Ekphrastic Opportunity

GET YOUR POEM ON FOR A GOOD CAUSE

Hickory area writers and would-be writers are again invited to participate in this year’s Aroma of Art Fundraiser to benefit ALFA (AIDS Leadership Foothills-area Alliance), the Flynn Home of Hickory, and the Women’s Resource Center.

Aroma of Art consists of a month-long exhibit of works of art donated by local artists and auctioned off at the event’s Grand Finale on March 1 from 5:30 to 8:30 at Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse on the lower floor of the Hickory Furniture Mart. Poets can participate by writing poems based on or inspired by the donated works of art which will be on display at the Furniture Mart beginning February 2. A Kick-Off Party will be held that day from 6 to 8 at the Mart.

To be eligible, poems must be submitted to CVCC creative writing instructor and Founder of Poetry Hickory, Scott Owens, no later than 5:00 PM, February 14. Poems can be submitted by email to asowens1@yahoo.com or dropped off at Taste Full Beans in downtown Hickory. Poems must fit on one side of a 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of paper, and the submission should include the writer’s name, email address, and phone number, as well as the work of art on which the poem is based.

Entries will be judged by a panel of local writers. Up to 10 poems will be selected to be framed and hung as part of the exhibit for the rest of the month. Of those, 3 will be selected to be read aloud by the authors at the Grand Finale. Selected poems may also be published in a local newspaper. At the Grand Finale, the poems selected for display will be presented along with the matching work of art to the winning bidder.

Annual Issue of Catawba Released

Celebrating Catawba’s 2nd (or 14th) Year

Depending on your perspective, the new issue of Catawba, CVCC’s annual literary and arts journal released May 27, is either the 2nd or 14th issue of the journal. Not many magazines can claim such an uncertain history, but such is the fate of many things dependent upon changing annual budgets and the work of volunteers.

What is now Catawba began as Synaesthesia in 1987 as the brainchild of CVCC instructors Tim Peeler and Tricia Hayes. For four years Synaesthesia published art and literature by both CVCC students and artists and writers from around the country. When Hayes left CVCC, the magazine went into dormancy, only to be revived 7 years later by Peeler and Nancy Risch with the title Sanctuary.

Sanctuary, which focused more on student work, was published for 7 years before falling victim to budgetary belt-tightening. One more issue entitled Sanctuary was published as an online journal in 2009 under the guidance of Peeler, Jerry Sain, and CVCC photography instructor, Clayton Joe Young.

Then, in 2010, the format was once again changed to a print journal focusing exclusively on CVCC student work. The journal was renamed Catawba, and edited by CVCC instructors Peeler, Young, Scott Owens, Brian Morris, Kevin Keck, and Robert Canipe. The second issue in this format was released at a launch party at CVCC on May 27 with the assistance of Anne Williams and Linda Lutz.

At the launch party students whose photos had been selected were displayed while those whose poems and stories had been chosen read from their work. Featured student photographers included Weston Bethancourt, Joy Barr, Amy Frady, Micah Harshbarger, Todd Money, Ashley Mosteller, Tennille Mullery, Jessica Prieto, Lana Ruffini, Stephanie Turner, Tiffany Ward (Student Editor), and Chris Wood. Student poets were Bethea Buchanan, Jeni Conklin (Student Editor), Carol Howard, Spencer Huffman, Kaitlin Leathers, Dennis Lovelace, and Kim Teague. Short stories were published by Stephanie Jo Young and Micah Harshbarger.

Copies of this year’s Catawba can be picked up in the CVCC library or by contacting Tim Peeler at tpeeler@cvcc.edu. Here is a poem by Dennis Lovelace to serve as a sample of the journal’s contents.

