Flier for Hickory's 100 Thousand Poets for Change

Flier for Hickory's 100 Thousand Poets for Change Event. Please post or print and post anywhere interested people might see.

Slight Change in Format for Poetry Hickory 4th Anniversary Celebration

The response from poets for the Poetry Hickory 4th Anniversary Celebration has been much greater than I anticipated. When I first planned on having this double book release party (my new book and The Best of Poetry Hickory anthology), I figured we would get between a half dozen and a dozen poets to come and read their one poem from the anthology, so I thought it would make sense to give the anthology a half hour and I would take an hour for mine. Then when we went over a dozen, I changed it to where we would split the time evenly. Now, we have 23 poets who will be there to read their poems from the anthology. So, I'm still having my book release party, but I'm going to do just a brief (10 minute) reading from "Something Knows the Moment" just as a "warm-up" for the anthology. We will split those readers in half and take a break in the middle so that people can buy books, get signatures and refresh their drinks.


I look forward to seeing you all at Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse in downtown Hickory on September 13. The readings will begin at 5:30 and should wrap up around 7:00. I will have plenty of copies of "Something Knows the Moment," which retails for $14.95, and the anthology, which sells for just $5. If you can't make it, but you want a book, let me know, and I will work out the shipping with you. And by the way, we will still have Writers' Night Out at 4:00.


Here is a complete list of the poets currently scheduled to read their poems from what is a truly wonderful collection:

Jeanne Ackley

Hazel Benau

Jessie Carty

Bud Caywood

Ann Chandonnet

M. Scott Douglass

Bill Griffin

Helen Losse

Dennis Lovelace

Doug MacHargue

Shane Manier

Ron Moran

Scott Owens

Tim Peeler

Julian Phelps

Ted Pope

Nancy Posey

David Poston

Tony Ricciardelli

Molly Rice

Donnie Smart

Kermit Turner

Devona Wyant

and maybe more


Should be quite the Poetry Party. Come for the anthology; come for my book; come for the poetry; come to meet some of these poets; come for the wine; just come for the good time!


I hope to see you there.

Bathanti Proves Poetry Can Make a Difference

Bathanti Proves Poetry Can Make a Difference

One of the charges occasionally leveled at contemporary poetry is that it has become irrelevant. Whenever I hear that claim I can’t help but wonder what contemporary poetry the speaker is reading. I read about 100 new poetry books each year and perhaps thousands in various poetry journals, and I will admit that a percentage of those seem pointlessly self-involved: poems about writing poetry; poems written such that only other poets could appreciate them; poems that are mere self-expression. I will admit that even I occasionally write such poems, since other poets and myself are also among my audience. That percentage, however, seems to be a very small one. Most of the poetry that I read is about experiences, ideas, and perceptions that have a broad base of interest and appeal: politics, religion, philosophy, living in the 21st century, joy, loss, regret, all the various faces of human endeavor, success, and failure, and, of course, like all art, beauty and truth.

I can think of no better example of the vital relevance of contemporary poetry than the work of Joseph Bathanti. For decades Bathanti has been deeply involved in the “real” world both in and through his poetry. As a poet and educator (currently at Appalachian State University), Bathanti is the author of 12 creative and scholarly books and has won virtually every award available, but it is the subject of his poetry and the ways in which he uses poetry to change people’s lives that are most deserving of acclaim and that illustrate his vital relevance.

Bathanti’s various involvements in criminal justice began when for fourteen months as a VISTA volunteer, he taught and coached inmates, started Alcoholic Anonymous chapters at two prison camps, coordinated work and study release programs, developed job and parole plans for inmates on the verge of release, and conducted a weekly creative writing workshop, culminating in the publication of an anthology of inmate writing and art work. He followed that up by teaching a Learning Lab at Huntersville Prison and living as a house-parent for abused and neglected children. During this time, he also became involved in death penalty work and appeared on radio and TV as a staunch abolitionist.

