CITY OF BIRMINGHAM POET LAUREATE INITIATIVE
ANNOUNCING SALAAM GREEN AS THE CITY OF BIRMINGHAM POET LAUREATE
The City of Birmingham is pleased to announce the appointment of Salaam Green as the inaugural 2024-2025 City of Birmingham Poet Laureate. This prestigious position recognizes Ms. Green’s outstanding contributions to the literary arts and her commitment to fostering a deeper appreciation for poetry within our community.
Selected through a rigorous nomination and evaluation process, Green emerged as the ideal candidate to serve as Birmingham’s Poet Laureate. As the founder and director of The Literary Healing Arts and a Road Scholar for the Alabama Humanities Alliance, she has spent over 16 years working as an arts educator, healer, and community leader in Birmingham. Green is a published author whose work has been featured in the book Peaches the Perfect Poet, and the Alabama Arts Journal.
For more information on the City of Birmingham Poet Laureate and to contact Salaam Green, click here.
What Must We Do “Birmingham”
Salaam Green, Inaugural Poet Laureate,
City of Birmingham Mayoral Proclamation of Poet Laureate, City Council, 2024
A PROCLAMATION TO THE CITY
What must we do to elevate the human race.
What must we do to eliminate violence, poverty, and suffering.
What must we do-Birmingham
We must activate acts of agape love and moments of radical resistance…more joy.
We must walk the streets and recognize the beauty therein, the progress, the histories that tell our stories of forgiveness an unrelenting legacy.
What must we do-Birmingham
We must take the hands of our youth and guide their hearts into spaces of renewal and transformation.
We must blaze a path towards solidarity, unity, and repair. We must become the pathfinders that light the roads toward recovery and kindle the fire of change.
We must open up the book of love and read each chapter carefully page by page line by line verse by verse.
We must digest the words of our forefathers the cries of our little girls the laughter of our critics and dare to write our own script.
What must we do-Birmingham
We must become the Birmingham we wish to see, the Birmingham we wish to be.
We must carry wisdom to the ones that refuse mediocrity and futility. We must grasp hope by the strength of each woven sentence. We must speak up.
We must raise our voices.
We must rise… Birmingham
We must work.
We must build.
We must be brave.
We must remember that we are the caretakers of King’s courage the catalyst of peace the protectors of justice the genesis of civil rights the revelation of a mighty south.
What must we do-Birmingham
We must empty our pockets of complaints and fear. We must take great concern and wrap our arms around the giants of greatness.
We must embrace that a new day has begun.
We must believe.
We must be the Birmingham we were birthed to be.
We must remind the world and the nation that Birmingham’s beautiful spine shall never bend or break.
We must perfect our posture with an unmovable spirit.
What must we do-Birmingham
We must recognize we are significant and propel ourselves forward with dignity and align ourselves with rest and resiliency.
We must heal together and teach a world how to heal together. We must call forth and gather each citizen young and old to sit in the chair of champions and to create their own destiny.
What must we do-Birmingham
We must be the Birmingham where people were born to be free the Birmingham we wish to see
the Birmingham we know and trust we all can and desire to be.
SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS
- 2024 Mainstreet Now Conference (May 4-8)
- Poetry to the People: A Community Event Featuring Birmingham’s Poet Laureate Salaam Green (April 30)
- Poetry at the Museum! (April 13)
- Faith and Politics (March 2024)
- Selma Jubilee Bridge Crossing (March 2024)
- 205 Day (Feb. 2024)
- Viva Health
Create Birmingham, in partnership with the City of Birmingham and funded by the Alabama State Council on the Arts and Birmingham City Council’s Cultural Arts Committee, invites Birmingham-based poets to apply to be Birmingham’s inaugural 2024-2025 Poet Laureate.
The City of Birmingham Poet Laureate will serve as an ambassador for poetry in Birmingham. This is an honorary position and roles and responsibilities include making local appearances, facilitating public and educational programs, and building advocacy and community through poetry. The poet laureate will receive an honorarium of $5,000 over the course of their term. Additional funds will be available for materials and other approved costs associated with community engagement programs that the poet laureate facilitates.
The City of Birmingham Poet Laureate will agree to the following scope of work, repeatable for each year of their term:
- Host three workshops for Birmingham City Schools.
- Participate in five City of Birmingham events (dates/events to be shared no later than February of each term year).
- Write two original poems for the City of Birmingham.
This initiative is administered by Create Birmingham. After reviewing the submission form and requirements, if you have questions, please email viola@createbirmingham.org well in advance of the deadline so that we may assist you.
A PDF of the information on this page can be found here.
A PDF of the Birmingham Poet Laureate Rubric can be found here.
