Salaam Green | The PEN Ten Interview
Written communally with descendants from the Wallace House Plantation, The Other Revival (Pulley Press, 2025) is a poetry collection that addresses the horrors of slavery by reclaiming oppressed narratives and offering a space for all to heal. With the help of archivists and activists, Poet Laureate of Birmingham Salaam Green uses setting and character to drive each poem forward and connect the experiences of voices from both sides–the enslaved and the enslavers.
While Southern revivals have been traditionally religious gatherings, Salaam’s book asks us to consider hosting our own revivals–to celebrate and question historical events, to learn about what artists and activists are doing, and to search out our own transformations.
In conversation with World Voices Festival and Literary Programs Manager Sarah Dillard for this week’s PEN Ten, Salaam Green discusses the importance of headstones, why she chose to write certain poems with the feedback of the person she interviewed, and what ‘revival’ means to her. (Bookshop; Barnes & Noble)
In the preface of your new collection The Other Revival, you write about the history of the Wallace family plantation and how it has turned into the Wallace Center for Arts and Reconciliation–a place where descendants of both the enslaved and enslavers can gather and heal. This process was done in partnership between members of both communities. Why does systemic racism need to be addressed by both sides, those who suffer and those who benefit?
The Black descendants of enslavement and white descendants of the slave owner instituted yearly homecomings on the grounds of the former Wallace House. In order for systemic racism to be fully addressed, old institutions must be banished and no longer tolerated. In the case of The Other Revival, the poems represent how homecomings help to create a new way of living together that resists institutions that perpetuate systemic racism. When those who have perpetuated harm do not do the work of getting rid of these systems and institutions in ways that center those directly impacted, the system evolves and the harm continues. Yes, the collection does highlight a need for more to be done through the characterization of the woman in the yellow apron walking off the plantation (system of racism and violence) finding the tender soil of the History House. The woman in the yellow apron dismantled the systemic racism through her own power. This example is a narrative of how those who have suffered can engage their power while those who have done the violence should be more than participants; they should be forerunners in forming reparative worlds.
You worked with the people you interviewed on the poems in the collection, sending them the drafts for their feedback. Was this the first time you wrote communally? Did this writing process feel different than working with an editor or sharing your work with other writers?
During the pandemic in 2020, I became a certified Listener Poet with the Good Listening Project. I have spent over seven years working as an Artist in Residence for the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Arts in Medicine Program where I served as the poet and creative writing artist and was trained as a Write to Heal facilitator through Duke University Integrative Medicine Program. This work led me to be trained and experienced in listening to diverse populations and supporting their writing experiences for healing and well-being. Therefore I have written communally for years professionally. The poems in The Other Revival were the first time that I wrote communally with Black and white descendant populations. Pulley Press that published this collection focuses on “the pulley method” helping poets glide poems into the hands of readers. Frances McCue, my editor with Pulley Press, helped me to hone my skills in this method and in my former expertise as a Listener Poet I sat with hundreds of people and listened and wrote custom poems to support their health journeys. Writing communally helped me to thrive more in my writing process because it was a reciprocal process. It was less lonely for all parties. I wrote the poems alongside the community members who learned about poetry construction and saw the myriad of ways their voices could be heard through various poetic forms. Therefore there wasn’t any hierarchy in the poetry process; we were learning together and also creating community with each other through my knowledge of poetry and their willingness to share and trust their stories to me.
The poems that were worked on with interviewees are indicated in the collection beneath the title by the phrase: “(With NAME).” No quotations are marked through either punctuation or text style and the poem seems to come from their substance with you as a vessel. How much of your Alabama heritage did you contribute to these poems that were co-written? How did you distinguish your voice from or contribute your voice to these stories?
