Memory, Faith, and Becoming with Salaam Green (Episode 14)
Charlotte Donlon talks to the first Poet Laureate of the city of Birmingham, Salaam Green, about her reading and writing life, her new book—The Other Revival—, and the themes of memory, faith, and becoming.
Learn more about Salaam Green and her writing and work here.
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Why It Matters: Salaam and her poems have an extraordinary ability to hold space for both pain and joy, for wounds, and for the possibility of new life. Remembering can be an act of resistance and a way to honor ancestors, while also paving the way toward wholeness.
Remembering isn’t just about looking back—it’s about transforming the present and making room for a more just future.
>>> Remembering our individual and collective stories—especially the difficult ones—is a radical act of love and courage.
>>> Salaam’s presence and her words invite us to honor the fullness of our histories.
>>> Listening deeply to voices that have been silenced, and finding our own ways of breathing freely in spaces that have not always welcomed us.
After Listening to This Episode, You’ll Walk Away With:
More willingness to see your memories—personal and collective—as sources of wisdom and strength.
Greater trust in the power of healing, even in places marked by deep wounds.
Encouragement to honor your own story and the stories of those around you, knowing that sharing and witnessing art can help you become more of your whole self.
Please check out this third mini-season and subscribe on your favorite platform. I’d also appreciate it if you could take a minute to rate the podcast and leave a comment to help others find it. Thanks so much for your support!
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As you listen to this episode, I invite you to reflect on your own memories, both personal and collective. Consider how faith and doubt have shaped your path and how the stories you carry have formed you.
Where do you see glimpses of those who came before you?
How might embracing uncertainty open new doors for growth and connection?
What does it mean to become more of your full self, your whole self, not in spite of memory, faith and doubt, but because of them?
This mini-season is an invitation to lean into the fullness of your human experience, to honor the complexity of your history, and to find more belonging as you continue to become more of who you are through your own memories, faith, and doubt.
About Salaam Green:
Salaam Green is the inaugural poet laureate of historic Birmingham, Alabama, 2024-2025. She graduated from the University of Montevallo with an English degree and has a MS in Early Childhood Education from the University of North Dakota. Green has garnered residencies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, The Wallace House for Arts and Reconciliation, and Auburn University. She has spent more than 16 years as an arts educator, healer, and community leader.
Episode Transcript:
Charlotte Donlon:
Welcome to All of This & More. I'm Charlotte Donlon, and I'm so glad to bring you my conversation with Salaam Green, Birmingham's first Poet Laureate and author of The Other Revival. Salaam's work is rooted in memory activism and the healing power of storytelling. She invites us to reckon with the past and imagine new possibilities for ourselves and our communities.
In this episode, we delve into the many ways memory-- both healing and collective-- can be a force for justice, healing, and revival. Salaam shares how her poetry and ritual practices help transform personal and generational wounds, and how faith and doubt are woven into the fabric of her creative and spiritual life.
Through her experiences as a listener poet and her work at the Wallace House, Salaam shows us how remembering can be an act of resistance and a way to honor ancestors while also making a path toward wholeness. We talk about the embodiment of memory, the role of ritual in reclaiming sacred spaces, and the importance of joy and community in the face of historical trauma.
Salaam's story is a powerful reminder that becoming more of who we are often means returning to the narratives and the places that have shaped us, while allowing faith, doubt, and memory to be our guides moving us toward deeper connection and freedom.
Thank you for being here for this rich and restorative conversation about memory, faith. And the journey of becoming more of who we were made to be.
You can learn more about this episode and Salaam's writing and work at allofthisandmore.com
Charlotte Donlon:
Welcome to All of This & More. I'm Charlotte Donlon and I'm so glad to be here with Salaam Green to discuss her new book of poems. The other revival Salaam is Birmingham's first Poet Laureate, and I'm so glad to have you here. For those who aren't familiar with you and your writing and work, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Salaam Green:
Yes. Thank you so much, Charlotte for having me. I'm excited to be here on your wonderful podcast. I'm Salaam Green, the first Poet Laureate for the city of Birmingham, and my writing really revolves around writing to heal and using healing as a tool and a technique to support people and using their voices to heal their lives.
Charlotte Donlon:
Great. We're going to talk a little bit about your book after we talk about your reading and writing life. Okay. So we are going to dive in with the first question, which is how do reading and writing help you belong to yourself, others, and the world?
Salaam Green:
Beautiful question. So I feel like I spend most of my life reading random things. I'm a very heavy reader and observer, and when I say reading anything, everything from magazines to social media posts to what have you, as well as a stack of books and stack of books and stack of books. But my reading and writing life really shapes my thought life. It really helps me to really hone and cultivate my imagination. It helps me with relationships with other people and how the world outside of myself, my reading and writing life really shapes the way that I relate to other people and then also how I see myself.