Fatherhood by Proxy
by Dennis Lovelace

Standing at the bottom of the staircase,
“Girls, I’m going to work. Come and give
me a hug and a kiss.”
A herd of elephants descending
with you in the lead,
raven tresses surrounding your features,
head down, brown eyes peeking
up at me, “Can I have one too?”
Leaning down, your tiny arms encircle my neck
tightly squeezing, a peck on my cheek.
I feel the chink in my armor
as you slip past into my heart.

Hickory Poet How-To, Part I

HICKORY POET HOW-TO, PART I
(first published in Outlook)

So, you want to be a poet in Hickory, NC? Many have tried; many have failed; and a perhaps surprisingly large number have done pretty well. A word to the wise, however; it’s not easy. There is not what could be called a lot of interest in poetry in Hickory (or anywhere else these days for that matter). There is even less opportunity for financial remuneration. So, whatever you do, don’t give up your day job to become a poet.

If, despite these unfortunate facts, you are still interested, then here are some tips on how to get started and keep going.

1. READ. Whether you’re in Hickory or Paris, this is the most important element of developing one’s prowess with language. Read everything, of course, but in particular read good contemporary poetry. Anthologies like Contemporary American Poetry and Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems are a good place to start. You can find the poets you identify with there and then seek out their books to read further. There are also over 1000 regularly published poetry journals in America, many of which are available for free online. Nearby examples include Wild Goose Poetry Review (www.wildgoosepoetryreview.com), Dead Mule (www.deadmule.com), and Main Street Rag (www.mainstreetrag.com).

2. WRITE. Seems intuitive, but I know many would-be writers who get so caught up in the “busy-ness” of being a writer, that they never get much writing done. Aside from one’s job and family, the only thing a writer should be doing more than writing is reading. There are two possible keys to this process. First, one can schedule his or her writing for the same time every day, just like exercising or bathing, and stick to it. If family and work make that difficult to manage then one can purchase a nice journal and carry with them everywhere and write during whatever free time presents itself.

3. Read “Musings” (this column). The column comes out every other week and is also available online at www.scottowensmusings.blogspot.com if you miss the paper. It will include details on upcoming poetry events in the area, profiles of poets giving readings in the area, sample poems, and the occasional exploration of various poetry topics and issues (like this one).

4. Attend Poetry Hickory and Writers’ Night Out. On the second Tuesday of each month, two well-published writers and three Open Mic readers are featured at Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse in downtown Hickory. The featured writers read for about 20 minutes each, and the Open Mic readers for about 10 each. The featured writers usually have copies of their recent books to sell and sign as well. The readings start at 6:30 and are free. They are preceded by Writers’ Night Out, sponsored by the NC Writers’ Network and also free, which begins at 5:00. These are networking sessions attended by anywhere from 10 to 20 area writers, including several “newbies” as well as 3 journal editors, 2 creative writing instructors, and 4 writers who have published at least 5 books each.

5. Take a class. Both CVCC and Lenoir Rhyne offer creative writing classes every semester. If you already have your degree, you can sign up to audit the class as a way of honing your skills and increasing your motivation to write.

Okay, that’s a start. Come back in two weeks, and we’ll continue with the list.

Catching Up: Dead Mule, Catawba, and Redheaded Stepchild

Catching Up: Dead Mule, Catawba, and RedHeaded Stepchild
(Published in "Outlook," May 13, 2010

For the past two years I’ve frequently been asked how I manage to keep up with all the things I’ve been doing: teaching, writing a column, editing a journal, publishing 3 books of poetry, giving 50 or so readings, parenting, etc. Well, it finally caught up with me, and for the past month I haven’t kept up, and this column is the thing that I’ve allowed to slip by the wayside. I could offer lots of excuses, but I’d prefer to just say I’m sorry and get quickly back on track.

There has been and soon will be a lot of exciting things happening in the poetry world in the foothills area, and I’d like to focus on a few of those happenings in this column. First, hats off to the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature and poetry editor, Helen Losse. The nationally-recognized online journal has published the work of three students from CVCC: Bethea Buchanan, Jeremy Deal, and Ethan Sigmon. Their poems appear in the same issue with some of the South’s best poets, Harry Calhoun, Felicia Mitchell, Joe Milford, Jessie Carty, and Hickory’s own Bud Caywood, and can be viewed at www.deadmule.com.

