This is a conversation between Birmingham’s first poet laureate, Salaam Green, and AL.com columnist John Archibald.
Juan Archibaldo:
Hello Salam. You’re the first poet laureate of Birmingham, Alabama, a black woman, originally from the Black Belt, where some pretty amazing writers grew up. I always thought that many Alabamians found words – or their voice in some other way – because of all the contradictions in our state. We are sweet and sour, easy and tough, hospitable and downright mean, if you look at, say, the Legislature. Alabama is beautiful and sometimes it isn’t. Do those things make us, as a State, who we are?
Green Salaam:
Hello John. Alabama is America’s classroom. As in any classroom there are micro and macro aggressions. Alabama tends to lean toward this in a passive, pastoral way.
Growing up in the Black Belt was hard and soft, tender and sweet; the bitter way justice felt in Greensboro as a child in a still-segregated school system shaped my view of Alabama. Both in good and bad. The stigma of rural Alabama fueled by its past of racial tension always lurks, yet the beauty of family and home is also important. For me, as a black woman, rurality was a connection to a space, a people and a place that gave me kinship with myself. My home and family were my first introductions to the poetic life. Rurality allows me to transcend those realities. Alabama and Birmingham especially are the classrooms that continue to teach lessons.
Archibald:
You’ve been talking to people, asking them to describe, poetically, their experiences in Birmingham and Alabama. What have you learned?
Green:
I have found that Alabamians are tied to the land in a very pure way. The red clay and the oaks, the way the interstates stretch across the state. Sometimes the land divides us and Alabamians, or people I talk to, want to talk about those divisions. Race comes up a lot. Maybe it’s because I’m a black woman. People assume I feel some way. But most conversations begin and end with hope and take us into a space of who we can be now that we see each other.
Archibald:
I’ve heard you talk about how you used to watch your grandmother on her porch and how you decided to be a witness to the world, like her. How does that – how does it – affect what you write?
Green:
My writings and poems are lessons or teachings. Something about fire, something about rain, something good, something about the fragility of our state. I became a certified hearing poet, basically someone who sits with people, listens to their stories, and writes a poem to reflect what he witnesses. This work has given me an idea of what I am proposing as “reparative poetry,” poetry that seeks to address or repair something. I want to repair the American South, witnessing the human voice and offering poetry as a resonance of those stories. Perhaps it is too arrogant of me to believe that poetry can be a force to change the world and, better yet, transform the two challenges of the South, or that I, a country girl from rural Alabama and now the first poet Birmingham laureate, could be a conduit for this to happen, but here we are.
Archibald:
You have to be a little arrogant to accept it. It’s wild out there. Not a day goes by that people don’t tell me they love this place, but are worried about children, friends or family members being attacked based on race, sexuality, politics, whatever, by a Legislature that tears people down. instead of bringing it. we all up. They talk about a love/hate relationship with the State and many tell me that they don’t believe they can stay.
Green:
Yes. The contradiction between staying or leaving while young are normal topics. Young creatives often tell me that they can’t create where there are barriers to change. I say that is when we believe best. Staying and experiencing a state that seems not to care about life and livelihood is a challenge. We must find joy – all of us. We must decide how it feels and free our bones for joy.
Archibald:
How does all that color what you write? And how do you live?
Green:
I feel like African American writers are often expected to write about the mortal wounds of the world instead of just writing a nice poem about birds and the way the earth speaks to them. However, I believe that as a poet and creative writer, my job is to speak to the conscience of people, culture, and the world. I find myself writing a lot about liberation. I believe that freedom is what others can give you and liberation is what you give to yourself. For example, we can have freedom of expression and that is a given freedom, but using my story to liberate myself and others is something I can give to myself.
Archibald:
I know I focus too much on things that go wrong. The threats, challenges, corruption, politics, AI, and technological changes that seem to threaten the things I value: liberal arts education, the written word, storytelling, truth, etc. And you can give me so much joy talking about fruits and vegetables and the like. Heal me.
