NC Poet Profile: Katherine Soniat, Traveler Through Space and Time

NC POET PROFILE: KATHERINE SONIAT, TRAVELER THROUGH SPACE AND TIME

Originally from New Orleans, poet extraordinaire Katherine Soniat has taught at the University of New Orleans, Hollins University, and for twenty years was on the faculty at Virginia Tech University. Recently, she moved to Asheville and began teaching in the Great Smokies Writers’ Program through the University of NC at Asheville. In addition to these professional journeys, Soniat has been a world traveler as well, visiting such places as Crete, the Andes, and the Bavarian Alps.

Such peripatetic history plays a vital role in Soniat’s poetic work, as settings often seem central to her poems. Soniat, however, cannot have been the typical casual traveler one might call a tourist. Rather it seems she must successfully immerse herself in the culture and history of the places she goes, for her poems often uniquely express the personal through the complex intricacies of setting and vice versa. It is almost as if her own identity becomes interwoven with that of her surroundings such that in writing about one, she inevitably reveals the other.

Soniat’s fifth collection of poems, The Swing Girl, was recently named winner of this year’s Oscar Arnold Young Award for the best book of poetry from NC in the previous year. She will receive her award and give a reading from her book at Poetry Day to be held in the Catawba Valley Community College Student Center on Saturday, April 14. The event, including awards and readings in 9 poetic categories and a live-judged Poetry Slam, will begin at 9:30 and extend to 3:00. It is free and open to the public.

Soniat’s previous books have won the Iowa Prize, the Virginia Prize for Poetry, and the Camden Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of two Virginia Commission for the Arts Grants, a William Faulkner Award, a Jane Kenyon Award, the Anne Stanford Award, and Fellowships to Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, and Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Her sixth collection A Raft, A Boat, A Bridge will be published by Dream Horse Press this fall.

This excerpt from the title poem of Swing Child is based on an image from a Greek burial relic and suggests both the relic’s ability and the author’s desire to move between cultures of the present and past as well as between the temporality of experience and the permanence of symbol. It also suggests that such movement, such broadening and deepening of experience is exactly what poetry and art make possible for the reader.

(O, to fly abroad again on her board roped to the limb.)

The territory that girl could cover, her eyes peering birdlike
across the grove. The air, a vector.

Return to the days of her swing, not this relic. To warriors
crossing the sea, ready to cross out generations with spears
then settle their weight down on this island.

Far past that sack of the sacred, I hear a donkey bray,
tied to the thorn tree. Empty snail shells bleach on boulders
near the tomb entrance.

(Old inching of the soul thirsty for a last sip of nightshade.)

The Poets Are Coming

THE POETS ARE COMING! THE POETS ARE COMING!

On April 14, poets from across the state will descend upon Hickory, NC, as Catawba Valley Community College hosts the Poetry Council of NC’s annual Poetry Day celebration. As many as 30 award-winning poets are expected, including Katherine Soniat of Asheville, Susan Lefler of Brevard, and Joanna Catherine Scott of Chapel Hill, winners of the Oscar Arnold Young Award for the year’s best book of poetry from NC.

This 62-year-old event will bring winners of the Council’s annual poetry contests together with poetry lovers as the winners receive their awards and share their poetry with all who attend. The event will also feature the debut of the Council’s 2012 annual awards anthology, Bay Leaves, and a live-judged Poetry Slam. Attendance is free and everyone is welcome.

The doors of CVCC’s Student Center will open at 9:20 for registration. The dedication of Bay Leaves will follow at 10:00, after which winners will be announced for the Charles Shull Traditional Poetry Award, the Charlotte Young Elementary School Student Award, and the Gladys Owings Hughes Heritage Award. All winners present will give a reading of their winning poems.

Before breaking for lunch, poets are invited to participate in the Poetry Slam. Entering the Slam requires a $5 entry fee and features awards of $35, $25, and $15 for first, second, and third place performances. Judging the Slam will be author, Emmy-winner, and coach of Slam Charlotte, Boris Rogers, also known as Bluz.