Although the poems were co-created, I solely wrote the poems and used my experiences in storytelling practices to examine the cadence and voice of the poems based on the stories I learned from the descendants. Many of the Black descendants I listened to live in Harpersville or in close proximity to the Wallace House. This gave me a unique identifier with the participants as a southern Black woman who grew up in rural Alabama as a Black descendant of enslavement. The poem “I Do Descend” by Julia Cotlier, a white descendant, is particularly striking because Juilia did not grow up in the South but her grandmother, Nell Gottlieb, owner of the Wallace House, immediately commented that even though she could tell Juila didn’t write the poem I got her voice perfectly. I often wondered if I was the right person to tell these stories but in the end I believe the stories were told through me. I look at this way of writing communally as reparative storytelling and I look at each poem as revival poetry outlying a method of writing that awakenings or re-awakenings the consciousness of belief and truth through poetry.
Writing communally helped me to thrive more in my writing process because it was a reciprocal process. It was less lonely for all parties. I wrote the poems alongside the community members who learned about poetry construction and saw the myriad of ways their voices could be heard through various poetic forms.
You write “The dead endured / their unmarked graves” (34) and “Where enslaved persons are buried– / no headstones.” (35) with Doris McLeod-Williams then later “a large headstone sculpted / from the hands of the enslaved” (40) with Daniel Boatner V. What does a headstone signify for you? Why is it meaningful?
For many years Ms. Doris spoke of wanting to see the headstone of her loved one. Her grandson Daniel Boatner V. at a Homecoming celebration also repeated this grief of his grandmother. Headstones in the Black community are particularly important, much like funerals and proper burials and upkeep of cemeteries. The white Wallace family are buried in the front of the cemetery with some very elaborate headstones that are all identified with names and years of birth and death. The Black cemetery is behind the white cemetery behind a separate gate far from the white cemetery. Many of the grave-sites are unmarked and some do not have headstones. A headstone is an important marker that marks the identity of a loved one so families have a representation of their loved one and others can know who lived. When Ms. Doris found the gravesite and read the headstone she had been talking about and waiting to see, she fell to her knees and hugged the headstone, the holder of faith of our ancestors. Headstones are for the living and are places of remembering and identifying the ones who lived.
How did you decide which poems went together in each section? Why did you focus on “The Woman in the Yellow Apron” as a connecting thread compared to the place/setting of the Wallace Plantation and History House?
The collection came together in unison from my work as a poet in residence at the Wallace House. I drove into Harpersville for many years and the poems chronicled this journey. The road to the Wallace House, where there was this Ghost Bicycle which is a poem in the collection, the cemetery where black and white Wallaces’ are buried, the Wallace house itself, and the History House which is the space where Peter Datcher Black descendant created an archival home for his ancestors. The Woman in the Yellow Apron represents a divine connection between all the sections in the book. This woman is all of us and lives in all of us. The woman walked and worked the land and traveled the roads between the cemetery and the Wallace House and ultimately used those same feet to walk off the plantation and walk into her revival-freedom. This collection is a journey many have taken and one many will take into their own revivals and liberation.
You end The Other Revival with “Words from Descendants of the Wallace House Plantation” as well as “Biographies of Harpersville Descendants.” I found the context extremely helpful and went back to each descendant’s poem(s) with more depth. Why did you decide to include these elements?
It was very important to me and the descendants that we included the names of living descendants who shared their voices and who participated in the emancipation of these stories. Hydeia Averitt who shared that her grandmother gave all of the “grandgirls” in the family a quilt. Unfortunately the quilt she was gifted burned in a fire. As she told this story and shared memories of grandmother quilts and her quilt that burned I thought how wonderful it would be to know as much as we can about each one of them. Hydeia is a young mother in her twenties and she is an actress and lives on farmland her family now owns that is also a cotton field. The stories are powerful but the people are even more real and are the true storytellers. Their biographies reflect that their ancestors lived and now they are alive and that is joy. As humans, even those enslaved there were great moments of joy, love, and full emotional capacity. The biographies are also in reverence to the names that we may never know.
