HILLSBOROUGH - Jaki Shelton Green didn't get two steps inside the door at the Cup A Joe coffee shop Tuesday morning before someone hailed her.

"Hey, Jaki!" said a man sitting next to the front window. "How are you doing? Congratulations!"

"Thanks, Mike," Green said.

"They made a great choice," he said.

He was referring to the newly created Piedmont Laureate Program, which is designed "to promote awareness and heighten appreciation for excellence in the literary arts throughout the Piedmont region." Last week, the program named Green, a native of Orange County, the inaugural Piedmont Laureate.

The man who greeted Green on her way through the door, Mike Troy, knows a little bit about such things: he's Hillsborough's poet laureate.

Green sat down at a table inside the small coffee shop. It was familiar turf; Cup A Joe, she said, is practically her second home.

"I'm a little crazed, because I've been up since 5 a.m.," she said. "I woke up and there was a little voice begging to be heard. So I got up and started writing."

Green has learned to listen when characters have something to say; if she doesn't, she said, she might not get another chance.

"I had to learn to give myself permission to stop what I'm doing and pay attention to those strong voices," she said. "They're saying, 'Deal with this now, because I'm not coming back.'"

Green has published four books of poetry, had poems published in numerous magazines and journals, and is working on her first novel.

In addition to the new laureateship she has won honors including the North Carolina Award for Literature and the Sam Ragan Award. She's also a teacher of writing and a charismatic performer of her own work.

"Her readings are electrifying," wrote Joseph Bathanti, professor of creative writing at Appalachian State University, in a letter supporting her application for the laureate post. "She is a presence at the podium, a meld of panache and humility that embraces every audience. ... She is North Carolina poetry's Billie Holiday."

Green was born in Efland and now lives just a few miles away, in Mebane. As a young girl, she grew up in a home full of books and of people who loved to read. It was a short step to grow from a girl who loved to read into a girl who loved to write.

"My family encouraged that," she said. "I was fascinated by the culture and the place I was in. I spent Sundays in church writing about the ladies in their fancy hats and about the various people I knew."

In some ways she never stopped doing that. The range of subjects she writes about is wide, but her own past is rarely far from her mind.

"I sleep, think, cook, wake up in poetry," she said. "Memory is one of the creative containers I draw from a lot. Stories, found objects, family memorabilia, photographs, all of those things can be the starting point. I've been known to work with one photograph for years.

"We're all products of the people who make us: family, schools, community. Those are the windows I look through, if that makes any sense."

Green's first official act as Piedmont Laureate will be to present a poem at the Orange County Board of Commissioners meeting on Monday. The board will recognize her in her new post, and she will read a poem to mark the swearing in of the new members of the board.

Green said that after some initial reluctance she applied to the Piedmont Laureate position after a number of people encouraged her to do so. She passed the encouragement on, urging other writers she knew to apply as well.

In the end, though, she was the one the selection committee chose. She'll serve a one-year term and receive a $5,000 honorarium, and will be expected to present public readings and workshops, participate at various public functions and create at least one original activity to expand the appreciation of literature.

That should be no problem. She's already bubbling with ideas.

"I want to find and encourage creative voices all throughout the Piedmont," she said. "It's important to go outside the margins to non-traditional writers -- the incarcerated or the newly literate, for example -- and bring to our attention some of the emerging voices we might not otherwise hear. I'm interested in writing as a means for self-recovery and self-transformation, as well as community transformation. I also want to tap in to what established groups and individuals are already doing, and create venues and forums for Piedmont poets to come together for dialoguing and workshops."

It's an ambitious agenda. But it all boils down to one thing.

"It's all about encouraging people to use a computer or pen and paper as tools for digging, unearthing and sharing. That's the heart of it."

dave.hart@nando.com or 932-8744