Charlotte Donlon:
Wonderful. And this is a question that we sort of touched on when we were at a gathering a couple weeks ago, the Deep South convening, which I was so glad to be at and so glad to see you at where you told me about something I didn't know about, which happens often, I will say, but what art, and by art I mean all forms and genres of all kinds of art has nourished you over the past few months.
Salaam Green:
Yes. So yes, the Deep South convening was beautiful, so excited to have been a part of that and be there with you. So all kinds of art. So I love all kinds of art, everything from going to the museum every Sunday evening and seeing what new exhibits they have and that kind of thing. Right now, I am being nourished by trail ride trail rides. So I am from rural Alabama and I am southern, but I'm also country. So there's got to delve into both of those worlds. So I love blues, I love all kinds of music, but I really love old fashioned blues. But there's contemporary modern blues, I guess you could call it, where there's this group of folks who are doing these really cool line dances and those kinds of things, and where they have trail rides in the middle of pastures and farmland and fields where people come and dance and have barbecues and cookouts and those kinds of things. So it's a whole culture out there of folks who are just hanging out together, listening to music, blues dancing, learning new line dances. So I think that's what's going to save us right now as a line dance. So that's what I'm doing as far as my art. Yes.
Charlotte Donlon:
So have you been to a trail ride recently in person?
Salaam Green:
I have not been recently because it is really hot and we can't really be outside. When I say outside, I'm talking about out outside. When I lived closer to rural Alabama and lived closer with my parents, my mom and that kind of thing, I would go to blues festivals every summer where they had trail rides and those kinds of things. So for me, it's just a really fun thing to do with friends, but sometimes you get dressed up in cowboy outfits, it's a whole thing. You got to just immerse yourself in it and say you're going to do it right. But as of yet, it has become very popular, very modern. We just had some kind of award show and people who have been part of this particular type of music for the first time have been awarded awards. So I'm very excited that I'm kind of sad that people are like, oh, now let's give them the awards and let's get into this culture. But I'm really excited that this type of art and artist are beginning to become famous and looked at and they're writing in their lyrics and their Lou are being kind of seen as part of the artistic world.
Charlotte Donlon:
And I will say that first night that you recommended trail ride music to me, I did a deep dive into all kinds of playlists and artists, and I think I texted you a few times later than I should have. So I apologize for that. But thank you for introducing this music to me, and I look forward to learning more about it from you and others as I have opportunities too. And I am just thankful for the fact that you're the one that told me about it and that I get to connect that music to you now for the rest of my life.
Salaam Green:
It's really funny. I know that's, it's cool. And yes, Charlotte, you did text me a lot about it, and I was like, you're really like, I know, but when you listen to it, you're like, I can't stop. There's so many. And who are these men? What are they doing? Who are these people? Yeah. So it is a little addicting when you first start listening, you're like, what is this? Yeah.
Charlotte Donlon:
Yes. And that's one thing I love about art and music and I mean all genres of art is that you never run out. Even with just that one genre, I would never run out of songs and learning about it. And it just really touches on this idea of the opposite of minimalism. I always forget the word, like maxism or maxim, I don't know how to say that word. Yeah. Not minimalism art. We will never run out of it. We'll never run out of it. And then learning that there's this new to me genre, which it's not a new genre at all, was delightful. And I'm just thankful that there's a lot of art out there because we need it, especially right now.
Salaam Green:
Absolutely. Yes. I'm so glad I could share. Yeah, you're right.
Charlotte Donlon:
So what are some comfort reads that you return to again and again?
Salaam Green:
Oh my goodness. I love reading children's books. I have a massive childhood, spent all my life doing early childhood things, which means a lot of time reading books on the floor. And now I have a great niece who's like my grandchild, and I really am going to whisper this. You guys are going to laugh, but the very, very hungry caterpillar for, and I'll tell you why, because when I first started doing early childhood as children, they love to read books repetitively and repetition, that kind of thing. And for some reason, I had the cutest little boy who just attached to me like all kids do, and this is the only book that he ever, ever really wanted to read. And I just remember reading that to him and reading that to him and how his vocabulary really enhanced. And I thought, this is what reading does.
And whenever I go back to the very, very hungry caterpillar and we look at how the caterpillar is eating all these things, and I think about that little boy Cooper, who's now probably in his late early thirties who would die if he knew I was talking about him at two years old on my lap reading the very hungry Caterpillar. I could only imagine how he's like, no, I didn't. I did not. I was like, yes, you did. You did talk about eating all day with a very, very hungry caterpillar and that kind of thing. So returning there is comfort because it brings me back to a world where I had really loved to be a part of and that kind of thing. So I go back to that and the poetry that I tend to go back to, and I don't know how comforting it is, but I mean comforting.
