Once Upon a Magic City 

By Salaam Green, Inaugural Poet Laureate, City of Birmingham 

Cover Art by Micah Althea 

An Initiative of the Poet Laureate of Birmingham, 2024 

Paper and PDF: No Charge 

Genre: Poetry 

Reviewed by Michelle Dacus 

Cover of Once Upon a Magic City. Four Black girls in white dresses dance in a field of flowers with Magic City signage in the background.As someone who has lived in nine of these United States, in well over a dozen cities—four in Alabama alone—I can attest that home is far more than the place we’re born or have roots in. A lot depends on what we carry with us. Places, in and of themselves, can be what we make of them. This is true even of a place as rich in myth, mysticism, and material wealth as Birmingham, the subject and setting of Once Upon a Magic City, a chapbook of poetry by Salaam Green.  

A hotbed of early industrialism, Birmingham has been called the “Steel City” and, with continued economic development, the “Magic City.” Later, alongside racial and class strife, it was called the “City of Perpetual Promise,” and through its fraught, sometimes frightening, Civil Rights era history, “Bombingham.” Multifaceted Birmingham, with its ninety-nine neighborhoods, towering Vulcan on a hill, urbane, industrious, revitalizing downtown, prominent university presence, unhoused and affordable housing, and public safety concerns (undergirded by consequential civil rights controversies), was not easy for Green to make home right away.    

Arriving in 1999, she navigated fits and starts in her career, a divorce, depression, and displacement.  

Gradually, though, as she began unpacking the treasure trove she’d carried from her Black Belt upbringing in the town of Greensboro, she started to settle in. She’d brought along a strong sense of self-awareness and pride (honed in her segregated public schooling), a love of words, and sensory memories like the smell of her grandmother’s kitchen, the sound of her footsteps, and the colors of her curtains. Green began making her “home in poetry” after finding a community of women poets (and a red leather couch) in Birmingham, which helped her find home in the city.  

Now, in a true manifestation of grace, the city has returned the favor by not only adopting Green as one of its own but also by blessing her with the honor of being its Inaugural Poet Laureate.  

Mayor Randall L. Woodfin—in concert with the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Cultural Arts Committee of the Birmingham City Council, Create Birmingham, and municipal agencies such as Community Development and Parks and Recreation—is casting a lasting imprint on Birmingham’s physical landscape, demographics, and social climate through the fulfillment of his administration’s goal of celebrating the arts and culture. A significant achievement, of many, in meeting that goal is Green’s appointment as poet laureate, which Mayor Woodfin describes as an “ambassador for Birmingham’s arts community.” The poet’s civic role can also be viewed as scribe—recording and interpreting the events of history—and as sage—inspiring and influencing events yet to come. Green absolutely understands the assignment and is doing her homework. 

She has described her writing as her “biggest sensory expression” and as “reparative poetry” that helped her establish her own “homecoming” and is integral to her ongoing healing work. For example, in the poem, “Little Girls of Birmingham,” Green recounts the events of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing while also calling forth and embracing the next generation of the city’s little brown girls. And in “Birmingham Where the World Belongs,” she opens her—and the city’s! —arms wide to welcome and, yes, embrace “all y’all” who can, like her, find home there.  

Her approach of using poetry to heal and repair is particularly apropos to her setting and is put into practice in this volume through the inclusion of writing prompts that facilitate readers’ own exploration and creation. A series of short sayings throughout the book stimulates reflection and contextualizes the overall importance of the arts in the municipality’s health and wellbeing. 

Illustrations by featured artist Micah Althea Briggs, an affiliate of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, not only give visual complement to what Green says excites her most about poetry: how “words spread themselves across the page,” but also testify to the collaborative nature of Birmingham’s artists, arts community, and leadership. Kudos are well deserved all around! 

Michelle Dacus is a poet, freelance writer, and lover of the arts.