Second, to see even more of the outstanding work from students at CVCC, stop by the campus library and pick up a free copy of the school’s own literary and arts journal, Catawba. This magazine, edited by faculty and students at the school under the leadership of Tim Peeler, includes outstanding photography, poetry, fiction, and nonfiction created by CVCC’s students.

Third, a special edition of Poetry Hickory will take place at Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse in downtown Hickory from 1:00 to 2:30 on Saturday, May 22. Poets from across the state whose work has been included in the journal Redheaded Stepchild will be reading their poems. Featured writers will include the editor of the journal, Malaika King Albrecht of Raleigh, the aforementioned Helen Losse, Asheville’s Michael Beadle, and yours truly, Scott Owens, among others to be announced. The journal can be seen at http://www.redheadedmag.com/poetry/.

Additionally, Poetry Hickory continues at 6:30 on the second Tuesday of each month at Taste Full Beans (June’s readers will be Linda Annas Ferguson and David Rigsbee), and Eliot Lytle, with the help of Ted Pope, has begun a summer poetry and music series at MESH Gallery in downtown Morganton at 3:00 on the second Saturdays of each month.

Finally, May 22 is the deadline for this year’s Poetry Council of NC annual poetry contests. Last year’s 36 winners included 3 area poets, and 9 who have read at Poetry Hickory. Complete guidelines for the contests are available at http://poetrycouncilofnc.wordpress.com/.

Review of Tim Peeler's "Checking Out"

Review
Checking Out, Poetry by Tim Peeler
Hub City Press, 96 pages
ISBN:

Aging can have certain surprising benefits: less hair to worry about, getting a drink without ID, and having enough knowledge and experience to forge meaningful relationships with those you admired in youth. Last year, I had the great pleasure of reviewing a book of poems by my undergraduate creative writing instructor, Paul Nelson, whom I hadn’t seen or communicated with in nearly 30 years. This year, I find myself reviewing a new book from another of my early “poetry crushes,” Tim Peeler.

I first encountered Peeler’s work about 20 years ago when I was still confused about what to write and how to write about it. His poetry then was about things that were very familiar to me--trailer parks, farms, small town Southern life--and it was written in a way that was approachable, observant, objective, and understatedly real. Those poems served as models to me, in a sense giving me permission to write in a certain way about certain things I had been wanting to write about and have been writing about ever since.

Today, Peeler remains one of my poetry crushes, and he remains as true to his poetic ideals as he does to his friends, family, and hometown of Hickory, NC. So, his new collection of poems, his fifth, entitled Checking Out, is as familiar and important to me as his poems of years ago. In fact, the details of his “Prelude,” which opens the book and mimics the ambition of Wordsworth’s poem by that title, could almost have been my own: “the barefoot child, / shirtless in overalls;” “the congregation of chickens;” “the sun [elevatoring] through / the maples beyond the meadow / where he’s seen angels;” “the forest floor . . . coated with crunch oak leaves, / broken branches, pine cones and needles;” following “the moonlit railroad tracks / out beyond town, skipping a tie, / toeing a rail, imagining animal eyes / in sinister bushes, thinking a poem / without knowing it yet.” This poem also introduces the setting for the rest of the book: “Four AM, the night audit finished, the motel silent / he wrestles the heavy notion of sleep.” One immediately suspects that, as in Frost’s “After Apple Picking,” this will be no ordinary sleep the speaker wrestles with.

