15 Minutes With ... Poet Glenis Redmond
Words can breathe life into those who hear them. Glenis Redmond knows their import, and she wields them with a spirit of caring and healing. As the City of Greenville’s first Poet Laureate, she is on a mission to open doors and open voices.
Redmond has a rich career as both a poet and a teaching artist. She founded the Greenville Poetry Slam and is the former poet-in-residence at the Peace Center. She is a Kennedy Center teaching artist, recipient of the South Carolina Governor’s Award for the Arts, and is a mentor poet for the National Student Poets Program.
We talked with her about her new role, where she finds inspiration, and what has fueled her as she faced cancer treatment amidst a pandemic.
Talk Greenville: Let's start with the obvious thing – being named Poet Laureate for Greenville. I'm really thrilled that the city is embarking on that. I think it speaks to what the community values. What does it mean to you to be named the first poet laureate for the city?
Glenis Redmond: First of all, I have to say it feels very full-circle for me, because I began writing poetry at Woodmont High School, and so here it comes all the way back around that now I am the Poet Laureate of Greenville. It feels very gratifying in that sense. I have wanted a poet laureate in Greenville for a long time. I was a poet-in-residence at the Peace Center, and I really wanted a poet laureate. It took a while for it to happen, not necessarily just for me to be the poet laureate, but to have the position in our city. Because when you look across South Carolina, there's a poet laureate of Rock Hill, Columbia, Columbia, Charleston, and so to me, it was a no-brainer that we needed to have this position for our city. What's wonderful about it to me is that there will be a second poet laureate, a third. It will go on. We now have the structure in place.
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TG: How do you envision shaping this role, since you're the first one to do it?
GR: There are things that I want to shore up for the poet laureates to come – strengthening the platform and opening doors with partners like the Peace Center, the Metropolitan Arts Council, the libraries, and those sorts of things. Of course, every poet laureate will have their projects that are important to them, but I think it's wonderful to have some solidified partnerships as they come into this role. I am thrilled beyond belief to have been chosen. I feel like I've been acting as an informal poet laureate for the last 28 years, so it's nice to have your work seen and valued because I value poetry. My goal as a poet laureate is to see that other people value poetry. Not that I'm trying to make everybody a poet, but I do want them to be aware of the poetry in their lives.
TG: So much of your work has to do with healing, and there are some very deep themes there. How do you see that factoring into the city's growth at this particular moment in time?
GR: Before I was a poet, I was a Clinical II Counselor for the State of South Carolina, so the healing aspect of poetry has always been there for me. I don't consider it therapy; I consider it therapeutic. Poetry came along when I was diagnosed with chronic illness. In the ’90s, fibromyalgia, at the time, people didn't really know what it was, but I was in a lot of pain, a lot of fatigue, and I left the counseling field and switched over to the poetry. I don't say it healed me, but it served as a healthy distraction and somewhere to pour my passion. It gave me a sense of agency in a way nothing else had in my life. Up to that point, nothing had given me that sense of reflection (and) agency. What I feel, in turn, now 30-something years later, I feel like, hey, this poetry served as a lifeline for me, so I want to throw it out as a lifeline to others. Teens, adults, seniors, anybody can grab hold of the lifeline of poetry and find their place in it.
TG: We're at a time where we're still in a pandemic and we have so many other issues that are that are facing our community that the division can, if we're not careful, overshadow the unity. So, how does that factor into your work?
GR: When I was coming up, we didn't have poetry at every corner, we didn't have that. So, as a teaching artist and as a poet, my goal is to help provide access to these windows for people, because everybody needs something different. The more we have, the more choices people have. You know, teens are really important to me because I started writing when I was a teen. When they strengthen their voice through poetry, it's astounding and it's quite beautiful. I think they're more ahead of the game than what I was 30 years ago, because they have these avenues. They can take creative writing; they can take a workshop. We have nationally known poets coming in that they can listen to and see firsthand. And so, when I say poetry is a healer, I actually am speaking metaphorically. But I'm also speaking literally.
TG: How is this method of expression a window to your daily experiences? How does it continue to feed you in that way?
GR: I was diagnosed in 2019, six months before the pandemic, so I was already at home sheltering in place because I was busy with chemotherapy and them getting me ready for a stem cell transplant. My patio became my lifeline. I'm an amateur birdwatcher, and nature has always fulfilled me, but because of my rigorous touring schedule, I didn't spend much time back there. But as you know, the cancer, multiple myeloma, reared its head, and then the pandemic. That's where I spent most of my time – out there, watching the birds, watching my flowers grow – and poetry again became another lifeline.
