This National Poetry Month, join Chapel Hill Public Library and Chapel Hill Community Arts & Culture for "The Poet is a Verb: Local Poetry & Open Mic Night" hosted by Chapel Hill Poet Laureate Cortland Gilliam with special guests CJ Suitt, Nina Oteria, Blaine Purcell, DS Will, Johnny Lee Chapman III, and Mariah M.
Poets do not poet alone. Poeting is community work - an invitation, a relational practice.
Any and everyone is welcomed; however, due to the open mic nature of this event there might be explicit language and/or mature content.
Cortland Gilliam (he/him) is a poet, educator, scholar and cultural organizer based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. While he has come to consider many places home growing up in a military family, attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for his B.A. in Economics in 2010 and again for his Ph.D. in Education in 2016 has deepened his ties and commitments to the Chapel Hill community, to the home state of the past five generations of his family, and to the U.S. South more broadly.
Cultural space-making and space-taking are essential to his artistic and political practice and the ways he aims to cultivate community. In his academic work, Cortland studies cultures, policies and practices of school discipline, as well as histories of Black pre-voting-age youth contributions to political struggles and liberation movements during the late twentieth century. In his creative works – which span poetry, filmmaking, and curation – he explores and illuminates the hues and textures of racialized experiences, identities, and histories.
During his time as a graduate student, Cortland has regularly performed his work around the NC Triangle area – as a creative outlet at various open mic nights and at protest rallies in service of the local anti-racist movement of the past six years. Additionally, Cortland’s written work has appeared in Gulf Stream Magazine and in an independently published collection of emerging NC-based poets, Triangle Poetry Twenty-Twenty-One.
Cortland’s fusion of the creative and political has also extended to artistic works beyond the poetry. In response to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill administration’s refusal to remove a Confederate monument on campus and proactively disrupt the broader university culture of white supremacy, Cortland participated in a daily performative “Noose Protest”, in which he and graduate colleague Jerry Wilson wore white and Carolina Blue nooses while on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for nine-months. This protest effort led to a follow-up project, wherein Cortland and Jerry co-curated the collaborative art exhibition #BlackOutLoudUNC.
Central to Cortland’s role in all of these experiences was his identity and perspective as a poet and the way they shape how he engages with the people around him and the spaces he inhabits. Poetry is as much about the beautiful deployment of language as it is about voice. Therefore, Cortland views poetry and art as a vehicle for voice – the imparting of perspective, the sharing of knowledge, the transmission of feeling, the disruption of power, the cultivation of community. Cortland currently serves at co-chair on the Board of Directors for the Marian Cheek Jackson Center for Saving and Making History.
DS Will has always been aware that writing can be a form of expression, a way to educate, or a means to inspire. It is this belief that has allowed him to be an integral part of the Triangle's poetic community and abroad! As the Founder of Press Play Poetry, DS has facilitated many community-serving showcases that have provided a platform for both upcoming and seasoned artists alike. DS currently serves as the Department Head of Poetry for The Raleigh Film and Art Festival. It is within this non-profit organization that he was able to institute Voices 2 Reel, an initiative that spotlighted the poetic talents of various youth throughout Raleigh and surrounding areas via recorded performances. In addition, he has contributed to the creation of the Arts on the Hill showcase emanating from Dix Chapel located in Dorothea Dix Park. DS is also a contributing writer for the premiere men’s lifestyle magazine SUAVV and has been featured in EMBRACE, Voyager, and Creative Rebel Magazines.
Mariah M (they/she) is a non-binary Black woman, cultural organizer and worldbuilder based in Greensboro, Afro-Carolina. They are the 2023 Artist-in-Residence at The Beautiful Project, an organization that uses storytelling to the ends of the creative development and self-efficacy of Black girls, gender expansive people and women. Mariah is also founder and member of SaltWater Sojourn, a Blackqueer-autonomous radical artist collective whose members believe in the transformative power art can have on the individual and the collective. They are the Co-Architect of Revival of the Seers, a summer rest retreat for NC-based Black queer cultural organizers and artists, and curator of High Tide, 31-day cultural programming portal held distinctly during Black August.
Johnny Lee Chapman, III is a multi-disciplinary artist from Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina. Chapman started writing as a "Tumblr poet" during his first year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2014, after graduating with a B.S. in Dental Hygiene, he leaped from page to the stage, beginning his career as a spoken word artist. Since then, he has performed regionally and nationally, and is an active voice within his Carolina community. Over the years, his professional range of activities have grown to include spoken word and movement performances, acting and directing, workshop facilitation, event hosting, and artist mentorship. Chapman also utilizes the mediums of film and photography to convey emotion without explanation under the moniker The Golden Moment. Chapman embraces the title of storyteller. The one in charge of relaying information by inspiring the imagination of his audience. Offstage, he can be found cleaning the teeth of his community as a Registered Dental Hygienist, traveling the backroads of NC with his camera and guitars, or on the athletic field with a soccer ball and running shoes.
Nina Oteria is a poet, artist, and educator from Raleigh, NC. She is one of the founding poets of the Corcoran Poetry Wall in Durham, NC and is a visual artist in residence at Attic 506 on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. Nina uses creativity to heal herself and the community through teaching English at a high school, acting as a writing coach, and hosting poetry and mindfulness based creative spaces for all ages through her organization Sweetgum Workshop.
Blaine Purcell is a mixed, gender-fluid poet studying at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Their writing focuses on family and community, sex, and the intersection of their identities. They have previously been published in Beaver Magazine.
CJ Suitt (he,him/they,them) is a performance poet, arts educator, and community organizer from Chapel Hill, NC, whose work is rooted in storytelling and social justice. CJ was recently appointed as the first Poet Laureate of Chapel Hill, NC. CJ co-directed, produced, and starred in a historical reenactment of the 1947 Freedom Rides, performed at many national and local music festivals, including Gnarnia, Shakori Hills and Bonnaroo, and acted in a production of Hands Up: 6 Playwrights, 6 Testaments. His career as an educator has allowed him to work with young people awaiting trial at the Durham Youth Home, older inmates whose voices have been silenced within the Orange County Correctional Facility, and high school and college-aged men pushing to redefine masculinity in their schools and communities. Additionally, he has collaborated with organizations such as Transplanting Traditions, Benevolence Farm, and Growing Change on the intersection of storytelling and food justice. He is committed to speaking truth to power and aims to be a bridge for communities who can't always see themselves in each other.
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