But I go back to it for social justice purposes. It's June Jordan. June Jordan is my hero. I really love all her works and I love her quotes and that kind of thing. So a couple months ago as I was finishing up my book and I had my editor here, and we were at this Airbnb and I just took June Jordan with me, so I got to take June Jordan with me and sit there with her to finish my own book and to find justice for myself. So a very, very hungry Caterpillar. And June Jordan is a little juxtaposition. There
Charlotte Donlon:
But it's so wonderful and I love it. It's perfect. It's perfect. Thank you. What a great new thing to know about you.
Salaam Green:
Of course. Oh my gosh, who else? I bet you nobody else says a very, very hungry caterpillar. And if they do, we need to.
Charlotte Donlon:
I think you might be right, but I love for you, it's connected to the power of reading and the power of language and voice and how that one book can take you back to a very particular season with a very specific person. And I think that, I mean, that's a great example of how art combines the past, present, and future. You just did it for us, so thank you. I'm going to ask one more question about your reading and writing life, and then we'll turn to your book because I want to hear a lot about your book. What types of external and internal resistance have you experienced while working on larger projects, maybe this book for example, and how did you respond and how did you move through that resistance?
Salaam Green:
Yeah, that's a really good thought and good question. One resistance that really came, especially working on this particular project of the other revival, was the external resistance of health and the whole idea of staying healthy while having a writing life. And for me, there's a writing life and a writing career. And so I was moving towards really, I am moving towards a writing career. And for me, the writing life is where I have other things, other ways in which I make money for myself, other ways in which I do different things, and writing is part of that life. The writing career is the fundamental way that I make money and other types and other ways that I might make money or just part of my life. So I was writing this book and having a writing life and not a writing career and really, really challenged externally and I guess internally too, but external factors of my health and really the access that writers need or all artists, but we're talking about writers in particularly.
And then if we drill down deeper, we can talk about poets. That's a different genre as well, really need in order to stay healthy, in order to do the work, in order to do the writing, in order to get the writing done, in order to have a successful writing life. So that's something that there is that resistance and that pull and push that I have to have that balance in my life as well. I haven't always done a good job with it at all, and I'm still journeying through that internally. This is the thing I've been really, I'm not there yet. I'm on the bridge of what this thing is that internally I'm working with is I don't believe things have to be as hard or challenging as I perhaps maybe have made them to be or perhaps made them up to be number one.
But also perhaps as professional systems or institutions have made them to be, someone decides what publishing is, someone decides what marketing someone decides what advertising is in the next what, hundreds of years. We kind of just pull into those fields. And one of the fields of writing and publishing, which is very traditional, everyone is like, you got to have the guts for it. You got to. And I'm just like, wait a minute. The internal part that doesn't resonate with my internal reservoir of who I am and who spiritually I am, why do I have to believe in that? Because other people are telling me to believe in that because it's just the way it is. So that's internally, I've been fighting, I guess fighting against the system, come on, fighting against the system, but I'm not fighting against the system. The system is there and I'm not fighting against it. I'm just dreaming up internally a new way of being that's good for my writing career and my writing life.
Charlotte Donlon:
Amen. I mean, most of those rules and expectations were set by old white men who had all kinds of supports and reasons why all they had to do was go write for however many hours a day they needed to without any other quote, responsibilities or things that they needed to give their attention to. And I'm all about burning that down. We can let go of the rules that don't serve us and have imagination and creative ideas for how to inhabit the writing life and the publishing life. And I'm so glad to hear that from you because too many of us don't have the wherewithal for it, especially right now when it's just hard living in this country day by day by day. Is there anything else you want to share about this topic? I love your vibe on
Salaam Green:
This. We need a healing circle around this because I can't do it, and I just have, it is a choice. I made a choice, and I'm not going to falter into that. When I left the professional world in 2016, I've been working in most people 15, 16 years or whatever. I wasn't bitter or resentful. I just made a choice that this particular professional world is not good for me. It's sucking me dry. And then it's like to make that decision and then to move into this writing, creative, artistic life, and then take those same problematic, toxic morays into that life, it is not a very smart thing to do. So I was like, no. I saw myself taking that in and taking that in and taking that in. And the more I took it in the sicker and the sicker and the sicker I got physically, even physically, not just spiritually and emotionally and also in my mental life.
So yeah, I can say that. And it's really funny. Today I had a meeting with John Archibald, who's a news reporter here in Birmingham and is also a two time Pulitzer Prize winner. And I was saying something about, he was saying he wrote a book and he was just like, oh my gosh, I just hate marketing. I didn't like doing that. And then he said something he said, and I just kept wondering, why aren't I a New York Time bestseller? So if John Archibald, who has two pool of surprise is not a New York Time bestseller, and he's sitting there, I just don't know. And I'm just, what the heck are we? I'm like, oh, John, thank you. You have healed me. I'm like, you got the biggest prizes right in journalism. And then also, I'm sure it's, for him, it's writing and his reporting on writing and his career, and then also him telling me that you wrote the book, period. There's X, there's no thinking of anything else. That's it. If so, what if you're on a list or not a list or an award or not an award, that's it. You wrote the book, that's the plan to write a book, get it on period. And it was like speaking my love language. All my love language is period, reach the goal, period. Whatcha going to do next, period. It's a period on there. So yeah, I could go on and on.
