Glenis Redmond is a performance poet, a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist, and a Cave Canem alumni. In October of this year, Glenis was selected to be the City of Greenville’s first poet laureate. She has authored six books of poetry: Backbone (Underground Epics, 2000), Under the Sun (Main Street Rag, 2002), and What My Hand Say (Press 53, 2016), Listening Skin (Four Way Books), Three Harriets & Others (Finishing Line Press), and Praise Songs for Dave the Potter, Art by Jonathan Green, and Poetry by Glenis Redmond (University of Georgia Press). She is presently working on a seventh collection, Port Cities: Portals of the Second (Domestic) Middle Passage.
In 2020 Glenis received the highest arts award in South Carolina, the Governor’s Award and in 2022 she was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors.
Glenis was born on Shaw AFB in Sumter, South Carolina. She presently resides in Greenville, South Carolina. She was the founder of the Greenville Poetry Slam in the early 90’s. She confesses she is Bi-Carolinian as she lived in Asheville, North Carolina for seventeen years and was a vital leader in the poetry scene in the 90’s. During that time, she was a Southern Fried Slam champion of the individuals twice and ranked twice in the top ten at the National Slam. Glenis was awarded the WNC Best Poet through the Mountain Xpress so many times, she was placed in the Hall of Fame.
Glenis is a North Carolina Literary Fellowship recipient and helped to create the first Writer-in-Residence program at the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site in Flat Rock, North Carolina. She received her MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College while touring full-time as a poet and mother-of-twins, Amber, and Celeste Sherer. She is now a Gaga to three grandchildren Julian, age 7 and Paisley age 1 and newborn, Quinn.
Glenis has spent almost three decades touring the country as a poet and teaching artist. She served as the Poet-in-Resident for the Peace Center in Greenville and the State Theatre in New Brunswick, NJ. As a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist, for seventeen years, Glenis has created and facilitated poetry workshops for school districts across the country.
Since 2014, she has served as the mentor poet for the National Student Poets Program through Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. In the past she has prepared these exceptional youth poets to read at the Library of Congress, the Department of Education, and for First Lady Michelle Obama at The White House.
Her poetry has been showcased on NPR and PBS and has been most recently published in Orion Magazine, storySouth and The New York Times, as well as numerous literary journals nationally and internationally. Glenis believes poetry is the mouth that speaks when all other mouths are silent.
Website: www.glenisredmond.com
Instagram: glenismakingpoetryreign
Twitter: glenisredmond
TikTok: RedwomanGlenis
Listen to SOREN LIT's interview with Glenis Redmond here: