North Carolina Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green and artist Monique Luck are bringing their creative partnership to develop The Communion of White Dresses; an interactive installation using the text of Green’s poem of the same title. Reimagining tradition, symbolism & representation at the intersection of the black female body politic, this new collaborate work will serve as primary sources to invite female audiences to share the stories of generational white dress culture while serving as living documents that manifests the Afrofuture through art.
Jaki Shelton Green is the ninth Poet Laureate of North Carolina. Appointed in 2018, is the first African American and third woman to be appointed as the North Carolina Poet Laureate and reappointed in 2021 for a second term by Governor Roy Cooper. She is a 2019 Academy of American Poet Laureate Fellow, 2014 NC Literary Hall of Fame Inductee, 2009 NC Piedmont Laureate appointment, 2003 recipient of the North Carolina Award for Literature. Jaki Shelton Green teaches Documentary Poetry at Duke University Center for Documentary Studies and the 2021 Frank B. Hanes Writer in Residence at UNC Chapel Hill. She received the George School Outstanding Alumni Award in 2021.She serves as the poetry editor for WALTER Magazine and an appointment as the Poet Laureate in Residence at the North Carolina Museum of Art. Additionally, she has been recognized on the Forbes Magazine 50 Over 50 Lifestyle List for 2022.