Charlotte Donlon:
Well, I'm sure we will talk about this again one day soon on a podcast or not, because it's a huge issue for a lot of writers, and there's only a small number of people who get the accolades that are New York Times bestseller worthy or whatever. And so many of us are doing the good work anyway, and so many people are benefiting from our words anyway. And just because a million copies don't sell doesn't mean it wasn't a good work and a good book, and that people haven't received good things from you. So thank you to John Archibald for being honest during that conversation with you and helping all of us know that it's never enough for anyone. I mean, that's the problem. Never enough. Never enough. We could name names of all the famous writer people that we think have it made, and they would come back and tell us it's not enough.
Salaam Green:
That's it. It's always another thing. Yeah.
Charlotte Donlon:
Well, let's move into the other revival, and for those who haven't read the book yet, will you share a bit about the other revival and how it came to be and describe the connections to the place and people that you wrote with?
Salaam Green:
Absolutely. Absolutely. So the other revival poems and reckonings, I started on the book maybe three years ago, and the other revival is book a collection of poetry from the voices of black descendants of enslavement and white descendants of the white slave owner. I sat on a front porch in different spaces and coffee shops and listened to the stories of black and white descendants of the Wallace Plantation, which is located in Harpers Field, Alabama, which is now a Wallace Center for Arts and Reconciliation, which is a plantation that was owned by Samuel Wallace, who brought 39 or 40 enslaved persons from Virginia to Shelby County to settle in Harpers, Alabama, where those enslaved people built a house, the Wallace House, and also worked the land and worked the house as enslaved folks there as well. Many of the black descendants of the enslaved people still live in Harpers, Alabama, and many of the white descendants don't, or they don't know.
I'm sure there's some that don't even know. But every year after the house has been sold back into the family to nail God lip, they decided to have homecomings where black and white people come together and attempt to have some type of reconciliatory practice and reconciliations. And the book is about how those reconciliations between black and white descendants are actually causing a revival among people who wouldn't necessarily revive together and awaken together. So I wrote poem with these folks, listened to their stories, interpret those stories, and wrote those poems. And the other revival is a book of homecomings and revival for people who have been enslaved on this Wallace House plantation. The process of doing this work, I am a certified listener poet through the Good Listening Project. Good listening Project is a space that certifies poets to listen carefully and help to listen with dignity, particularly in healthcare fields.
I'm also an artisan resident at University of Alabama at Arts and Medicine program, which simply means I use poetry and writing with people who are in the hospital to help support their wellbeing while they're there. And so I took this same process that I actually hospital and in the healthcare community took it to the plantation, plantation where there is trauma, where there is who's healthy, who's healthy as black descendants of a plant as white descendants of the slave owner. So took this same process and wrote this particular book over three years, and I'm happy to put it and glided into the hands of those whose stories are so important and into the hands of other people to get to know those stories as well.
Charlotte Donlon:
Thank you for telling us about how this book came to be and your process of listening and being with the people of Harpers and some people who have moved away but visit occasionally. Yes. I was going to, sorry, I'm going to skip around. Okay. While you were writing this book over the past few years, how has this specific book and these poems formed you to become more of your full self? How has the writing process and the poems that were the result of this writing process, how have those helped you become more of your full self?
Salaam Green:
Oh my gosh. I don't remember who was the writer who said Every day something tried to kill me, Lucille Clifton in her poem, this writing process and writing this book every day, tried to take me out, literally, like I said, I was in the hospital and all this kind of thing, but it really helped me form myself because it took on a total different direction. The book that I wrote was in the book that I was planning to write, but it was the book that needed to be written. So the book that I wrote was not what I was planning to write, but it's the book that needed to be written. And I was a poet in residence at the Wallace House, which is now the Wallace Center for Arts and Reconciliation. So as a poet in residence, when they had people come, I would just do poetry and I would help support other artists, bring their art projects to life, utilizing poetry, and there's some beautiful work there that I did with another artist, et cetera.
But there was no way for me to be there without this space to inhabit me, inhabit me, because I didn't think of it. I'm a black descendant of Ens Slavet. I'm a southern black woman who's a black descendant of the south. I'm a southern black woman who's a black descendant of African ancestry, all those things. And so I guess it's like the light bulb goes off when I'm here on this former plantation, even though it's being a nonprofit that's being reintroduced into the world. It is a plantation and I'm, I'm really strong about calling a thing a thing, and it's what we all know to be plantations, to be anywhere in the world. And it's almost as of going back into that time period whenever I would go there. It's just really strange for people who've never been there. It's a strange thing because the house is bare.