Over the past 33 years, Bathanti has lectured, read his work and conducted workshops in a variety of prisons, training schools, battered women’s shelters, homeless shelters, daycare centers, nursing homes, soup kitchens, barns, gyms, train depots, and fish camps. He served as a Humanities scholar through the Georgia Humanities Council on a writing/performance project with AIDS patients at Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital. For ten years, from 1991-2001, he taught an annual week-long creative writing workshop at a North Carolina prison road camp in Stateville. And during the academic year 2005-06, he weekly took a group of creative writing students into Boone’s homeless shelter, Hospitality House, and facilitated a writing workshop among the residents there. This initiative resulted in an anthology, featuring the work of the residents and Appalachian State University students.

Most recently, in March of 2009, he guest-edited the Michigan Review of Prisoner Creative Writing, an anthology of prisoner writing published through University of Michigan’s Prisoner Creative Arts Project (PCAP); and also conducted creative writing workshops in Detroit and Ann Arbor prisons.

Bathanti will facilitate a poetry workshop sponsored by the North Carolina Poetry Society, from 5:00 to 6:30 on Tuesday, October 12, at Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse in downtown Hickory. The workshop will be followed by October’s Poetry Hickory, where Bathanti and Robert Abbate, author of The Courage of Straw and instructor at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College, will be the featured writers. Poetry Hickory will begin at 6:30 with shorter readings by Bill Griffin, Julian Phelps, and Bethea Buchanan.
Cost of the workshop is $15 for NCPS members and $25 for non-members. Membership information is available at http://www.ncpoetrysociety.com/. Registration can be reserved by contacting Scott Owens at asowens1@yahoo.com or 828-234-4266. Space is limited, so early registration is encouraged. Poetry Hickory is free and open to the public. The poem below, which deals with issues faith, beauty, and everyday ways of coping, can serve as a sample of what those in attendance will hear.

The Last Time I Drank with Phil
by Joseph Bathanti

I’m drinking
in the Rose Garden
at Mellon Park with Philip.
Out all night, we find ourselves
burnished in the high
dawn of Easter, Sunday
sun dripping yellow plates
from the Sycamore’s wet green shade.
Spider webs catacomb
the primrose. Angels
spray from silver fountains.
Goldfinches float above
the sequined lawn.
So much light
we shield our eyes,
like the first mendicants,
two old friends, stumbling
upon the risen Christ,
uplifted emerald
bottles of warm Rolling Rock
igniting.

POETRY COUNCIL COMPLETES WORK, PREPARES FOR POETRY DAY

The Poetry Council of North Carolina, an organization that for 58 years has worked to foster a greater appreciation for and appreciation of poetry in NC by sponsoring contests and events for adults and children, has concluded its work on this year’s competitions and is preparing now to highlight the winners of those competitions at its annual Poetry Day, to be held October 16 at Catawba College in Salisbury.

This year’s big winners include Greensboro’s Rhett Iseman Trull, recipient of the Oscar Arnold Young Award for the best book of poems published by a North Carolinian, for her book, The Real Warnings. Trull will be spending a great deal of time in Hickory this year, appearing at Lenoir Rhyne as part of their “In Their Own Words” visiting writer series on September 16 with NC Poet Laureate Cathy Smith-Bowers, returning in the spring as Lenoir-Rhyne’s writer-in-residence, and reading at Poetry Hickory on March 8.

A recent visitor at Poetry Hickory, Tony Abbott, who read here on September 14, received second place in the book competition for his New & Selected Poems. Other finalists in the book competition who have read at Poetry Hickory in the past year include Linda Annas Ferguson and Alex Grant. Award recipients in other categories also include recent and upcoming Poetry Hickory readers: Sara Claytor and Bill Griffin, both of whom read last year; Richard Allen Taylor, who is part of November’s event; and Malaika King Albrecht, who will read with Trull on March 8.

Poetry Day events begin on October 16 with registration at 9:20, followed by the dedication of this years’ awards anthology, Bay Leaves, honoring Main Street Rag Publisher and Editor, M. Scott Douglass, for his unparalleled contributions to the NC poetry community. The highlight of the event will be the recognition of category winners and readings from those winners. Following lunch, entertainer Bob Whyte will perform. Poetry Day is open to the public. Lunch can be reserved for $8 at www.poetrycouncilofnc.wordpress.com. A complete list of this year’s winners and sample poems from Trull and Abbott can also be seen there.

