn Plaid, and he looks at me, and this is a cousin all my life. I have never seen him in any clothes that were not plaid. And he said, this is in my DNA. I said, yeah, like you are, you are, you are walking advertisement for plaid! He's a golfer. So he has like all of these, you know, plaid pants. He's always in long sleeved plaid. Beautiful, you know, and he said, Oh, my God, he said, This is freaking me out. He said, because I absolutely love plaid, I said like we know. But to be there in that moment, what was more powerful was to witness to two elderly, white women saying they're shocked. They were just they were frozen. And they were like, we didn't know, we didn't know. We didn't know. Like, you didn't know what. I said, But you so eloquently articulate your history from the perspective that you want it to live in the world, that your grandparents, your great grandparents, were industrialists, you know, they interventionists, they were wealthy entrepreneurs. But that first tier was their enslaved people. So you know, we're standing there, I said, you can't even see the black women pushing carriages of white babies. You literally can't see them. 

So just that experience, you know, and the camera is rolling. You know, and these New Yorkers are like, their own like, this is like really good content, man. You know, they're just eating it up. Because yeah, these women became this really embodied. Kind of the classic, stereotypical, Southern Belle and I said, Well, of course you didn't have to know. It was not required of you to know your grandfathers, your fathers, your uncles, your brothers. And now your nephew stands here, making sure you don't have to bother your sweet little heads with this. This is dirty work. Your sweet little hands should never have to worry about this. And it was very, very, very interesting. 

What happens that night, is the nephew who's a big realtor, goes on Facebook. And what he weaves on Facebook is, oh my god, USA pictures, family pictures, USA traveled to my great grandfather's, not plantation, but homestead, to celebrate his pioneering as an entrepreneur in Alamance County. And I'm thinking no, the documentary is about the first African American Poet Laureate of North Carolina. I was just, you know, that whole experience, you know, and, you know, over lunch, I'm sitting there with the filmmakers and the two producers. And these people just like that, did that just happen?  Like, did we just witness these people come in? And we had to tell them, we're not here to interview you. 

Lisa Campbell:

Right 

Jaki Shelton Green:

Jaki, guided us here. You didn't invite us here. This is her story about her ancestor who lived on this plantation? Well, we don't regard it as a plantation. Well pick up the history book laying over there, on that side table. So if you know, I'm just saying this about you, like, who controls the narrative? This was, yeah, positionality. It was about, you know, power. It was like, in that moment, I decided you're not taking this power. I mean, you're not going to reweave a different story. But the minute he could get on social media, he embroidered this fabulous thing about he and his family. And it was really sad, because there were all these black people coming on, like, Oh, this is great! This is so fabulous!  His friends, and I was like, Whoa, and I and I didn't I didn't say a word. You know, I just felt like it wasn't my place. I did not, it wasn't necessary to. It wasn't necessary to tell him that that was just so inappropriate. Sometimes we have to let people be where they are, and own their own truths. If that makes sense. And I know I've gone off on a tangent here. So I'm sorry.  But when we think about 

Lisa Campbell:

We love the story of the, you know, the exposure of what we will allow ourselves, what do we know? What will we allow ourselves to know, and this is a little bit of a different tangent, rabbit hole. But you know, this idea of, because we've been sheltered from it, or because we've been scared, or protected, or all of those things. It's sort of like, you know babies, the brain synapses. There was this cognitive experience where they were studying babies from all around the world, at birth, and they were mapping what their brain activity looked like when they heard languages, English, Spanish, Chinese, German. And then, six months later, they conducted the same experiment. And in the American babies who were primarily hearing English, when they played the Chinese language and other languages but that specifically in the Chinese language, because the sounds are so different, the baby's brain synapses no longer were firing, when the Chinese language is being spoken in some because they hadn't heard it, and therefore they didn't hear it any longer. And that was just shocking to me in the moment to think about our brain and our, the way that it builds and it layers and it changes and what we think is reality. Our reality is often, and very often, not the shared reality. And so how do we hear the things that we've been programmed or, you know, conditioned to hear or to not hear? How can we open up our heart and our brain? And when do we even know, to your point? They couldn't see the other people? 

Jaki Shelton Green:

Right? Well, you know, it comes back. Right? And that's why I think that that's why there's so much that is allowed to happen. Because we don't see the humanity of each other. We just don't, we don't see the humanity of each other.

Jaki Shelton Green:

I've always been raised that if there's a child hungry anywhere, that the child is right next door, you'd like that no child should, should should be hungry, that no people should be hungry. But we live in a culture that it's interesting. There's a commerce, there's a whole commerce, of just not being good. You know, it's like how have we commercialized, not being good? And I don't know if I'm making sense? But, kind of like that whole bad boy, bad girl. You know, I was paying attention to language during the last presidential campaign and language and what some women were saying about them, just like, like, you're not talking about me, you're talking about all of us. You think you're talking about those women over there, but you're talking about yourself as well. You cannot separate yourself from us. Like we are a species like, like, there's not you all the other women. So it's very interesting. You, you hit it on the nail, what, what we don't allow ourselves to see, people. 