Following lunch, winners will be announced for the Ellen Johnston-Hale Light Verse Award, the Carol Bessent Young Middle School Student Award, the James Larkin Pearson Free Verse Award, the Sam Ragan High School Student Award, and the Poetry Slam.

The event will conclude with readings from the winners of the Oscar Arnold Young Book Award. For more information on Poetry Day or the Poetry Council of NC, visit www.poetrycouncilofnc.wordpress.com or contact Scott Owens at (828) 234-4266.

And the Winners Are . . .

POETRY COUNCIL ANNOUNCES ANNUAL WINNERS

The Poetry Council of NC, a self-supporting, all-volunteer nonprofit organization founded in 1949 to foster a deeper appreciation of poetry in the state, has announced the winners of its annual poetry contests. Judges were permitted to select 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners as well as up to 3 honorable mentions in each contest category, with the exception of the book contest which has no 3rd place winner. Some judges elected to name fewer winners.

All winners will receive their awards, including cash prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place, at Poetry Day to be held at Catawba Valley Community College in Hickory on April 14. Winning poems will also be published in the Council’s annual awards anthology, Bay Leaves, and winning poets will be invited to read their poems at Poetry Day. An additional category for Performance Poetry is judged and awarded at Poetry Day. Information on any of the contests, Poetry Day, and the Poetry Council is available at www.poetrycouncilofnc.wordpress.com

The complete list of category winners and judges is as follows:

Oscar Arnold Young (book contest):
JUDGE: Paul Hostovsky, Medfield, MA & Ron Moran, Simpsonville, SC
1st The Swing Girl by Katherine Soniat, Asheville, NC
2nd Lie Down with Me by Julie Suk, Charlotte, NC
HM Rendering the Bones by Susan M. Lefler, Brevard, NC
HM An Innocent in the House of the Dead by Joanna Catherine Scott, Chapel
Hill, NC

Gladys Owings Hughes Heritage (free verse):
JUDGE: Darnell Arnoult, Harrogate, TN
1st “Babies Hurtling Several Stories” by Ross White, Durham, NC
2nd “Daddy Imagines a Good Death” by JS Absher, Raleigh, NC
3rd “The Museum of Broken Things” by Jane Shlensky, Bahama, NC

Charles Shull (traditional poetry):
JUDGE: Paul Bone, Evansville, IN
1st “Facts about Early America” by Ross White, Durham, NC (rhyming couplets)
2nd “Basic Bad Day” by Peg Russell, Murphy, NC (terza rima)
3rd “Featured Reader” by Alice Osborn, Raleigh, NC (sestina)
HM “On a Recent Engagement” by Michael A. Moreno, Rockville, MD (sonnet)
HM “Water the Lover” by Ellen Summers, Greensboro, NC (sonnet)

James Larkin Pearson (free verse):
JUDGE: Felicia Mitchell, Emory, VA
1st “Address to Monarchs” by Ross White, Durham, NC
2nd “My Mother’s Lake” by Ann Campanella, Huntersville, NC
3rd “What Burns for Light” by Lisa Zerkle, Charlotte, NC
HM “Circumventing the Circumference” by Terry Collins, Mount Airy, NC
HM “Things Fall Out of My Father” by Robert Moyer, Winston Salem, NC
HM “The Lesbians Next Door” by Alice Osborn, Raleigh, NC

Ellen Johnston-Hale (humorous verse):
JUDGE: Gloria Alden, Southington, OH
1st “Where Time Does Not Fly” by Susan Spalt, Carrboro, NC
2nd “The Voice” by Barbara Brooks, Hillsborough, NC
3rd “Arctic” by Lisa Zerkle, Charlotte, NC
HM “Black Friday” by Doris Dix Caruso, Burlington, NC
HM “Patience” by Jane Shlensky, Bahama, NC
HM “I Think They Got It!” by Janet Ireland Trail, Greensboro, NC