The Catawba County area is well-represented on the Poetry Council by locals Scott Owens (Vice President), Bud Caywood (Free Verse Contest Manager), Nancy Posey (High School Contest Manager), and regular Poetry Hickory attendee, Jessie Carty of Charlotte (Humorous Verse Contest Manager). The Poetry Council is a 501c3 non-profit organization. Further information on Poetry Day, or the Council’s annual contests, or details on how to support the Council is available on the website or by contacting President Ed Cockrell at edcockrell@hotmail.com or Scott Owens at asowens1@yahoo.com.

Poetry Council Announces 2010 Contests

Poetry Council Announces 2010 Contests

The Poetry Council of NC (PCNC) will again sponsor a series of poetry contests for NC residents this year. In all, PCNC sponsors contests in 8 categories, including one each for elementary, middle and high school students. Other categories are for a book by a NC poet published in 2009, traditional poetry, light verse, free verse, and poems on the theme of family. The submission period for these contests began February 15 and concludes on May 22. Winners in last year’s contests include such notable poets as Anthony Abbott, Bill Griffin, Sara Claytor, Shelby Stephenson, and Dannye Romine Powell.

All contest categories feature cash prizes ranging from $100 to $15 for first, second, and third place. In most categories, up to three additional poems are awarded honorable mention status. All poems selected for awards are published in PCNC’s annual anthology, Bay Leaves. Additionally, authors of the awarded poems will receive certificates from PCNC and are invited to read their winning poems at PCNC’s annual poetry celebration known as Poetry Day, to be held this year on October 16 at Catawba College in Salisbury.

Poems submitted for PCNC contests must be unpublished and not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Complete details including the method for submitting work are available on PCNC’s website at www.poetrycouncilofnc.wordpress.com or by contacting PCNC President, Ed Cockrell, at 2906 Gait Way, Chapel Hill, NC 27516.

The Poetry Council of NC was founded in 1949 with the primary mission of fostering “a deeper appreciation and love of poetry among the people of NC.” Since its founding, the Council has sponsored contests, published anthologies, coordinated Poetry Day, and helped maintain an archive of NC poetry at Catawba College. Starting with last year’s contests and continuing this year, winning poems are also published online (a new poem each week) on the Council’s website.

Poetry Day to Have Hickory Flavor

POETRY DAY TO HAVE HICKORY FLAVOR

Every year since 1950, the Poetry Council of North Carolina has held a one day celebration of poetry, designated as Poetry Day, at Catawba College in Salisbury. This year Poetry Day will take place on October 10, and it will have a definite Hickory flavor.
This year’s Poetry Day will include the usual speeches and exciting performances by the group, Chambergrass, and Poetry Out Loud (a national high school recitation project) participants, but the highlight of Poetry Day this year, as in every year, is the series of readings by winners in the Council’s annual poetry competitions. The Hickory flavor in this year’s celebration comes in the Sam Ragan Contest for High School Students and Undergraduates, where three of the winners are students from Hickory. Recent St. Stephens High School graduate, Liz (Megan) Monish placed second in that competition, and CVCC students Jacob Gryder and Keegan Blankenship were both recognized as honorable mentions by judge Joseph Milford .
Readings will also be given by the winners of the Council’s six other competitions. These winners include, among others, such NC notables as Shelby Stephenson, long-time editor of Pembroke Magazine; Sara Claytor, author of Howling on Red Dirt Roads and a recent reader at Poetry Hickory; Joseph Mills, author of Angels, Thieves, and Winemakers; Dannye Romine Powell, former Book Page Editor at the Charlotte Observer; Tony Abbott, author of Leaving Maggie Hope; and Bill Griffin, author of Snake Den Ridge and another recent visitor to Poetry Hickory.
Another highlight of the day will be the debut of the Council’s annual awards anthology, Bay Leaves, which will include all the winning poems from this year’s competitions. Copies of Bay Leaves will be available for $9.50. Copies of Bay Leaves, first published in 1952, and all books entered into the Council’s Oscar Arnold Young Book Competition are archived in the Catawba College Library.
Poetry Day activities will begin at 9:20 A.M. in the Peeler-Crystal Lounge on the campus of Catawba College. Admission is free and open to the public. Lunch will be available for $15 per person. Questions about Poetry Day or the Poetry Council of North Carolina can be addressed to Ed Cockrell at 919-967-5834 or by email at edcockrell@hotmail.com. Additional information, including registration forms, are also available at the Council’s website: www.oldmp.com/poetrycouncilofnc.com