August 1, 2023: Application opens
September 29, 2023: Final day to submit application questions by 5 pm
October 2, 2023: Submissions due by 11:59 pm
November 2023: Finalist interviews take place
December 2023: Poet Laureate is selected and announced
January 2024: Poet Laureate officiation and start of two-year term
In order to be eligible, applicants must:
- Be age 18 years old or older at the time of application.
- Reside in the City of Birmingham at the time of application and for the duration of the appointment.
- Demonstrate a track record of public presentation of original poetry, including in-person and/or online events and via websites and/or social media.
- Have the capacity and availability to attend periodic public events over the course of the two-year term.
Poets will be selected for consideration by a distinguished community review panel that will make recommendations to the Mayor of the City of Birmingham, who will officially appoint the City of Birmingham Poet Laureate.
For questions regarding residence eligibility, please refer to this list of the City of Birmingham’s 23 communities and 99 neighborhoods.
Along with a brief form providing contact information, applicants are asked to submit the following:
- A resume listing published works and related experience. (not to exceed two pages)
- A statement describing your ties to the City of Birmingham and why you would like to serve as the City’s poet laureate. (1500 characters or less)
- A description of relevant community engagement and/or public speaking events you have participated in. Please include the year(s) of each event and the organization(s) you partnered with. (1500 characters or less)
- Two professional references, including affiliation, phone number, and email address.
- Five work samples, including the title and date completed for each.
(not to exceed one work per page and five pages total) - Optional: Link to audio or video recording(s) of no more than five minutes total, reading work aloud, in either a public setting or recorded for the purpose of this application.
2024-2025 CITY OF BIRMINGHAM POET LAUREATE
Create Birmingham, in partnership with the City of Birmingham and funded by the Alabama State Council on the Arts and Birmingham City Council’s Cultural Arts Committee, invites Birmingham-based poets to apply to be Birmingham’s inaugural 2024-2025 Poet Laureate.
The City of Birmingham Poet Laureate will serve as an ambassador for poetry in Birmingham. This is an honorary position and roles and responsibilities include making local appearances, facilitating public and educational programs, and building advocacy and community through poetry. The poet laureate will receive an honorarium of $5,000 over the course of their term. Additional funds will be available for materials and other approved costs associated with community engagement programs that the poet laureate facilitates.
The City of Birmingham Poet Laureate will agree to the following scope of work, repeatable for each year of their term:
- Host three workshops for Birmingham City Schools.
- Participate in five City of Birmingham events (dates/events to be shared no later than February of each term year).
- Write two original poems for the City of Birmingham.
This initiative is administered by Create Birmingham. After reviewing the submission form and requirements, if you have questions, please email viola@createbirmingham.org well in advance of the deadline so that we may assist you.
A PDF of the information on this page can be found here.
A PDF of the Birmingham Poet Laureate Rubric can be found here.
KEY DATES
August 1, 2023: Application opens
September 29, 2023: Final day to submit application questions by 5 pm
October 2, 2023: Submissions due by 11:59 pm
November 2023: Finalist interviews take place
December 2023: Poet Laureate is selected and announced
January 2024: Poet Laureate officiation and start of two-year term
ELIGIBILITY & SELECTION PROCESS
In order to be eligible, applicants must:
- Be age 18 years old or older at the time of application.
- Reside in the City of Birmingham at the time of application and for the duration of the appointment.
- Demonstrate a track record of public presentation of original poetry, including in-person and/or online events and via websites and/or social media.
- Have the capacity and availability to attend periodic public events over the course of the two-year term.
Poets will be selected for consideration by a distinguished community review panel that will make recommendations to the Mayor of the City of Birmingham, who will officially appoint the City of Birmingham Poet Laureate.
For questions regarding residence eligibility, please refer to this list of the City of Birmingham’s 23 communities and 99 neighborhoods.
APPLICATION & QUALIFICATIONS
Along with a brief form providing contact information, applicants are asked to submit the following:
- A resume listing published works and related experience. (not to exceed two pages)
- A statement describing your ties to the City of Birmingham and why you would like to serve as the City’s poet laureate. (1500 characters or less)
- A description of relevant community engagement and/or public speaking events you have participated in. Please include the year(s) of each event and the organization(s) you partnered with. (1500 characters or less)
- Two professional references, including affiliation, phone number, and email address.
- Five work samples, including the title and date completed for each.
(not to exceed one work per page and five pages total) - Optional: Link to audio or video recording(s) of no more than five minutes total, reading work aloud, in either a public setting or recorded for the purpose of this application.
This initiative is in partnership with the City of Birmingham and funded by the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the Birmingham City Council’s Cultural Arts Committee.