Salaam Green, Birmingham’s inaugural poet laureate and founder and executive director of The Literary Healing Arts, will release her first full-length poetry collection, “The Other Revival: Poems & Reckonings,” today. Published by Pulley Press, a subsidiary of Clyde Publishing, the collection comes after years of Green’s work as a storyteller, educator and racial healing facilitator.
“The Other Revival” revolves around themes of homecoming and deep listening. The poems center around the Wallace House in Harpersville, Alabama, a plantation home built in 1841 by 39 enslaved people, which was later repurposed as a site of reconciliation and remembrance.
Through her work with Black, white and mixed-race descendants who gather there, Green has crafted a collection that honors the land’s complicated legacy.
“I hope to bring liberation to the memories of enslaved women and their children, as well as shed light on the voices of descendants who are living in the area today. I want their voices to be amplified, and I hope the poems do them justice,” said Green.
This collection follows the story of a Black woman poet invited to perform on plantation grounds, where each gathering becomes a ritual of remembrance and reckoning for the poet. As the emotional weight builds, the speaker is guided by the vision of a woman in a yellow apron who leads her toward a reimagined form of revival.
That journey continues to “History House,” the home of Peter Datcher, believed to be the oldest continuously Black-owned residence in Shelby County, where a new legacy of archiving, storytelling and community healing unfolds.
Green, a native of Greensboro, Alabama, is a Kellogg Foundation Racial Healing Facilitator and Alabama Humanities Foundation Road Scholar. She has held residencies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Auburn University and the Wallace House itself, where she continues to lead workshops on racial healing, intergenerational storytelling and historical memory.
“The Other Revival is about restoring what history has overlooked. In a time when public memory is under threat, this book reminds us that the most vital archives live in people—in their voices, in their willingness to pass stories on,” said Green.
Ahead of its release, “The Other Revival” has been praised for its emotional depth and poetic resonance.
“Honest, vulnerable, insightful, and hopeful, Green’s poems are soul food,” says Imani Perry, author of South to America and winner of the National Book Award.
Through “The Other Revival,” Green reclaims the tradition of Southern revivals and transforms them into spaces of spiritual reflection. Her work speaks not only to Alabama’s past but aims to underscore the urgent need for restorative justice and healing.
Green is one of two city-specific poet laureates in Alabama.