Bill Griffin

Bill Griffin
“Musings” for April 23

Bill Griffin is a family doctor in rural North Carolina and long time Board member of the NC Poetry Society. He is also a fine poet. Author of three collections of poetry, his work has appeared in many regional and national journals including: Southern Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry, Poem, NC Literary Review, Pembroke Magazine, and Illuminations.
His most recent chapbook is Snake Den Ridge: a Bestiary (March Street Press 2008). In it the various creatures of the Smoky Mountains speak their mind. Bear, for example, states:

if you hear me, it will be the rising chest
of the mountain and its timeless slow
exhale,
and if you hear me
it will only be because
I didn’t hear you first.

As if the words are not beautiful and authentic enough, each poem is accompanied by a sublime drawing by Bill’s wife, illustrator Linda French Griffin.
In a recent review of Snake Den Ridge, I said the book could be used “to add immediate aesthetic beauty, intellectual depth, and meditative calm to any living room or waiting room fortunate enough to have the book placed therein” because “the poems’ unique combination of intellect and readability and the visual appeal of the sketches will make any room a more interesting place.”
Often today it seems the only ones interested in reading poetry are other poets, and just as often it seems poets are all-too-willing to write only for that audience. Such is not the case with Griffin. His poems are compelling and intricate, full of precise language and imagery, but they are also straightforward and familiar enough for any reader to enjoy. At the end of each poem I find myself thinking, “Yeah. That’s it. That is what a bobcat or hawk would say.”
My own favorite of his creatures is the first and last to speak, the raven, who says at the beginning:

I know from twenty circles
of snowdeep and hungry moons
and twenty circles of fresh shoots
that Sky . . . Water . . . Earth . . .
none of them are mine.

And I know none are yours.”

And at the end:

Don’t sigh
at my passing -- each morning
and for every dawn to come
I will spread my soul of wings
where they cast no shadow
and invite you to join me as part
and presence
of Snake Den Ridge.

Griffin will visit Hickory on May 12 to read from his work with poet DB Cox as part of Poetry Hickory, held at 6:30 at Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse. Those who attend will meet a poet of great warmth, hear poetry of ineffable beauty, and perhaps learn what so many poets have wanted us to understand, that the natural world is sacred, invested with a divinity which is too often and too easily obscured by our obsession with ourselves as prime mover.

North Carolina Poetry Society Plays Vital Role

NORTH CAROLINA POETRY SOCIETY PLAYS VITAL ROLE
Recent Awards and Upcoming Events Include Area Poets

"Musings" for March 12, 2009

In one of my previous columns I featured information about one of the key poetry organizations in NC, the Poetry Council of North Carolina. Today I’m highlighting another of NC’s vital groups for the promotion of poetry, the North Carolina Poetry Society.

NCPS was created in 1932, making it the longest-active poetry organization I am aware of in the state. Since that time, the Society has served as an invaluable networking and development tool for poets across the state, bringing poets together at least three times a year for their annual meetings at the Weymouth Center in Southern Pines. Those meetings are usually the third Saturdays of January, May, and September. The January meeting concluded recently and included workshops by NC writers Maureen Sherbondy, Richard Krawiec, and Barbara Presnell, as well as Open Mic readings and book signings.

The Poetry Society is in the news again locally with the selection of its 2009 Contest Winners. Each year, the Society sponsors awards in 9 adult and 5 student categories. Those winners are invited to read their work at the NCPS Awards Day, this year on May 16, at the Weymouth Center. Winners also have their work published in the annual awards anthology, Pinesong. Among the winners this year are several writers with local connections, including myself and fellow Hickory native, Bud Caywood. Other winners, including Bill Griffin and Terri Kirby Erickson, have made or will make appearances in Hickory through the Poetry Hickory reading series held the second Tuesday of each month at Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse.

In addition to meetings and contests, the Poetry Society sponsors the annual Sam Ragan Poetry Festival, to be held this year at Weymouth on March 14 and highlighted by readings from poet Cathy Smith-Bowers. The Society also sponsors the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poets Series, which brings together outstanding poetry instructors with promising young writers, culminating in a series of readings across the state, one of which will be at the Patrick Beaver Library in Hickory on March 29, featuring incoming NCPS President, Anthony Abbott and Hickory native, Liz Monish.