It's not an antebellum home that has been refurbished. It's not a space that has been remodeled or redecorated into these spaces that we think are these big antebellum homes. It's pretty much a bare space that looks like what it would've looked like probably so many years ago. But anyway, the whole idea of how it helped me to fulfill and become myself was that it helped me to do poetry the way that I believe poetry can support the world. It helped me to just write the poems and to be the poet that I was called to be because I was going there as I help people write, I'm a workshop, whatever, and my editor kept saying, you're a poet. You're a poet. Living to it, living to it. And while I was there, the whole book took a different direction of me just not interviewing those people and putting their stories in a book, because that happens a lot.
But it really took on the whole idea where I met this lady in a yellow apron, and when I'll say this lady in the Yellow Apron, someone, an ancestor who lived at the house, it was this character that I felt like was inhabiting me that was still living there on that plantation. And as I was there as a poet in residence writing this book and doing other things, I felt her spirit. I felt her joy. I felt her sadness. I felt her entire aura around me. It was almost as if she sucked the blood out of my body. I had two blood transfusions during the time I was there, and I was very fragile during that time, and I felt her fragility. I felt the fragility of this woman. And all I saw was the sweeping yellow apron sweeping through. If you haven't gone there, there's an upstairs and all this kind of thing sweeping through the upstairs of this home where the wallpaper is ceiling and the wallpaper is literally white people on horses.
You look at the wallpaper, you're like, what is the wallpaper? Peeling? And then you look at the figures and you're like, oh my gosh, what is this wallpaper where the floors have actual dings in them where there's walls? They just got an AC unit a couple months ago. So the time I was there and it was hot, then it was so cold, and I saw this yellow apron of this woman, and as I saw this yellow apron of this woman, I knew that she had a mission. I had a mission. I needed to get off that plantation. Well, and she needed to get off that plantation well as well. She's like, we both sick. We got to get off this plantation. We can't continue to be here. So as I'm writing these poems to activate her off the plantation, it's actually writing poetry to activate myself off of the plantation as well, and to propel me into my own as a poet in the world who has a writing career.
And to propel this woman in the Yellow Apron into her own revival, where she went to this beautiful space that's about six, six country miles away from the Wallace House called the History House, which is owned by Peter Dacher, who's a black descendant of the Wallace House, who this book is dedicated to. And Peter Dacher's History House is the real revival, is the Real House we should really be talking about, because Peter, who's a black descendant, has taken all of his history and archived it in this small house that used to be his mother's house. And everything that we hear about at the Wallace House, we see it come full picture in full picture at Peter's house. So the whole book took on this frame. That's different than any other poetry book where lots of poetry books are just poems, poems that poets do and a structure. But this book takes you on a journey through the road, the cemetery, the house, the lady in the Yellow Apron, the revival at the Peter Datcher's house, and what it feels like to think about what your own revival could be. Where does your plantation you need to get off of We Are All The Lady in the Yellow Apron in 2025, are we not? So that's the book. Yeah.
Charlotte Donlon:
Wow. Thank you much. Thank you. I know it's much. Thank you for No, it's wonderful. It's wonderful. I'm glad you told me about the Lady in the Yellow Apron, because I'm reading your poems and I was like, did you find a Yellow Apron? Was there a photo of someone in a Yellow Apron? But it sounds like she came to you from I would say, from God, from Spirit, and it wasn't like an actual person or a photo or anything like that. Is that
Salaam Green:
Right? Yes. It was more just a spirit, a characterization. Yeah.
Charlotte Donlon:
Yeah. Do you remember when you first met her?
Salaam Green:
I feel like it was probably just from the first day there was this bubbling up of spirit there. Every time I've gone there, I felt spirit there or you feel, I feel, and I know other people I've talked with, it feels different. It feels a little heavy and waited like there's a person hovering over the space. But I was doing a project with Elizabeth Webb who was a filmmaker and an artist who was also an artist in residence there. At the same time, I was a poet in residence, and we worked collaboratively on this project called With Love for Grief. Grief Wallace was one of the people who was at the Wallace House Plantation. And we did this wonderful project for grief there. And one night I was working with and say, I'm not going to be nowhere at night for real that much, but I'm working with Elizabeth.
And she's like, I got to finish. She does these beautiful sculptures and these beautiful column art that she does, and she's a visual artist. She's like, I got to finish this art. Can you come with me? And so I was still sick and it was getting night, and I was like, sure, let's go. So we're on this plantation at night in rural Alabama where it's dark. There's not, if you don't know rural Alabama, there's no lights, there's no streetlights. And if you know a former plantation, it is just acres of land and this house and these little things, and I know that there's no such thing as ghost, whatever. But anyway, I was like, I really don't want to be out here at night. And Elizabeth was like me and we couldn't see. So Elizabeth had her iPhone light and I had my iPhone light.