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This year alone, I had two books published, and another one coming out in 2023 in January. I've really turned my gaze back to my internal landscape, and that's where I was able to go deep. I wouldn't wish cancer on anyone, and most people don't really think of it as a gift. But for me, it became a gift because it slowed me down in a way I needed to be slowed down, and I think my work got deeper because I was standing still, and I could literally feel the roots underneath my feet. That kept me -- it kept me again. Next to my twin daughters, Amber and Celeste, and my grandchildren, poetry has been my consistent companion. It has never failed me and it has continued to yield beauty amongst the struggle.
TG: You have new work coming out, and you're continuing to foster and nourish that creativity in younger generations as well. How do you see that leading us forward?
GR: I think when young people are reflecting and going deep, they are our greatest mirror. It's hard to argue with young people because they have this angst. They have this fire that we all need. Every generation has it. They have plenty of pluck, and they need that pluck to live in this world. I mean, there's just so much going on. And if they can be grounded in their own growth and creativity, I think it strengthens the community. I hate where we get to this place where it's like, boomer versus millennial or boomer versus Gen X. We're not “versus” in a true community. We're not in competition with each other. It’s a circle. We need all people at the table.
TG: What do you see as the place of creativity and poetry – or whatever form that takes – in this young generation?
GR: My home church, my family's church is Bethlehem Baptist Church. As a poet, they embraced me at 13. If somebody died, they would call my family home, my mother, father, and then they asked for me – a 13-year-old – and they would give me all the demographics and stories about that person, and then I would write a poem. I would show up at the funeral, and I would deliver the poem. That role and being taken seriously in that role gave me a platform and a seriousness early on. That's how I feel about our young people. We have to take them seriously because they have something to say. There's a role they need to fulfill, and that's why one of my projects will be to institute a Youth Poet Laureate. We will start doing that in January and looking for a youth, someone from I think, ninth grade to a senior, who will be the Youth Poet Laureate. I think it’s important and essential.
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Sometimes young people get a bad rap – they start talking about teens, and they're not listening, not being engaged. What teens are you talking to? Because the teens I work with are just dedicated. They are. They're passionate about words. They're wordsmiths, they're creative. They have a particular gaze. Only being a teenager will give you that gaze. I find young people energetic, and they are energizing. I consider myself an elder, and as an elder, I see it as part of my mission to include and to create this a wonderful creative table where everybody can come and be validated and speak.
TG: Anything else that you wanted to say?
GR: Getting back a little bit back to the cancer, I feel like the community really embraced me during the hardest three years of my life. It's still ongoing. This is the kind of cancer you don't recover from. I'll be on chemo the rest of my life, but I have to say, the community really showed up for me, and I really felt that and I'm so appreciative. The poet laureate coming in when it did, feels like a way for me to continue to return the blessings that I have received. I've been really fortunate to make my living as a poet and a teaching artist. That's what I've done solely for 28 years, and to be able to do it in my own community who has embraced me, now I can return that favor.
TG: Talk about some ways you’re doing that.
GR: All my health stuff came through Prisma, and they have a cancer support group. A lot of it was virtual during this time. This spring, they asked me if I would run a workshop for cancer survivors. It was beautiful to sit virtually and in some live workshops with people struggling or fighting for their lives. And it was gratifying. If there's one thing I can say as a poet laureate, the job is to bring poetry to the masses. I believe poetry works. I'm hoping that we can find more places for poetry to live, and especially for those who are caregivers of people who are ill, and people who are struggling with cancer for their lives. I believe that poetry is a place of hope, as well, and it's not this kind of corny hope, you know. It's the hope of yes, we are divided. Yes, there's a lot of turmoil. But I don't think that peace is absence of turmoil. Peace is being in the turmoil and making some kind of reconciliation with what's out there – finding hope and beauty in the midst of the struggle. It can happen. It will happen.
TG: Reconciliation in the turmoil. That’s beautiful.
GR: I always say poetry is the mouth that speaks when other mouths are silent. Poetry will go to that place where people do not want to visit and bring it up and hold it to the light so we can examine ourselves individually and collectively. That to me is hard-won love, holding feet to the fire and allowing people to see -- fully see. I think when the walls come down – I know when the walls come down, we realize that these divisions that we are putting up are manmade. And like Maya Angelou said, we're more alike than we are unalike. And I think that is what poetry shows us.
This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Q&A With Greenville's Poet Laureate Glenis Redmond