Green:
That’s what we can do with poetry: we can reimagine the world we want to live in and for our children to thrive in. The land, the food, the way we nourish ourselves, care for ourselves and gather together. These survival elements are as present as security, violence and political corruption. What is alive in you must be cultivated. Then a poet comes to invoke the hidden and the invisible and integrate the memory of all of them. I have a poem titled “Birmingham Girls,” a wish and prayer for the four girls who died in the 16th Street bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. In that poem I challenge readers to witness and truly reimagine what we want the world to be and believe it can be. We owe it to those girls, we owe it to Birmingham, we owe it to America for reinventing it and then creating it. It only takes a critical mass to change the world. Start with our neighbors and our neighborhoods and love each other.
Archibald:
I think attending integrated schools was one of the most important and formative things in my life. I came to see similarities and differences and learned to appreciate both. It has stayed with me my entire life, not only in regards to race, but also in appreciation of different cultures, foods, music, customs, and people who do or think things differently than I do. I worry that we have resegregated and lost some of that. Thoughts?
Green:
For me, as a Black woman, going to a school where I had Black teachers and was taught Black history and life was, honestly, my saving grace. Remember that black people did not ask to be segregated. Segregation and inclusion were not our problem or our issue. We weren’t the problem. Our history and culture were under attack. We welcome inclusive ideas from everywhere. School and our home were the only places where we got our truths; the purity and essence of that came from brave black teachers.
I learned the black national anthem. It was the only way we could pass on Alabama history. It wasn’t in Alabama’s thin history book. But Mr. Brinson made sure I knew this poetic revolutionary battle cry. We all did it. This anthem now softens my vitriol against attacks on black history today. Without those lessons I wouldn’t know who I am. It allowed me to go to a liberal arts college with a 7% minority population in 1994 and thrive as a whole person and also appreciate the historical narratives of others. I appreciate both spaces. My understanding of Black life was preparation and protection from the pain and stigma of segregation, and my life in inclusive spaces taught me fellowship with others.
Archibald:
We are now in a different place in time. Those institutions were essentially broken, and we resegregated in a different, perhaps more damaging way than before. Now we have legislative efforts to edit history so that people don’t feel “uncomfortable,” to legislate what libraries can do, to reshape the narrative so that it reads like one of those old fourth-grade “Know” history books. Alabama” that said “The slaves were happy, so what’s the problem?” I just don’t know if we, as a state and region, have ever been honest with ourselves. And I don’t know if we’ll make progress until we are.
Green:
It’s maddening. My 78 year old mother says every day that we are going back to the 60’s. She is a retired teacher and teaches early reading. She also said she is grateful to have learned and know how to teach without the systematic structure of a society that she hates. But not everyone does it. We have to put poets in a position to recharge these systems. Our legislators are not faithfully responsible for humanity.
Archibald:
That’s why I’m so wary of AI and efforts to make education focus solely on job skills. The humanities are key to humanity. And art, who said this? — is the highest form of hope.
Green:
Trust poets, not politicians. Basically, the humanities will probably save us. Our fight is to get to the libraries before the books run out. That starts with truth, education, poetry and artists who fight through their words. No change has come about in our world systems without poets at the helm and poetry igniting the front lines.
Archibald:
So really poetry is looking at the world honestly. And honesty is both beautiful and terrifying.
Green:
Oh yeah. It’s very scary to be a black woman in Alabama.
But I’m also very proud of it. Poetry allows me to talk about the pride of my past and the proud nature in which I live and people live every day. Poetry does not suffocate the truth, it only illuminates it. For me I write and talk about both. But above all I am very proud of my people and myself and how poetry allows me to be me.
Archibald:
I love that. What brings you comfort?
Green:
What comforts me most is being a witness to the land and the people. I am a poet residing in Harpersville, Alabama, on a former Wallace plantation homestead. I am making poems based on the enslaved descendants of that space and people. What I witness most among the cotton fields and the sound of cicadas is the importance of remembering. Memory is what will heal us. Nothing is more racially reconciling than the truth. And the truth is comforting and confronting.
Salaam Green’s works are published in Alabama Arts Journal, Southern Women’s Review, and Glass House Journal. This year she will release a full collection of poetry with Pulley Press.
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