National Black Poetry Day
To celebrate National Black Poetry Day we are highlighting six Black poets with North Carolina roots. Take some time to explore their work.
Jaki Shelton Green was born in Alamance County, and grew up in Efland, now Orange County. She has worked in many different spaces, including with women on death row, and draws inspiration from classic writers like Zora Neale Hurston, Sylvia Plath, and Shakespeare. Want to write like Jaki? In her words, “treat your journal like a bank. Make deposits and withdrawals.” Green was named North Carolina’s poet laureate in 2018.
George Moses Horton was born enslaved 1798 on a North Carolina tobacco plantation. Still enslaved, he made connections with students at the University of Chapel Hill, learning to read and write in the process with the help of professor’s wife, Caroline Lee Hentz. In 1829 Horton published his first book, The Hope of Liberty, which he hoped would earn him enough income to purchase his freedom. While this was not the case, with this collection Horton became the first Black author in the South to publish a book, as well as the only American to publish a book while enslaved.
Maya Angelou was best known as a poet and the best-selling author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970). Angelou was also a singer, dancer, Grammy-winning composer, director, and actress. Angelou resided in Winston-Salem, North Carolina for over thirty years. Dr. Angelou moved to North Carolina in 1981 after accepting a lifetime teaching position at Wake Forest University as the first recipient of the Reynolds Professor of American Studies. During her career as a tenured professor, Angelou taught a variety of subjects, including science, theology, theater, writing, ethics, and philosophy.
Fred L. Joiner is the co-founder of The Center for Poetic Thought in Washington, D.C. and currently serves as the poet laureate of the Town of Carrboro, North Carolina. Listen to his winning poem for a poetry contest a part of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art’s new exhibition The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists.
Dr. Nathaniel Mackey’s work has received numerous awards including a Whiting Writer’s Award and a 2010 Guggenheim fellowship. He is the Reynolds Price Professor of English at Duke University and served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2001 to 2007. He found music before poetry, and his work has been noted for its percussive and rhythmic quality. Read his piece “Song of the Andoumbulu” for an example of his style.
Camille T. Dungy holds a BA from Stanford and an MFA from UNC-Greensboro. Among her honors are fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Cave Canem, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Her work often incorporates elements from the natural world, the piece The Characteristics of Life being an excellent example.