We weren't prepared because we're artists. We didn't have all a shovel and a flashlight and all the things we needed to be prepared to go out there at night. We were just like, we got our iPhone light. Come on, let's do this real quick. But I was so sick and I was like, I couldn't even eat. And we put the light out there and I was like, there's someone upstairs in this house. She's like, please don't start talking about that. There's no one up there. And then I said, maybe it's just me. So my subconscious was invited into the lady in the yellow aprons consciousness that night, the whole night. I didn't want to go. I needed to go because it was preparing her off the plantation and preparing me out into my revival and into her revival.
Charlotte Donlon:
So she helped you do your work and helped you do your writing, and her memories became some of your poems, I think. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on how this character met you through the process and how that sort of intersects with the idea of memory and spiritual life or soulfulness for you personally, but also maybe beyond just you. Do you have any thoughts on how the role of memory, maybe not just your memories, but other memories and the memories of the people you met with and how the yellow, the woman in the yellow apron, was able to sort of bring it all together?
Salaam Green:
So when I thought about this work, and I never heard this term, but someone was telling me that this is memory activism, which is actually a thing in the world and the whole, and I was like, that is it. This is what we've always been doing culturally and folks who work on auto ethnography and ethnography and et cetera, is helping people activate memory. And that's memory activism and storytellers and archivists who are local and rural. This is what they do. I believe there's something cellular about ancestral DNA, particularly for folks who are descendants of enslavement, but I believe it's also for white descendants of the, I mean, I think we live in a world that's teaching us that it's a cellular thing that's inside of our DNA. So the minute that I kind of step foot onto this plantation, things I may not have ever thought about or even remembered, I began to remember.
And if I don't remember, my body does because it's embodied. It is that somatic experience that we cannot get away from. And you're like, I just dunno what this is. I feel, or if you're away from there, I just have this, my body just needs to, so I didn't have those words then, but I have the words now of this cellular embodiment that was a spiritual awakening and a consciousness that can only happen when you already have this memory and when it's activated, then the justice you give the memory is to activate it with other people and for other people. And so that's what I think this book is about. Yeah,
Charlotte Donlon:
That's wonderful. And that's definitely how I experienced it reading it is that sense of justice, recognizing the sense of justice that you are offering to the different people who are included in your book and who are a part of the work and a sense of justice for the place too. And I will say, I was able to go to the opening of this current exhibition at the home last Saturday, and you did a brief ceremony with water. And I would love to hear a little bit about that and how the tradition of the ceremony and how it helps us, all of us who witness it, sort of do some of this memory work, also memory and soul work, I would say
Salaam Green:
Yes. Yes. Well, yes. So some of the work that I do, what I really call rituals is not so much work or practice, but just ritual work or ritualistic work on plantations in different spaces, civil rights spaces, justice spaces, sites of consciousness, I guess is a new word, the word that's out that bubbles up and libations pouring libations where it's an ancestral heritage, whether it's African heritage, whether it is native heritage, what have you, where you're giving and cleansing the earth and pouring water back into the earth while you are giving homage and honor to people who passed away in your life or passed away on that land. So it's a regenerating ceremony where water cleanses, but at the same time, it regenerates the soul of those persons who were either harmed in those spaces or who lived in those spaces back into the space of originality, root in the soil and the ground.
Charlotte Donlon:
I also love the visual and the cleansing of the ground in a way that maybe it's also regenerating the actual ground in the actual space in addition to the people who inhabited this space and how those connections that we have, the very real attachments that we have to places, how that is hopefully healing some of it, right?
Salaam Green:
Oh, absolutely.
Charlotte Donlon:
And maybe if you went back at night now, I don't think you should, but if you were to go back at night, I bet your experience in this place would be so different than the first time because you have been in conversation with these memories. You have been in conversation with the stories of the people and the place and in ways that have brought justice. So maybe it's a little less scary for everybody, maybe.
Salaam Green:
Yes. I think it opens the door for everyone to come in that space and breathe, and that's it. That's what our cellular embodiment is asking us to do is to breathe freely. We are wanting black descendants and ancestors who are there to breathe freely, and we're wanting visitors and guests to breathe freely. We're wanting the memories to breathe freely, and so we have to cleanse it. I don't know why I was chosen to have a moment, but of course I'm always the one out there to go first. All this stuff was like, oh my gosh, this is hard. Exactly what you said. It's a cleansing and yeah, sacred, sacred, sacred.
Charlotte Donlon:
That's very sacred. Can you read a poem for us now, just one that comes to mind, one that might be appropriate at this point in the conversation?
Salaam Green:
Absolutely. So I'll read about the woman in the Yellow Apron. In the Yellow Apron, a seer in spiritual spaces. We talk about people who have spiritual gifts. One of the spiritual gifts is someone who's a seer can see right through you, but who has an intuitive nature and is an intuitive. And so I believe this lady in the Yellow Apron, I don't know why she stayed there so long at the plantation there, but I believe she's a seer. And I wrote this poem for her. It says, after a mother ancestor, there is a holy supper, sweet and sacred and everlasting. At the altar of mother ancestor, there is a passing of time that feels slow and quiet. At the altar of mother ancestor, there is a longing to seek and to be seen raw and unflinching At the altar of Mother ancestor, A fellowship is yet to be revealed, and history books are archived. At the hands of a man, there is sunshine in cheeks, curiosity without fear, a potent reckoning spring water for a daughter's thirst, a haunting we found to be a kind of home.