Charlotte Young (elementary school):
JUDGE: David Roderick, Greensboro, NC
1st “Jupiter” by Sydney Campanella (home-schooled), Huntersville, NC
2nd “Light Saves Us” by Paige Morrison (North Forest Pines Elem.), Wake Forest, NC
3rd “Blue” by Joellen Callahan (North Forest Pines Elem.), Wake Forest, NC
HM “Doves” by Sonja Woolley (Episcopal Day School), Southern Pines, NC
HM “Nature Walk” by Lilly Corcoran (Episcopal Day School), Southern Pines, NC

Carol Bessent Hayman (middle school):
JUDGE: David Roderick, Greensboro, NC
1st “The Pledge of Sausage” by Devon Stocks (Clarkton School of Discovery), Clarkton, NC
2nd “Pumpkin Patch” by Kenneth More [sp?] (Clarkton School of Discovery), Clarkton, NC

Sam Ragan North Carolina Connection (high school):
JUDGE: Natasha Trethewey, Decatur, GA
1st "Lesson of the Lark" by Maggie Apple of North Guilford High School
2nd Jennifer Comerford of North Guilford High School

Lots of News from the Poetry Council

LOTS OF NEWS FROM THE POETRY COUNCIL

The Poetry Council of NC is keeping quite busy these days, planning for its annual Poetry Day on October 1 in Salisbury while simultaneously starting up a new cycle of contests whose deadline for entry is November 21.

Poetry Day is a day-long celebration of poetry that will be held this year in the Crystal Peeler Lounge on the campus of Catawba College. Highlights of Poetry Day will include presentation of the 2011 Poetry Council contest winners, readings by those winners, the release of the council’s awards anthology titled Bay Leaves, and a live Poetry Slam competition. The event is open to anyone, and reservations may be made via the form found on the council’s website: www.poetrycouncilofnc.wordpress.com.

In 2012, the Council is moving Poetry Day from October to April to coincide with National Poetry Month. To facilitate this transition, the Council’s annual contests have already opened for submission and will close on November 21. The Council coordinates separate competitions for elementary, middle, and high school students, as well as adult competitions for free verse, traditional form poetry, light verse, and others. The Oscar Arnold Young Award is given to the best book of poems by a NC poet each year. Information on entering any of the contests is available on the Council’s website or by calling Ed Cockrell at 919-967-5834.

Entry in the youth contests is free, while most of the other categories have a $5 entry fee. First, second, and third place prizes ranging from $10 to $100 are given in most categories, and up to three honorable mentions are commonly named in each. All prizewinners and honorable mentions are published in Bay Leaves, and the poets are invited to read their poems at Poetry Day.

In 2012, Poetry Day will be held in Hickory, in the new Student Center on the campus of Catawba Valley Community College. Teachers interested in facilitating their students’ participation in the contests can contact Nancy Posey (nposey@embarqmail.com) for high school students or Michael Beadle (beadlepoet@yahoo.com) for elementary and middle school students. Local poet, Scott Owens, is available to visit classrooms to discuss these contests or coordinate workshops to get students started writing poetry. He can be reached at asowens1@yahoo.com.

The Death of Poetry Revisited

The Death of Poetry Revisited

Not quite a year ago, I wrote a column titled “The Reports of Poetry’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated,” in which I suggested the vibrant poetic community in the small town of Lincolnton, NC, was evidence of poetry’s continued vitality. I’ve just wrapped up accepting submissions to the annual Oscar Arnold Young Contest for an outstanding book of poems written in the previous year by a NC poet. As a result I have new information to support my claim countering the common supposition that nobody reads, writes, buys, or cares about poetry anymore.

