PRESS

Jaki Shelton Green, North Carolina’s current Poet Laureate (and the first African-American to hold this title), has given us a deeply moving and powerful gift for her 67th birthday, which is Juneteenth (the anniversary of the emancipation of the last remaining enslaved African-Americans). There’s a musical quality to these spoken poems that is mesmerizing and deeply beautiful — yet “The River Speaks of Thirst” is so much more than that. 

This vinyl poetry album contains 11 spoken poems that could not be more timely, especially in light of the murder George Floyd. In “Oh My Brother,” her mellifluous voice seduces us but once in her grip we become witnesses to the 8 minutes and 46 seconds of horror that it took to end Mr. Floyd’s life, a police officer’s knee on his throat. “I will sing your name into the wind/ until the wind lifts it from my tongue/ I will wail the presence of your history that is out of rhythm/ my poems will be forever screaming the life of you.” Indeed, Jaki Shelton Green’s voice is now forever within me, showing us again how art has the ability to transform individual hearts and minds. I have only gratitude to this beloved cultural icon for her gift to us.

— Steven Petrow, M.A.
Columnist, The Washington Post

In “The River Speaks of Thirst,” Jaki Shelton Green deftly unravels rough threads of history and heritage, reshaping stories, memories and complex ancestries into a complicated patchwork quilt. Green’s work is ethereal and honest, and (perhaps most notably) challenges listeners to re-think the very notions of American-ness, Southern-ness, privilege, and power. Some of her words sway, grind, twist and buck to tracks accompanied by smooth beats and powerful, yet subtle melodies. Overall, “The River” lends us words that slice, smash, squeeze and mock, all while offering up a raw session of truth-telling and soul healing. Its foremost message is clear: earth, wind, flora and fauna have borne witness to the acts that have both broken and stitched together our souls, and thus, the souls of our black ancestors.

— Angela M. Thorpe, M.A.
Heritage Practitioner | Curatorial Consultant

“The album manifests the music that is always inherent in Green’s award-winning verse as she performs it with instrumentation . . . Green just released “Oh My Brother” from it that speaks to the murder of George Floyd in the piercing but consoling way that only poetry can.”

— Indy Week, June 3, 2020

“On the terribly moving and eloquent “Oh My Brother” by esteemed North Carolina Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green from her debut album The River Speaks of Thirst she recites, bleeds emotionally for all “her brothers who have been silenced.” The poem told with artistic flair is set to a dark dirge of sounds, a plodding downbeat and haunting horns, dark orchestrations and pouring rain. The result feels cinematic, like a voice over to a horror story except this one is real.”

— American Pancake, June 3, 2020

“…elements of stories witnessed on the international media stage of brutality, racism, senseless murder, abuses of power and more are witnessed in new visceral poetics of love and mourning.”

— Week in Pop, June 3, 2020