The stories are powerful but the people are even more real and are the true storytellers. Their biographies reflect that their ancestors lived and now they are alive and that is joy.
Juneteenth has had importance since the 1800s though it has only recently been recognized as a Federal holiday following the media-attented murders of Black individuals. In Harpersville, Alabama they have created their own important date(s) with Descendants Day bringing everyone together. How can we structure our own moments of remembrance without relying on a political power to grant us permission?
It requires intention and a decision on what dates, events, or periods in history are important to the narrative of your stories. We do this by tapping into memory. Practicing daily the rituals and history keeping of our ancestors. It can be as simple as having birthday celebrations and cookouts. There is a poem in the collection that talks about what is revival to the south, a question that I believe cultures such as Black, Indigenous and people of color celebrate uniquely out and away from the white gaze and the calendar.
Colonial land ownership in America began with the seizing of space from Indigenous communities who suffered through attempted genocide and erasure. However, this does not lessen the significance of slavery or the need to reclaim sites of horrors, such as the Wallace Plantation, to ones of healing. How did you make space for this complexity in your conversations?
Much of our conversations centered on reclamation of historical narrative and sites of consciousness. We are all on stolen land. America is a bereft for thievery. As I sat mostly with Black descendants on Descendant Days and Juneteenth, these front porch conversations included the inclusion of all ancestry to expand the exposure to authentically recognizing Indigenous voices and the entirety of one’s cultural heritage. Many Black descendants are rural archivists who keep history and are hungry to authenticate their families identities. Black descendants understand this and know this and value this; white descendants are beginning to own these narratives as many of the historical records include ancestry from Native American tribes in the deep South.
As an arts healer and poet, you have years of experience with narrative healing and community poetics. What new learnings arose about healing through the process of interviewing the descendants?
I learned that we are intrinsically tied to one another. I also learned that there is a cellular component in our DNA that shifts while entering spaces where past trauma occurred. At the time I wrote this collection the Wallace House was bare as it would have been hundreds of years ago. I felt the spirits inhabited my body so much that I fell ill during the time I wrote this collection. I had two blood transfusions and a couple of surgeries. I was completely burned out. I am sure I had health issues before beginning this process but I am convinced that there were subconscious elements at play. I learned that our bodies are places and spaces that embody the collective experiences of the past. I also was reminded of something that isn’t new: There is more work for white Americans to do as a collective and personally to repair the oppressive states of systemic racism. It is not enough to posit apologies or acknowledgments. During this process I worked with filmmaker and artist Elizabeth Webb who created a reparations model for scholarships at the Wallace House as we worked together on this process. It was challenging but as Black Americans, I wish we did not have to fight for what is already ours. I learned that the ones who are directly impacted are memory activists. This work is Memory Activism. Lesson!
I learned that our bodies are places and spaces that embody the collective experiences of the past. I also was reminded of something that isn’t new: There is more work for white Americans to do as a collective and personally to repair the oppressive states of systemic racism.
What does “revival” mean to you?
I have been thinking about this and ways that I can condense my answer. One of my joyous poems in the collection is “Sisters Remember on the Front Porch-A Revival”, this poem highlights the need for history keeping and the tender ways families connect sweetly with remembering when the space is held with safety. Revival is a reawakening of our moral imaginations. Revival is awakening the state of one’s own humanity. Revival is expanding the field of love to self and then to others. Racial healing; a revival for all.
Salaam Green is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Birmingham, Alabama (2024–2025), a native of Greensboro, and founder of The Literary Healing Arts. A storyteller and healer, she is a Kellogg Foundation Racial Healing Facilitator and Alabama Humanities Foundation Road Scholar. Green holds an English degree from the University of Montevallo and a Master’s in Early Childhood Education from the University of North Dakota. She has held residencies at UAB, Auburn University, and the former Wallace Plantation in Harpersville, Alabama. With 16+ years of experience, she uses poetry to create healing spaces rooted in Southern history and resilience.