The Poetry Council of NC received 25 submissions to the contest. That means there were at least 25 books of poetry published by NC writers in 2010 alone. Actually, from subsequent conversations with other writers, I know of 5 others that weren’t submitted. So, at least 30 books of poetry were published by NC writers in 2010, and I suspect there were even more than that. Regardless of the exact number, that is a lot of poetry for something “no one is doing or reading anymore.” I doubt there were that many novels by NC writers published in the same year.

The books came from both well-established poets like David Rigsbee, Joseph Bathanti and Stephen Smith and first-time book publishers like Malaika King Albrecht and Jodi Barnes. There were a lot from the Raleigh area, 9 in fact, but they also came from Pinehurst, Gastonia, Wilmington, and even Hickory. And they came from established presses like Main Street Rag, Finishing Line and New South Books, as well as newer presses like Jacar and Big Table.

The selection of one of these books as the outstanding book of poetry from last year will not be an easy task. There is a great deal of quality work represented here. I have written favorable reviews of 10 of them myself, and 1 of them was published after my recommendation. If I were the judge, I think I would have to draw straws to choose among my half dozen favorites. Fortunately for my own sanity I’m not the judge who has to make that selection.

The results of the contest will be released later this summer. The winner, second place finisher, and a couple of honorable mentions will be given the opportunity to read from their winning works at Poetry Day to be held at Catawba College in Salisbury on October 1. The winner and second place finisher will also have a selection of their work published in the Poetry Council’s annual anthology of contest winners, Bay Leaves. For more information, visit www.poetrycouncilofnc.wordpress.com or contact me at asowens1@yahoo.com or by phone at 828-234-4266.

Poetry Council Annual Contests Open for Submission

POETRY CONTESTS OPEN FOR SUBMISSION

The Poetry Council of NC’s annual poetry contests are open for submission until May 31. PCNC sponsors annual poetry contests in 9 different categories, including best NC book of poetry, free verse, traditional form, humorous verse, and performance poetry. There are also separate contests for NC elementary, middle school, and high school students.

In most categories, first, second, and third place winners are named as well as three honorable mentions. Prizes range from $15 to $100. Winning poems are published in the Council’s annual anthology Bay Leaves and on the Council’s website, and all winning authors are invited to read their winning poems at Poetry Day, held this year on October 1 at Catawba College in Salisbury, NC.

To be considered, poems must be no more than 40 lines, previously unpublished, and not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Entry fees are $5 for individual poem contests, and $10 for the book contest, but there are no entry fees for the student competitions. Performance poems are limited to 2 minutes and will be performed and judged live at Poetry Day. Complete details and guidelines are available at http://poetrycouncilofnc.wordpress.com/ or from Ed Cockrell at 2906 Gait Way, Chapel Hill, NC 27516, (919) 967-5834.

Last year’s winners included well-known NC poets Tony Abbott, Alex Grant, Rhett Iseman Trull, Malaika King Albrecht, Sara Claytor, and Bill Griffin, among many others. The Poetry Council is a non-profit organization in its 59th year of working to foster a greater appreciation for and appreciation of poetry in NC.

Scott Douglass a Saint?

SCOTT DOUGLASS A SAINT?
Dedication of Poetry Council's 2010 Anthology, "Bay Leaves", to Poet, Editor, and Publisher, M. Scott Douglass

Anyone who has ever worked with Scott Douglass knows that he is no saint if sainthood necessitates the qualities of eternal patience, total abstinence, gentility of speech and manner, and holiness, whatever that means. If, on the other hand, one’s definition of sainthood focuses more on such things as “wonder worker, source of benevolent power, intercessor (in this case, between poets and their potential audiences), and selfless behavior” (all part of theologian, John Coleman’s definition), then no one is more deserving of the title Patron Saint of Poets, than Scott Douglass.