Charlotte Donlon:
Thank you. After every poem you read, I'm going to want to say amen. But
Salaam Green:
Say it.
Charlotte Donlon:
I'll try not to. Just poems feel like prayers to me. And I always flip the words. When I mean to say the word prayer, I say the word poem. And when I mean to say the word poem, I say the word prayer, and all of your poems felt like prayers to me in this book. This one shows why. So why do you think, or in what ways can the poem you just read be a prayer?
Salaam Green:
Yes, absolutely. So a prayer is a release or an offering to God or a higher power or what have you or to spirit. And I think that the woman in the Yellow Apron, who sometime referred to as Mother Ancestor, is herself releasing, just releasing. I think in the poem it talks about slow and quiet. It's like, well, you're on this plantation, you need to run fast and go go. There's no room to be slow and quiet for a black enslaved old woman. But she's just there praying, releasing, reminding us of who we are too and who we've always been. This is who you really are, girl. I think that's maybe why she was still there. She was waiting for me to come to remind me of who I was, that I'm a prayer just like she is slow and quiet releasing. Yeah.
Charlotte Donlon:
So I'm going to ask this question now. I'm not sure why, but I'm just going to run with it. How did your journey of writing this book and being an artist in residence at the Wallace House, where did becoming the Birmingham's first poet laureate fit into the timeline and what was that like for you through this process?
Salaam Green:
Yeah, I'd already started the book before I became the poet laureate. Early the writing process, or maybe I had gotten the contract or what have you to do the book and that kind of thing. I became poet, the first poet laureate after maybe about six months after I was a poet in residence there. So this came, I wasn't a poet library when I started this at all. It was after I had already started this early in the writing process and early in the residency. And how was that for me? Well, it was, first of all, it's two different places. Harpers Field rule, Shelby County, Birmingham, it's about 45 minutes from each other. And it's not strange for people to be in that space and drive there and work in different and all that. But the strange part is, as an artist, I like working rural and I think I fit in those spaces.
And so coming in Birmingham where it's a more urban, but they are, it is still Alabama, I had to kind of think, find my footing. I had to really find my footing and that kind of thing. And when you're the first anything, there's setting the foundation. And then at the same time, I'm going back hundreds of years back, but here's Birmingham, the Civil Rights justice place that has move forward. But it is just like, oh, maybe that needs to be a book 10 years from now. Who in the world is, this is crazy. But yeah, it was a distance in time, so I felt kind of off kilter for a while. Yeah.
Charlotte Donlon:
But do you think your friend, the lady in the Yellow Apron helped you through this process? If she helped, you know, were, and helps all of us know a bit more of who we are, it feels like it was a necessary thing that needed to happen before this next thing, right? A little bit.
Salaam Green:
What do you think? Oh, absolutely. I think that's writing her also as a seer, like the medicine woman person and that kind of thing, who knows what true healing is, what really holistic indigenous healing practices are so that we can live full lives. But I think that she really reminded me, your poet, live your full life here as a writer and move into this poet life. But she also reminded me that, hey, I lived a full life too. I'm not just an enslaved person who the stereotype type that we think. She's like, no, I'm a seer. I help people to see intuitive their life. I'm a medicine woman. I heal people and help people whole. I heal myself and kept me whole. I'm an overseer. I oversaw all these plantations of acreage for how many years and more years and more years and more years and more years. I help people who came here to get off of this plantation. I'm helping you to. So I think by me recognizing my fullness, I could see the fullness of my people. When I say my people, I mean black people, people in my culture and heritage.
Charlotte Donlon:
And that's one thing I love about your book is it gives a fuller picture of the life of these people. And at this place, I mean it's like there's joy, there's despair, there's suffering, there's goodness, there's celebration, there's all of it. There's all of it. And just like there's all of it in life. Now, as much as some people want to take it away from us.
Salaam Green:
In New Orleans at that particular plantation in New Orleans this year, people were talking about we need to remember and reminding people of the full lives of those folks. There was a lot of enslaved labor. Absolutely. Who built those spaces? We said history, let's talk about it, but let's also, there's an and loved and birthed and made sure that we're here today. And so there's the fullness. So thank you for saying that. Yes.
Charlotte Donlon:
Okay, thank you. Can you read a poem from the book that you wrote because you needed to read it?