The Poetry Society also sponsors the Brockman-Campbell Book Award for the best book of poetry by a North Carolinian in the previous year, maintains an online calendar of poetry events across the state, and distributes a monthly newsletter called E-Muse online. The Society currently has in excess of 350 members. Those interested in more information can find it at the Society’s website at www.sleepycreek.org/poetry/.

Review of Bill and Linda French Griffin's "Snake Den Ridge: a Bestiary"

Review of Bill and Linda French Griffin’s Snake Den Ridge: a Bestiary (March Street Press, 59 pages, $15)

Poetry doesn’t sell. Everyone knows that. But Bill and Linda French Griffin have created a beautiful book of poems and sketches that is bound to buck that trend. “Beautiful” is not a word one finds in poetry much anymore. It’s vague, overused, and ultimately so subjective as to be essentially meaningless. It remains, nonetheless, the first word that springs to mind when looking at the Griffins’ Snake Den Ridge: a Bestiary. It is a beautiful book of beautiful poems with corresponding beautiful drawings.
Outside the realm of photography, calling a book a “coffee table book” is usually considered something of an insult. In this case, however, it is simply a description of how Snake Den Ridge can be used to add immediate aesthetic beauty, intellectual depth, and meditative calm to any living room or waiting room fortunate enough to have the book placed therein. In other words, because of the poems’ unique combination of intellect and readability and the visual appeal of the sketches, Snake Den Ridge will make any room a more interesting place. How many contemporary books of poetry can make a claim such as that?
According to the book’s preface, “A bestiary is a collection of stories about animals, plants, or other entities of the natural world.” Such books have existed since at least the second century. The poems and sketches in this bestiary combine to present, in the words of the authors, “one week’s experience on an Appalachian mountainside” and “join in celebration of a fabulist natural world, where creatures voice moral messages.”
Glancing at the Table of Contents, the reader is naturally inclined towards the dramatic monologues from his or her favorite animals. In my case, I was sure my preference would be for “Hawk,” “Bobcat,” or “Junco,” and I admit to great pleasure in hearing Hawk proclaim his discriminating tastes:

Oh yes, there’s hunger,
but not for Rabbit --
I’m teaching you
to feed the place
you never knew you had.

Similarly, Bobcat’s confession of discretion conjures a smile from one who has both heard, and much more rarely seen the bobcat but only heard tales of panthers in “these parts”:

do you blame me if I choose
to be invisible?
Was it cousin Panther’s choice
to be exiled from the Ridge
and extirpated?

Finally, for a 20-year bird-watching veteran, the confidence with which Junco (also known as a snowbird) speaks of eluding Hawk’s dives while using his special intimacy with winter to survive “four seasons on the Ridge” brings a nod of recognition and appreciation.
In truth, however, none of these favorites created the most lasting impression upon me. That was achieved by the animals the author placed first and last in the collection, the animals who seem to squabble over actual ownership of this ridge: Raven and Bear. Raven opens the collection with a vital reminder of proper perspective, something most people lost before they were even born and never have the opportunity to regain:

I know from twenty circles
of snowdeep and hungry moons
and twenty circles of fresh shoots
that Sky . . . Water . . . Earth . . .
none of them are mine.

And I know none are yours.”

Reading these lines one can’t help but think of Frost’s absent owner of the woods in his poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” but then Bear concludes the animal monologues with a clear and somewhat eerie refutation of Raven’s claim for the absence of ownership:

Raven is mistaken -- this Ridge is mine.

And if you hear me, it will be the rising chest
of the mountain and its timeless slow
exhale,
and if you hear me
it will only be because
I didn’t hear you first.

And, finally, in the epilogue, Raven’s words hint towards a different level of “ownership:

Don’t sigh
at my passing -- each morning
and for every dawn to come
I will spread my soul of wings
where they cast no shadow
and invite you to join me as part
and presence
of Snake Den Ridge.

Ultimately, these totemic poems reinvent the message many of us first heard in Wordsworth’s “The World Is Too Much with Us,” that the natural world is sacred, invested with a divinity which is too often and too easily obscured by our obsession with ourselves as prime mover as well as by the “other-worldly” religions in which we have chosen to believe.