The Camden Festival of Poetry is pleased to announce the selection of the first Camden Festival Resident: Glenis Redmond, a poet and teaching artist from South Carolina. Applications were considered by a committee of jurors who unanimously chose Redmond for this inaugural honor. The residency includes a month-long stay at the Millay House in Rockland to work on a project during May along with a $500 stipend. Redmond will read poems during the opening of the Camden Festival on Tuesday night, May 12th at the Camden Public Library, and she’ll offer a workshop during the Festival on Saturday morning May 16th.

Redmond’s project proposal “It’s Written in the Name” is a poetic and curatorial exploration of Fountain Inn Colored High School in South Carolina—a Rosenwald School. Both of her parents, Johnny and Jeanette Redmond, attended and graduated from in 1954. Through tribute poetry, persona poems, African American poetic forms, and her own invented Afro-Carolina Quilt Stitch, she plans to document and amplify the cultural, civic, and educational legacy of this institution.

In her proposal she states: “In today’s climate—when African American history is being contested or erased—It’s Written in the Name stands as testimony, reclamation, and counter-memory. It models how poetry can function as both art and archive, restoring dignity and depth to lives nearly erased from the official record.”

Her workshop entitled “Tight Lines, Woven Lineage: Lucille Clifton’s Compression & Redmond’s Afro-Carolina Quilt Stitch”will be one of 5 workshops offered on Saturday morning, May 16th at the First Congregational Church in Camden.