In Muriel Rukeyser’s poem “Waiting for Icarus,” the character of the mother says: “poets [are] a trashy lot” and then “[those] who love such are the worst of all.” It was just such a love of poetry and poets that nearly 15 years ago led Scott Douglass to the painfully difficult decision to give up a rewarding and personally satisfying career as a dental technician to begin publishing poetry. He thought that editing a journal and operating a small press would both help other poets find audiences and stimulate his own creativity. He has written and found publication for hundreds of his own poems, including 5 books, but e quickly discovered that most of the creativity being stimulated was spent on the editing, production, marketing, and distribution of other poets’ work. Fortunately, for all of us, he usually found the selfless work of helping others perfect their poetry, achieve publication, and connect with their audience personally satisfying.

Since the first Main Street Rag chapbook and the first issue of Main Street Rag, the magazine, in 1996, Scott has edited 59 issues of the Main Street Rag and published somewhere in the neighborhood of 800 individual books, many of those as part of MSR’s annual chapbook competition begun in 1999 and annual book competition started in 2001, both of which provide substantial monetary awards to the winners. That record of publication comes out to more than 50 titles per year, roughly 1 every week. Is anyone else anywhere publishing that much poetry? Most of the poets I know don’t even read that much poetry.

A very rough analysis of MSR’s titles reveals that Scott has published books by authors from at least 30 different states and 4 different countries. True to his roots, however, Scott’s largest source of authors, by far, has been North Carolina. He has published books by more than 60 authors from this state, including both the well-known and the brand new, and they have all been of the highest quality from both a literary and production perspective. MSR books have received awards from virtually every competition out there, including the Oscar Arnold Young Award in 3 of the past 6 years.

And Scott hasn’t stopped in his quest to have a meaningful and lasting effect on the world of writers in North Carolina. He has also undertaken the production work for many other journals, publishers, and organizations, including the production of Bay Leaves since 2004. And to further help poets connect with their audience, he has helped organize and sponsor 6 reading series in Hickory, Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Fuquay-Varina, and Kansas City, MO, and coordinates writing workshops at a variety of venues across the state.

Poet, Editor, Publisher, Publicist, Activist, Dental Technician, and friend, Scott Douglass has borne many titles well. The Poetry Council of NC is honored to recognize the invaluable contributions he has made and continues to make to this organization, to poets across the state and the country, and to the world of poetry in general. For all of these contributions, we dedicate the 2010 issue of Bay Leaves to M. Scott Douglass, who perhaps after all, should hereafter be known as Saint Scott.

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.

Feature On Form

Musings for December 24

Feature on Form

Some of my students whose experience with poetry has been limited to Emily Dickinson, Alexander Pope and other pre-20th century writers sometimes complain that I don’t like form in poetry. But they’re wrong. I love form. In fact, until I was 20 or 21 everything I wrote was formal. In college, I was the sonnet champion, cranking out sonnets in as little as 10 minutes at times. And I still write the occasional formal poem, and I still utilize what I call the shadow of form in all of my work. And I still encourage my students to read formal poetry and write their own formal work as a means of training their ear and learning to appreciate sound play and a sense of the line.

The thing I don’t like is form for the sake of form, which is often an unfortunate side effect of limited exposure to poetry. I like purposeful form. I like form that reflects the meaning or mood of the poem. A poem that sounds like a nursery school rhyme but deals with a tragic experience will only work if it’s clear that the form is intended to create a sense of irony; otherwise, it would just seem inappropriately funny.

I also don’t care a great deal for simplistic form, simple meter, simple rhyme, iambic pentameter with an alternating rhyme scheme and little or no variation, for example, poems that sound like nursery rhymes or greeting cards. On the other hand, I greatly enjoy complex, challenging forms--villanelles, sestinas, terza rima sonnets, pantoums--especially if the form seems to match the subject matter. Villanelles, for example, with the emphasis given to repeated lines seem a perfect match for very serious poems, ones about death, like Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” or the meaning of life, like Theodore Roethke’s “The Waking.”