Salaam Green:
Yes. So while I was there and just like everywhere, but when you go to rural spaces, you hear the birds more. There's the slow kind of fullness of hearing the wind and the trees and the birds and that kind of thing. I thought about how black children who were enslaved there, especially black girls like myself, probably when I was a little girl, would just hang out of the window seal or sit on the porch and just listen to the birds. And for me, it was very, very comforting to think about black girls or black children that were there, someone's daughter or someone, whatever, who was part of this enslaved economy or whatever. And this horror of enslavement, listening to birds, just being able to do the normal thing that we just like, oh, there's a bird, there's a bird. You hear that bird. But then intentionally being a bird watcher, I wake up this morning, I can't wait to see if that red bird comes to see me and is able to take that moment out of the day when they're not doing things and working hard.
But that tender nurturing. So that's the poem I wanted. It's in the book called To Black Girls Who love Birds to black Girls who love Birds Mornings. I wake early before the world shrinks my smile. I rest my arms on the windows seal so I can feel the humming and the chorus, the kingdom of birds. Black girls are not supposed to love birds so much. Not the Alabama yellow hammer nor swallow tailed kite, not the chipping sparrow black bird swarm in flight. What the songbird knows the people in this sleeping town fear a dark and widowed land where everyone who isn't a bird flies everywhere and nowhere at all. Black girls are not supposed to love birds. But so much I crave the submarine blue birds to witness every dream.
Charlotte Donlon:
It's beautiful. It's beautiful. Thank you.
Thank you for your words and for your poems and for your presence and for the work, the healing work you do. You've done so much good work for so many years and it's a delight to be able to celebrate this book and to help others know about it and to watch how it does its thing in the world. So this is very exciting. Thank you.
Salaam Green:
Thank you, Charlotte. Thank you for being my friend. And thank you for being a good friend and a good friend to writers and artists. Thank you.
Charlotte Donlon:
So I want to hear one more poem. Is there one that you just want to read? A prompt I had is a poem that you wish people who love you would read and reread regularly. But if there's one that doesn't quite fit that bill that you just feel like you want to read, that's awesome too. Either way.
Salaam Green:
Yeah. So I'll read a poem called Crestwell, A Severe Need for Joy. So when the Lady of the Yellow Apron walked off the Wallace Plantation, which is in Harpers, Alabama, she went six miles down the road to a country town called Creswell, which is where Peter ER's history House is. Like any really rural spaces or county spaces, the towns kind of bump up each other. And you might not even know that there's, you think it's all one town. So everyone is like, all this is Harpers. But this little space where Peter D's History House is, that's six miles down from Harpers. It has a little sign that says Creswell. And as a community where black people own their land and the land was given from the slave owners to the enslaved folks in this little small town. And its poem, there's a lot to say about the poem, but that's the poem that I'm going to read.
And the great thing about this poem, one wonderful person I interviewed, Hadia, she's in her twenties and she's a miles college graduate, and she lives in Cresswell and is a descendant of the Wallace House and her grandmother and Peter ER's grandmother sat on that history house when it was alive, when it was just not even a history house, when it was just somebody's house and they quilted together. And the thing about had idea, she's also an actress, she has a young son, and her family now owns all of this farm land in Crestwell, which is former slave owner land. So now it is black people who own this land and it's all cotton fields and soybean fields. And so her son, who was very young, she took a picture of him standing in between the cotton fields and her house, which is all their land, and she took it to school, she said in Miles College.
And they were like, why would you have your black son standing in that cotton field? And she said, this is my home. We own this field. So the whole picture of a black boy, six or seven years old, standing in a cotton field that his family now owns. And to him, it's his place to play. And so I wrote this poem called Creswell, a severe need for joy in creswell. Black landowner own the land and reclaimed their livelihood. The severe need for joy of this sacred place where humidity is a prolonged fever. And the heart sutures two kingdoms, one where the farmland is rich, and a dar flimsy stems daring to hold on cresswell a wishing flower, fragile and radical between courage and sweetness is a small country road town where talk is communion, a new revival.
Charlotte Donlon:
Thank you. That's a lovely poem to wrap up our conversation with and thank you for sharing a little bit more of the story with us about that poem and that little boy in his place and his play place. Are there any hopes for this book and how you want readers to receive it that you would like to share?
Salaam Green:
I think I'll just finally share, I think what you said. I hope that readers see the full humanity of the black and white descendants in this book. I hope people see that full humanity and see the full humanity of folks who lived on plantations. And I hope people see the stories of people who are telling their lived experiences as revival.
Charlotte Donlon:
Thank you. And is there anything else you'd like to say before we go? About anything?
Salaam Green:
Oh yeah. I got a lot to say about a lot of stuff. But breathe, everybody, find your spaces to breathe. Find your lady in the yellow apron and revive yourself. And if you are the lady in the Yellow Apron, you can walk off that plantation today and find your own history house and begin again.
Charlotte Donlon:
Amen. Amen. Thank you for being with me. This was wonderful.
Salaam Green:
Thank you, Charlotte. I appreciate you.