By Alaina Bookman | abookman@al.com
Birmingham’s poet laureate, Salaam Green, is a recipient of the prestigious Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship which will support her project for incarcerated teens.
The Academy will award Green and 22 other fellows $50,000 in support of their community-based poetry projects. In partnership with the Magic City Poetry Festival and Radical Reversal, Green’s project, Lyrics for Life Birmingham, is a 10-week poetry and hip-hop workshop program. Green will lead teens at the Jefferson Youth Detention Center through weekly sessions about self-expression, personal development and rehabilitation.
“This fellowship is an extraordinary honor,” Green said in a statement. “Poetry is how we navigate grief, joy, injustice and reconciliation. Teaching literary excellence as a form of healing is at the heart of my work. Through literary arts, we repair what systems have broken and I’m eager to apply this work with incarcerated youth.”
Green, a poet, educator and activist, is from Greensboro, a historic town in the Black Belt, known for its role in slavery, sharecropping and the Civil Rights Movement.
Her work focuses on racial healing, resistance, spirituality and Southern storytelling.
As part of the fellowship, Green will present work from her new book, The Other Revival, a collection of poems highlighting the stories of descendants of those enslaved on an Alabama plantation.
Green’s work has earned her recognitions such as Kellogg Foundation Racial Healing Facilitator, Alabama Humanities Foundation Road Scholar and Healing Arts Practitioner.
Green has also held residencies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Auburn University and The Wallace Center for Arts and Reconciliation.
Green’s work both in the community and on paper has amplified the voices of those who often go unheard.
The fellowship places her among other nationally recognized leaders, changemakers and trailblazers.
“The Academy of American Poets is jazzed to champion wide-ranging poetry projects produced by poets laureate in big cities and small towns alike—all across the country,” Tess O’Dwyer, board chair of the academy said in a statement.
“At a time when more readers are turning to poetry to make sense of the world around us, American poets are beacons of free expression, cultural insight and civic engagement.