You know, I mean, if you interviewed people on the street, I mean, you and I could spend a day together shopping in certain places. And I could walk in and people don't see me. They literally Invisible Me. They literally ghost me, they don't see me. Because for them, I'm not supposed to be in that space. So I noticed that one of your questions that you sent me was about, you know, when a poet’s, about poets, some poets you know, we're political. Well, I'm a poet, but I'm also a human being. And I think about my very existence for some people as a political, is political. My very existence is a political statement for some. That I thrive.  You know, that I've walked into certain restaurants and it's not. Hi, how may I help you? I mean, Hi, how many? Are you here for dinner, table for two? Or? Excuse me, can I help you? Well, we'd like dinner, you know, like the two people in front of us? Oh. Because for you, I'm not, I’m in a space that is not a space you see me. You know, and I see it all the time. I experience it all the time. You know, all the time. You know, I walk into a space with a white woman, and somebody says, this is really funny. So people who don't know the Poet Laureate is, you know, someone who has made a reservation for me under the Poet Laureate's title. And I get there and have a white woman and they look at her like, Oh, we're so happy to meet you! Oh, my God. Thank you for coming to our restaurant today. How long have you been the Poet Laureate? And? And she's like, I'm not the poet laureate. Oh, but that's your name, your Jaki Shelton Green. And she was like, no this is Jaki Shelton Green. And oh, the dismissal certainly,  it's not a big deal anymore. It is a dismissal. Oh, let me show you to your seats. Not that I need to be glorified as a Poet Laureate, but that I'm standing here with someone, they're two of us. 

So we see how we are selective about what we see, how we ghost people, how we other people, the assumptions we make about people. You know, on a daily basis, so sometimes I just fly if I breathe as a political act, you know. But you know, I was always taught to kill them with kindness. And I think if we created more situations, where people from different belief systems, political persuasions, were actually intentionally, in spaces designed for them to be in conversation.  There's a huge project that's happening out of Colorado. This project involved about 18 people, like nine people who are voting for Trump, and nine people who are not voting for Trump, and they took them away for two weeks. And they were living together, eating together. There were situations where one the Trumpers were in one group, the people who were not in another, and then they mixed them up. And then they mixed up the women from different political persuasions together. And I was an evaluator. I was asked to look at all of this footage, because it's going to air pretty soon, some of it has aired. But it was fascinating to listen to why people said they were voting for certain people. There was actually a young African American woman who was a staunch Trump supporter. But what was bizarre is the people voting for Trump did not understand why she  was for President Trump, it was. It was interesting, because she wasn’ t clear!  You know, and there was a young African American man who just kept bumping up with her. He was like, sister, I just like, don't get like, I'm not saying you're wrong, it's like, you have not yet given me a clear reason. So there were, there was just so much going on. But what was beautiful were the friendships, that people at the end of the day the outcomes of people saying, I am not going to change my mind. But this has been the richest experience I've ever had as a human being.  To be in a room where I am respecting other people and I'm being respected. Like no one was mad at anybody, no one was attacking anyone. There were no facilitators or referees. This was just a natural living experience. A woman who said that the African American men that she was with, for those two weeks, totally changed her perspective on African American young men. She had them all stereotyped in her mind. And you couldn't tell her anything different, including the once President of the United States. You know, they were all thugs, Obama was a thug. And she was just talking about the graciousness to generosity of spirit. How they were kind and gentle with her. They treated her as a human being, which required her to respect their humanity. So I think if we had more of these opportunities, and we exercise this as a family, at our dining room table.  I believe that we all have the power to create this. I can't change the world, but I can, I can scratch away at the dirt in my little neighborhood, I can scratch away at that rock that seems unmovable. If you keep scratching you see it, making, you see yourself making the intentions in it. So over food, bringing people together just over food, no intentions.  You know, no conversation about heavy stuff, but just hey, you're my neighbor. I've never met you. Would you want to come to dinner next Sunday? Yeah, I know, our politics are different. I see your Trump signs all over your yard. You know, your kids have said nasty things to me walking by, but you're invited for dinner. 

So how do we? How do we take the risks? What are the risks that we need in our culture right now? Where are the risks that we're willing to take to save us all? You know, we may have come here in different boats. But we're all in the same boat right now. We're all in the same boat. And it's like, it's all hands. It's all, it's all hands on deck. And we need to be steering in the same way. Or we're all going to perish. 