And I enjoy poems that experiment with form, that play around with it to make something new. The pantoum, for example, traditionally consists of a series of 4-line stanzas in which the 2nd and 4th lines of one stanza are repeated as the 1st and 3rd lines of the next stanza, and then the final stanza not only repeats that pattern but also repeats lines 1 and 3 from the first stanza as lines 2 and 4. Below, on the other hand, is a very interesting and enjoyable variation in the pantoum form by NC Poetry Society President Anthony Abbott, republished here from Bay Leaves 2009, the awards anthology of the Poetry Council of NC. I think the repeated lines wonderfully capture the stream of consciousness of the speaker and the wistful sort of wishful thinking we all engage in when we look back with bittersweet regret on the things we didn’t or couldn’t do.

Pantoum
by Anthony Abbott

If yesterday were tomorrow
and we were driving
on a small country road
with the sun setting

if we were driving
to the west
with the sun setting
a huge transparent orange

more to the northwest
it still being winter
a huge transparent orange
I would have stopped the car

it still being winter
and not yet six o’clock
I would have stopped the car
and taken you in my arms

not yet six o’clock
I would have turned to you
and taken you in my arms
and held you while the sun slowly

I would have turned to you
and together we would have watched
while the sun slowly disappeared
and I would have kissed you

together we would have watched
on the small country road
and I would have kissed you surely
if yesterday were tomorrow

You Just Had to Be There

You Just Had to Be There
“Musings” for November 12


On October 10 I attended my very first Poetry Day at Catawba College, sponsored each year by the Poetry Council of North Carolina. And all I can say about it is, “Wow! What an experience.” Don’t get me wrong; this was not my first poetry event, far from it. Over the years, I’ve probably attended 500 readings and 4 dozen conferences, workshops, and other poetry happenings. None, however, have managed to outdo this one for intimacy, sincerity, talent, or pure joy taken in and from poetry.

Not all of what made Poetry Day so special can be easily quantified. Part of it was simply the spirit or soul of the thing. Here were 50 or more poets and poetry lovers ranging in age from 7 to 70 gathered together on a Saturday morning to celebrate the success of this year’s Poetry Council competition winners, but nothing about the day felt competitive. Appreciative, yes, supportive, reflective, and at times, ecstatic, but there were none of the negative trappings of competition. On a rainy day, in a room where 3 of 4 walls were made of 10 foot high glass panels and people talked of poetry, listened to music from a banjo and an upright bass, and ate fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and really good cherry cobbler, it simply felt . . . nice.

Part of it, of course, was the people. Many of the best poets from all across NC were here: Shelby Stephenson of Benson, long-time editor of Pembroke Magazine; Anthony Abbott of Davidson, president of the North Carolina Poetry Society; Katherine Barr of Charlotte, Sara Claytor of Carrboro, poetry activist; Bill Griffin from Elkin; David Manning from Cary; and many more. The student winners were also here, each one displaying talent and confidence far beyond their years and renewing the hopes of the poetry aficionados in attendance.

Part of it was the poetry itself: the quiet longing of Bruce Lader’s “Things in Her Life He Would Love to Be,” the strident intensity of Lenard Moore’s A Temple Looming as the poems reanimated black and white photos, the sometimes-painfully honest reflections of Stephenson’s Family Matters, and the perfectly relevant humor of Jean Rodenbough’s “A Poem Goes Through Airport Security” (reprinted below).

And part of it, perhaps the biggest part of it, were those unique moments we’ll tell others about years from now and follow with the phrase, “You just had to be there.” Moments like Anthony Abbott following readings by 7 middle and high school students, each of whom began by saying, “This is my first reading,” with the line, “This is my 3422nd reading.” Moments like Katherine Barr, despite severe macular degeneration, walking to the podium alone and reading from the page her cathartic poem “Squamous Cell Carcinoma.” And moments like Shelby Stephenson singing with Linda, his wife of 43 years, “I Can’t Stop Loving You.”

I don’t know if I’ll ever have such a day as this again, but I do know I’ll attend next year’s Poetry Day with great expectations, and I know that when I read the poems in Bay Leaves (PCNC’s competition winners’ anthology), what I feel will go well beyond what might be apparent in any single poem.

