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As the City of Birmingham’s first poet laureate, Salaam Green is performing a role she now believes she was born to play.
But a year ago? Green was not so sure. Green submitted her application on the edge of the deadline.
“When I first became poet laureate, I was reminded that I grew up with very little exposure to poetry or poets,” she said. “I did not know what a poet laureate was until later in my life. Therefore, this prestigious position has given me a mission towards promoting access to poetry for everyone.”
That’s why Green doesn’t mind when she encounters curious people who ask what a poet laureate does. Indeed, she relishes sharing how poetry can be a tool for building and bridging communities, how it can help people reimagine themselves and their world, how it can help people heal.
“One of the most beautiful things about this role,” Green said, “has been explaining what it means.”
It’s common for nations and states to appoint poet laureates, but it’s new for cities in Alabama. In 2024, Birmingham and Mobile appointed their first poet laureates, thanks to support from the Alabama State Council on the Arts.
By the time Mayor Randall Woodfin’s office and Create Birmingham started seeking nominations, Green had spent more than 16 years working as an arts educator, healer and community leader in the Magic City. Still, she was surprised to be selected.
“There are so many talented poets in the city,” she said.
Now at the midway point of her two-year term, Green has far outperformed the duties laid out in the original job description, participating in about 80 events and publishing a poetry booklet, “Once upon a Magic City.” She is savoring what she has accomplished so far and making plans for her remaining time in the role.
One goal is to find even more ways to raise awareness about the importance of artists as leaders and agents of community change. In particular, she wants to use her mantle to do more to showcase the goodness she sees in Birmingham.
Green has now experienced poetry readings, one-on-one listening sessions and intense workshops in libraries, city schools, theaters, private schools, corporate offices, hospitals and parks, with people of all demographics, world views and ages.
“It’s stretched me to see Birmingham in all its aura. This experience has made me want to write more about the beauty, the joy, the neighborhoods, the true poets among us,” she said. “I hope in the second year to find more opportunities for embracing and heightening my awareness of the wonderful, compassionate community we have.”
Sometimes, she found, the most magical moments occurred in the least likely of places.
‘A beautiful woman with a collage of poetry’
Once, Main Street Alabama organized an event with Green at the Alabama Theatre. After appearing before hundreds in the majestic theater, she stepped out in the city streets and passed a woman sitting in a bus shelter, finding a moment of solace from the summer heat.
“Aren’t you that poet?” the woman called to Green. She then introduced herself as a poet and began sharing her work with Green.
“She had her bag full of all these poems that she had written and collages of things she cut out of magazines,” Green said. “That experience changed me, to just sit there. I will always remember her. I was glad to be in that moment and sit with another poet. I thought, ‘This is the city. This is the church. This the revival.’”
Green believes poetry can empower people and transform communities.
As last year closed out with record homicides for the city, Green is on a mission to use her mantle to apply the healing power of poetry for those impacted by the violence — everyone from grieving family members to police officers who have been on the front lines. Green also hopes to promote a pipeline to support the economy of poetry for poets working in communities toward an income scale. During the first year, Green established a poet fellow program for youth and adult poets, establishing payment for inter-generational poets who have worked in the field. This year, two new poet fellows will be mentored by Green.
“I’d like to find a space to bring poetry and spoken word to the people for the sake of creating more inroads to healing in Birmingham and beyond to position poetry as a model for repair and wholeness,” she said.
Already, she’s seen how poetry in community spaces has helped bring renewal to employees suffering from workplace burn-out and to people in search of common ground. She’s even seen a change in herself over the past year as she connected with people from all paths of life.
“It has really helped shape me personally and also helped shape my faith,” she said. “It has helped me see the inherent goodness in humanity, to have more compassion for the world and also for myself.”
She believes it has also helped others in Birmingham “rethink and reimagine what successful communities and neighborhoods look like” and find connections that they didn’t know were there.
“When you give people opportunities to express themselves and connect with their voices and the voices of their neighbors, it’s a unique approach to empathy,” she said. “It reminds us to embrace empathy as another tool or technique toward community development and civic engagement.”
A calling and a legacy
Green believes being poet laureate is a natural extension of the community work she has done for years in Birmingham.
“I feel called to have been the inaugural poet laureate for Birmingham,” she said. “It’s a very special calling. It’s probably one of the things I was born to be. I feel like I’ve made a difference.”
And what she really wants is for that impact to be felt long after her term ends. “I really would like to leave a legacy of sustainable poetry inside the city,” Green said.
She mostly has faith. And if she has doubts, all she has to do is remember speaking at a reception at Vulcan Park, her final event of 2024. A young girl approached her afterward and showed Green a poem she wrote during the program. Green read her poem and took a photo with the girl. And Green was convinced that while she may have been the city’s first poet laureate, she won’t be its last.
“These are the future poet laureates that are in our midst,” Green said.
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