And that's just what my humanity believes. That's what I believe that as a poet, I have the platform to be encouraging about that, too. I have dismantled very racist men who have come to my poetry readings to be disruptive. And I dismantle them with silence and respectability. And as an older white woman said to this white man when this she said, you don't know you just got cussed out in a very, very nice way. She said, You don't even know that you're in like, you are a pea right now, Mr. Tall me, man. But yeah, like I don't invite that disharmony. I don't invite meanness, and I don't dual with it. You know, I'm going to respect your, your human value and right to have a different opinion. But you will not disrespect me in this space. 

Ron Campbell:

In politics, and it's in its most simple form is sometimes described as hey, it's just a matter of deciding how we want to get along and live again. 

Jaki Shelton Green:

Exactly. Yeah, so you know, it's what are we willing to do? 

Lisa Campbell:

Where are we willing to invest our time? Yes, you know, do we take the time to pause to talk to someone we haven't reached out to? Are we going to take the time to read and research? Are we going to take the time to get to know each other? And where are we going to invest? Not just our time, but our money, as we were talking about before the connections, right? Are we going to really value humans? And what does that look like? Politically, in funding of education, in access to healthcare and access to economic opportunities? And I think that's at the heart of why we started getting together weekly and decided, hey, let's have a podcast. Because running for office, we encountered so many of these same kinds of conversations, it was during COVID. So we weren't knocking on doors. But we were picking up the phone and talking to people down the street that we'd never met before. And just hearing their stories, and, you know, many, many people who said, Well, I've never voted for a Democrat. So I, you know, tell me more about what you're standing for. Many people would say, I'm not going to vote for you. But you know, it was interesting talking with you. 

Jaki Shelton Green:

Right? They will remember you because you crossed that line, because you know, you crossed that line, you extended yourself to them. 

Jaki Shelton Green:

I remember when Jesse Helms you know, continually was, was being re-seated over and over again. And I did some little research, I decided I was going to go to all the white beauty parlors and just walk out and have a conversation. And this is when my hair was really long and thick. And I remember walking into one beauty parlor. And this older white woman said, I'd love to get my hands into that hair. And then this other one said, I don't know if we know what to do with that. But they were really kind and gracious. And I said, Oh, I'm not here for hairdo. And it was like, and I just want to chit chat. And they were like we'll pull up a chair. And you know, they had women and of course there was some like, What is she doing here? There was a little nonverbal pushback. But I just thought, well, you know, I said, I'm just fascinated about Jesse Helms. And I said, I grew up with Jesse Helms as a child. And I said, Tell me, why do people keep voting for him? I said I'm just fascinated? Why a senator of that age continues to be re-seated. And I remember the collective sum total of their responses is, why it's just what we do. We're not racist, girl, I got black grandchildren, we aint’t racist. It's just what we do.So it's not I said, Well, do you know any of his platforms?  Not really. It's just what we've been doing. It's what our people have been doing. My husband votes for him. So I'm always gonna vote like my husband, like my daddy. So it was very, very telling to go to those beauty parlors. And then they wanted to tell me their stories of the black nannies that raised them and the black woman who still makes a pot of pinto beans for them, brings them by and you know this relationship. But you never thought about how much you love this black woman, this elderly black woman that has every politician you vote for disenfranchises her, and just self? It was like, well, oh, we don't know nothing about that. [Right.] You know, I'm reminded, you know, that Martin Luther King used to say if he could have convinced white people, that poor white people would join with poor black people for the poor people's, you know, campaign, that we could have alleviated a lot of poverty.  But it was important for people to, they'd rather stay poor. Their whiteness was more important than not being poor. Because our whiteness comes with a currency of power. [Yeah.] So here we are. Yeah, we're here. 

Lisa Campbell:

We are so inspired, talking to you. And just, even more, you've affirmed for me anyway, that poetry, music, art really has a, there's a huge space for it.  A huge need for it and a huge opportunity for us to connect-because of it.  Listening to it, reading it, sharing it, forwarding it, watching it–in your dance, in your productions of the poetry.  It just, there's a huge opportunity for more, more of that!

Ron Campbell:

Navigating the water, I believe you said, Jaki, navigating the water. 

Jaki Shelton Green  Yes, yes. You know, and to see my poetry go out into the world as dance… On Thursday night, I should have been in Chicago, but I was in Tennessee.  I was commissioned by the Arts Club of Chicago to write a score for two Grammy, last year, these two women were nominated for a Grammy. They're called Flutronics. And I wrote a text for a score that  was the first time that was performed Thursday night in Chicago. It's going to be performed in April, in Cincinnati. The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is also performing this body of work with them. And that's, for me, poetry doesn't just live on paper. You know, it's when people like someone called me and said, didn't I see you in a commercial last week? And I was like, Yeah, so the North Carolina Economic Development Commission–I’m in a commercial for them. [I love it!] I have a text that's they wrote it, but I didn't write it. But it's a text. It's kind of a poem. And I narrate and I’m the narrator, and you see me as the Poet Laureate standing in front of an audience, and then you see me walking through a bookstore. Um, but yeah, I mean, for me, it's been just, it's funny how the people who call me up to do stuff.  You know, chefs, like, we're having this food thing, we're having this, this OpenTable, farm to table and we thought instead of a blessing, we thought you could write a poem about the table and the food. You know, on Wednesday, I'm the keynote speaker for the North Carolina Association of Nonprofits. The theme is the power of our stories. You know, storytelling, you know, philanthropy, philanthropists want our stories. 

