Poet Cortland Gilliam wears a few different hats: an artist, graduate student, educator and now the Town of Chapel Hill’s second-ever poet laureate.
“For me it’s helpful to be engaged in community and space,” Gilliam said. “That requires sometimes that you go outside of the bounds of whatever your specific role is.”
Gilliam’s love of poetry blossomed while he was an undergraduate student at UNC. There, he went to open mics and listened to performances from CJ Suitt, the town’s first poet laureate.
“I saw him perform as someone who was just kind of coming into their poetic voice, their literary voice, what have you, and that had a lasting impression on me,” Gilliam said. “It was really in undergrad that I think I started to write seriously, and again part of that was seeing different representations of Black creatives and Black writers like CJ.”
Cortland Gilliam and CJ Suitt pose for a photo after Gilliam is sworn in as new poet laureate. (Photo via Town of Chapel Hill)
In 2019, Gilliam co-lead an exhibition with a group of Black artists at UNC. Named Black Out Loud, the exhibition showcased the experiences of Black students at a historically white institution.
“We were really building community amongst these, this very small collective of Black creatives on campus and taking up space in a cool way,” Gilliam said. “That really opened my eyes to kind of how I can be in community while using my creative bent.”
Gilliam is currently an education graduate student at UNC studying cultural studies and literacies. He also serves as co-chair for the Marian Cheek Jackson Center’s Board of Directors — an organization that preserves the history of Black neighborhoods in Chapel Hill.
He says he sees poetry as a vehicle to engage communities and to share experiences that reflect the times.
“It’s a tool to kind of channel voices or to kind of synthesize emotions and feelings around different social events, happenings, phenomenon, whatever,” Gilliam said. “And give it back to the world in a way that sheds a distinct lighting on an issue or something.”
This poetic activism is something Gilliam wants to bring to his new role as the town’s poet laureate.
“Work that kind of provokes something within someone, whatever that something is,” Gilliam said. “The goal is for people to feel and reflect and really absorb the words. And in that absorption then comes change to action.”
Gilliam will be the Town of Chapel Hill’s Poet Laureate until December 2024. To learn more about Gilliam and the poet laureate position, visit the Town of Chapel Hill’s website.
Top photo via Town of Chapel Hill.
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