Cortland Gilliam (he/him) is a poet, educator, scholar and cultural organizer based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. While he has come to consider many places home growing up in a military family, attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for his B.A. in Economics in 2010 and again for his Ph.D. in Education in 2016 has deepened his ties and commitments to the Chapel Hill community, to the home state of the past five generations of his family, and to the U.S. South more broadly.
Cultural space-making and space-taking are essential to his artistic and political practice and the ways he aims to cultivate community. In his academic work, Cortland studies cultures, policies and practices of school discipline, as well as histories of Black pre-voting-age youth contributions to political struggles and liberation movements during the late twentieth century. In his creative works – which span poetry, filmmaking, and curation – he explores and illuminates the hues and textures of racialized experiences, identities, and histories.
During his time as a graduate student, Cortland has regularly performed his work around the NC Triangle area – as a creative outlet at various open mic nights and at protest rallies in service of the local anti-racist movement of the past six years. Additionally, Cortland’s written work has appeared in Walter Magazine, Gulf Stream Magazine, and in an independently published collection of emerging NC-based poets, Triangle Poetry Twenty-Twenty-One.
Cortland’s fusion of the creative and political has also extended to artistic works beyond the poetry. In response to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill administration’s refusal to remove a Confederate monument on campus and proactively disrupt the broader university culture of white supremacy, Cortland participated in a daily performative “Noose Protest”, in which he and graduate colleague Jerry Wilson wore white and Carolina Blue nooses while on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for nine-months. This protest effort led to a follow-up project, wherein Cortland and Jerry co-curated the collaborative art exhibition #BlackOutLoudUNC.
Central to Cortland’s role in all of these experiences was his identity and perspective as a poet and the way they shape how he engages with the people around him and the spaces he inhabits. Poetry is as much about the beautiful deployment of language as it is about voice. Therefore, Cortland views poetry and art as a vehicle for voice – the imparting of perspective, the sharing of knowledge, the transmission of feeling, the disruption of power, the cultivation of community. Cortland currently serves at co-chair on the Board of Directors for the Marian Cheek Jackson Center for Saving and Making History.
Photo by Jade Wilson
This poem was commissioned by Chapel Hill Community Arts & Culture as part of a Chapel Hill Transit bus shelter public art project honoring George Moses Horton. The bus shelter art also features a second poem by inaugural Chapel Hill Poet Laureate, CJ Suitt, and graphic art by Durham-based visual artist Wutang McDougal. The poem “Elsewhere” was also published in the November 2023 Issue of the Raleigh-based Walter Magazine.
Image from Walter Magazine
This poem was commissioned by Chapel Hill Community Arts & Culture and debuted at the Town of Chapel Hill’s 2024 Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration for Town Employees. The piece is an erasure or blackout poem made entirely from excerpts from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence”, delivered on April 4, 1967 at the Riverside Church in Manhattan, New York, in which King unpopularly spoke out against U.S. imperialism, militarism, and capitalism.
This piece is an ekphrastic response to the portrait “Killed Negative #13″ (pictured) by Joel Daniel Phillips, of the Outwin 2022: American Portraiture Today exhibition, which visited The Ackland Art Museum during the 2022-2023 academic year. In partnership with the Ackland and Community Arts & Culture, Cortland curated “Defining a ‘We’: Parsing the Potentialities of Poetry and Portraiture”- an ekphrastic poetry reading and panel event inspired by the Outwin exhibition, featuring UNC-Chapel Hill Professors Dr. Meta DuEwa Jones and Annette Lawrence, poets CJ Suitt and Fred Joiner, and visual artist Claire Alexandre. All participants were invited to write poetry in response to the exhibition’s portraiture.
You came to document desperation
and found dignity
In a spirit
too proud to beg
In brows too resolute
for your Great Depression
In eyes that say
“To know death is to be undead” and
“When the country collapses in smoke and dust…
I’ll still be here
Weathered, worn, leathered
In plain sight working life
from all that you have forgotten”
Image from Artsy
Watch various interviews and talkbacks of Cortland sharing his academic and creative work.
“On Distorting History and Growing the Margins”
for the On the Margins Podcast by Jerry Wilson
“Imagining UNC’s Future with Art – Yet & Still”
a conversation about activism and art with Melody Hunter-Pillion
Cortland sat down with Due South host Leoneda Inge to discuss his work as an activist, community organizer and public artist. The doctoral candidate in education at UNC-Chapel Hill also shared some of his poetry.
Town of Chapel Hill Town Council Reading (1/11/2023) – read an original piece, “Purpose”
Town of Chapel Hill 2023 MLK Jr. Day of Celebration (1/13/2023) – read an original poem, “Dear Allies (of New and Old)”
Town of Chapel HIll’s 2023 Juneteenth Celebration (6/17/2023) – read three original works, “Freedom Dreams,” “U-N-I-T-Y”, and “Dear Allies (of New and Old)”
Town of Carrboro Town Council Reading (2/7/2023) – read an original piece, “Dear Allies (of New and Old)”
National Poetry Month Creative Cypher (4/28/2024), with Brentton Harrison of Hargraves Community Center
The Poet is a Verb (I) (4/27/2024) – curated this event featuring local poets
Town of Chapel Hill 2024 MLK Jr. Day of Celebration (1/12/2024) – read an original and commissioned piece, “Is this your King?”
Defining a ‘We’: Parsing the Potentialities of Poetry and Portraiture (1/21/2024) – curated the ekphrastic poetry reading and panel with invited poets for Outwin American Portraiture Exhibit at the Ackland Art Museum
White, Green Futures: An Environmental Justice Education and Poetry Writing Workshop (2/24/2024), in collaboration with Florafitti and Community Arts & Culture
“Radical Imagining: Youth Poetry Workshop” (4/20/2024), in collaboration with Chapel Hill Public Library and Community Arts & Culture for National Poetry Month
The Poet is a Verb (II) (4/26/2024) – curated this event featuring local poets
Chapel Hill Public Library Summer Reading Program Trivia Night (8/14/2024)
Right to Read (and Write): Youth Poetry Workshop for Banned Books Week (9/24/2024), in collaboration with Chapel Hill Public Library and Community Arts & Culture