Not surprisingly, the title of the next section of poems is “Place.” Over the years, Peeler has more successfully captured a sense of a particular time, place, and people than any other writer I know with the possible exception of Wendell Berry. And in these poems, he does it again, the more particular place this time being the small Southern town hotels he spent years working in. He begins, of course, at the beginning, with inspiration, the inspiration of the man who built the hotel, and the inspiration the hotel-clerk/speaker sought during long nights on duty: “What did he see when he / came out here past the town / after the dust settled on the war?” (II); “You wait for a face / long enough in a place like this; / it will come” (I). From there he begins to explore the memory of this place and time: “Once there was a three story motel building / with balconies that overlooked a drive-in screen” (III); “In the old days, / they’d leave a fourteen year-old boy / in charge of the motel / when they took an afternoon off / to drink some shine” (IV).

He continues, in the section called “Registry,” with the memory of people. He recalls “Stan” who “said he played at Notre Dame / then for the Sox,” but who it is discovered “had been lying / all along, magnificently, / profoundly, beautifully” (VII); and the “Rabb twins,” one of whom “could throw his voice; / the other . . . a mute” who “could / lip synch anything the other said” (X); and “the old men [who] sat for an hour each morning, / hashing and rehashing the past: a retired clerk, // an organ builder, an automobile dealer, a juke joint / entrepreneur, a retired English professor // till they died one by one, / sadly, all” (XIII).

In “Chaos,” Peeler characterizes the experience: “Chaos / when you are not war, / revolution, or murder / you are a Friday night / at a cheap motel” (XV). Then, he continues in this section to provide detailed illustration of the claim: “one woman had another / in a choke hold / pounding her dyed blonde head / against the gravelly parking lot” (XVI); “The night was busy, locals / rolling in off 64-70 / in a haze of marijuana / and George Dickel” (XXI).

Against this backdrop of place and people, a clearer image of the speaker begins to come into focus. In the section named “Swimming,” the reader begins to see that there is much more to the speaker than just his job. In XXV, perhaps my favorite of these poems, the speaker tells us:

I wrote a masters thesis
in a motel room, weekend
manager on duty, typewriter nights;
I answered complaints about myself.

Between check ins
I scribbled pieces of poems,
made up stories about guests,
. . . . . . . . . .

I can't remember how many times
I crawled under a motel building
at 3AM to change a fuse,
put the wheels back on a rollaway,
fixed a commode, walked through
pitch black, blessed by the moon.

I became the poet laureate
for the post office whores,
the random darling
of a small legion of fools,
the familiar of charming drunks,
a blundering father
in the no man's land
of the eighties.

When I dove into the pool
to clean the spot by the drain,
ten feet down, I felt
the dreamy pressure of the
whole world above me,
sensed that the water didn't
want to be there either.

And we continue to get these glimpses into the speaker’s deeper thoughts throughout the section named “Clerks:” “There is no afterlife” (XXVIII); “we thought we’d never grow old (XXXII). And, finally, we get an even rawer perspective on the business through the memorable serial character of “The Old Clerk,” in the section with that title.

At the end, like any good storyteller, Peeler brings it home with a poem that offers closure, in this case a satisfying perspective on the experience. In “I Say It Like a Prayer” (one of only two titled poems in the 52-poem collection,) Peeler tells us:

Some mornings I drive by the motel
where I worked for seven years, and
scenes come back to me in flashes:
. . . . . . . . . .

A man calls me one night
to complain about people talking
in the room next door. The rooms
next to him are unrented. Don’t
you hear all that? he shouts
when I get to his room. I listen
carefully to nothing, to silence.
You’ve got to do something about it;
you’ve got to stop them; it’s your job.
I walk next door, knock, turn the lock
and stare into the dark empty room.
You people shut the hell up I holler
angrily. I mean it damn it
I add for good measure. Thanks,
thanks the man tells me as I walk back by him.

Thanks, thanks I say to the motel
as I drive by to my boring safe job
which is rarely anything to write about.
Thanks I say to the ghosts that rise
with lead pipes and biker boots;
thanks I say to the vices and voices.
I say it like a prayer.