Lisa Campbell:

I love the expansive opportunity and the recognition. I think it's important and I hope that we continue to, to give you space and to elevate your voice and the voice of artists. So, so dear, and so powerful. And so uplifting, thinking, in your quest to ask.

You said you, I believe in one of your interviews that poetry is the medicine but you're but you don't see yourself as the medicine.  You see yourself as a poet as the spoon. That yeah, I see it as an offering. 

Jaki Shelton Green:

Right. I see myself as a carrier of that medicine, I believe that creativity is medicine. And I just, you know, sometimes I feel like I'm on the, on the boat that brings it in.  Or, you know, I'm the spoon. Sometimes, um, the, the blanket, you know, the poem is a blanket that someone needs to wrap up in. You know, sometimes it's like straight talk that somebody needs to hear.  Or, or that point could just be a lullaby, you know? Yeah, I believe in the ordinariness, the everydayness and in the ordinariness of poetry. That you can find poetry everywhere. You know, There are friends of mine who are amazing cooks. And I have one friend who makes the most gorgeous salads with, you know, edible flowers. And there's, they're just a poem. And I always tell them, you know, people, there's a poem inside of the salad bowl. You know, there's a poem, in the way old women in the south, you know, arrange flower pots on the porch, you know? There's poetry everywhere. If we can just listen. Get out if we could just get out of our way. And be still and hear the poetry inside of a rainstorm. You know, hear the Portree inside of the children's voices walking down the street laughing and talking or, you know, to hear the poetry when you walk into a crowded room, and you hear the white noise of so many voices. But if, if you're really like, and I give this assignment to students.  Walk into a very crowded space where there are a lot of people and listen, like to stand still, have your eyes closed, and write down what you hear. So you'll get a snippet of yeah I was late for class today. Oh, no, I've got a dentist's appointment that day. Oh, can I have the green beans with that? Just write it all down? And what is the point you've collected from space? When can you just be still? You know, you first walk in, are you here's the clatter. But if you can focus, you can hear the conversations, the snippets, that are just in the air for you to lift. So I want to give people different ways of thinking about poetry, and how they see themselves inside of poetry, and how they see their life experiences. Because all of my poems come from stories. I’ve you this before. All of my poems live inside of stories. And as a poet, I just pluck them out.  It’'s you know, it's like a Zora Neale Hurston.  I forget the line, but the last lines are,  “I'm too busy sharpening my, my oyster knife.” So that's the way I think of these stories. I'm the poet with an oyster knife, plucking them out of these stories and onto the page.  But we all have that oyster knife, all of us. I want people to believe that. More importantly, to believe that their voices and their stories matter. You don't have to have the MFA in creative writing. You don't have to be the Poet Laureate.  You don't have to be an English major, to enjoy poetry, to want to write poetry. Or to use those very Eurocentric, you know, what I mean collegiate academic, factors is how you critique your own poetry, or the poetry around you.

Lisa Campbell:

We really appreciate your generosity of time and of spirit today. Would you, we would love to have you read one more poem. Either, “Things Break Down” or any poem of your choice. 

Jaki Shelton Green:

I'll read that since you… It's a very old point that I'd forgotten about, but I'm happy to read it. I probably should put my real glasses on. Those are my computer glasses. I'm the Poet Laureate who goes all the time with different glasses.  

“things break down”

By Jaki Shelton Green

things break down in different ways

like love 

it's been ten years since

i've been thin

things break down in different ways. 

like the absence of his smile

things break down in different ways

like the meadows of the skin

apples spoil 

meat rots

aspirin takes care of toothache but 

things break down in different ways

ike the last time he praised my art

stood in my mirror

things break down in different ways

like sunday morning blues

getting sung out at the altar

I said, things broke down

in different ways. 

like my clock stopping 

one morning at 3 a.m. 

he crashed his car into the river

things break down 

his toothbrush is still 

beside the mirror

Lisa Campbell:

So thank you for having me, for uplifting my words out into the world. Thank you for being the messengers for this amazing podcast. 

Ron Campbell:

Thank you, Jaki. 

Lexi Hunter: 

Thank you. Thank you. 

Lisa Campbell:

Thank you. Thank you so very much.

Jaki Shelton Green:

Okay, my friends, take care. I hope to see you again. You too.