A Poem Goes Through Airport Security
by Jean Rodenbough

stop there please
we need to scan you again
our screen shows you are carrying
incomplete sentences poor
line breaks dangerous metaphors
and some unlikely similes
as though you were cunning
as an ice cube
just walk back through this detector here
no, don’t ask questions
we ask what we need to know
now place any small syllables
or words that alliterate into this plastic bag
stop! don’t touch anything else! that phrase
and the irregular meter must be removed
take all that is not secured you must bre
ak your lines in order to make them
safe be careful now leave these
stanzas on the table
and walk a
way slow
ly without
a
word

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

Jacob Gryder

“Musings” for June 18, 2009

One of my greatest joys in doing this column is having the opportunity to offer encouragement and bring attention to young writers. Previously, I’ve featured the work of CVCC student Trisha Hart and former St. Stephens High School student, Liz Monish. Today I’m featuring three poems by CVCC student and Taylorsville native, Jacob Gryder.

Despite his relative youth, Jacob has already found success as a poet. His poems have been published in Dead Mule and are due out in Wild Goose Poetry Review and Bay Leaves. His poem, “No Less Dear a Price Might Purchase My Felicity,” was recently named an Honorable Mention in the Sam Ragan Poetry Contest sponsored by the Poetry Council of North Carolina. Gryder will transfer to Appalachian State University this fall to major in Comparative Literature.

Wine of My Gluttonous Ways

you are the wine of my gluttonous ways,
the mirror of my vanity.
you are the Venus of my lustful days,
the vengeance of my wrath.
you are the trophy of my prideful gaze,
the perfection of my envy.
yet you defy my greed.


The Blues

I’ve got a devil with an angel’s voice.
She can pray like Peter,
preach like Paul,
and sup with the Devil all night long.


Love

is a bird
that sings in winter,
or a rose
that grows through concrete.
Love is the only recourse
for the lonely-hearted
and the last best hope
for man.
I no longer wonder
at its nature.
I can only remark
at “how much more it is than nothing.”

Review of Paul Nelson's "Sea Level" (Wild Goose, Winter 2008)

Review of Paul Nelson’s Sea Level (Main Street Rag, 71 pages, $14, www.mainstreetrag.com)

I remember Paul Nelson as a very even-handed teacher, treating the good poem and the bad one with the same respect, recognizing and valuing the student’s effort above the quality of the product, quietly and sincerely interested in everything that went into the work and even more in what had been, intentionally or otherwise, left out. That was 25 years ago, and I haven’t seen or spoken to him since. What great joy it is, then, to discover that his new collection of poems, Sea Level, is the perfect testimony to his education legacy.
These are meditative poems, achieving what my best focusing experiences have done for me, at once calming and provoking, familiar and deepening, ultimately helping the reader gain or regain a vital perspective. The last stanza of “Machias River Meditation” serves to illustrate my point:

My father carved a full-sized loon, shavings and dust
piling at his feet as the shape from poplar took
its place in air. It will never be a loon.
But if I carried it down to the marsh,
set it on one of the mounds, sooner or later
an eagle or osprey, perhaps ambitious marsh hawk
would stoop, helplessly, as some decoyed
hunter in the fall would be compelled by the sitting duck,
the fear of missing something,
to stud its painted feathers with steel shot
chilled by passing briefly through the universe.

Such perspective is repeated in the wonderfully balanced poem, “Fishing:”

Below the barber shop, perched on ledge
above a deep, rich pool, men stand on thumb-ish boulders,
or wade the strength of the eddy, casting
filaments as spiders do, toward nothing but hope,
that promontory. This is metaphysics.

Under the bridge, salmon
cleave shadows and rocks, roll up, leap,
thrilling hell out of anyone, as they steer
toward some ignoble backwater
to drop their eggs, squirt milt all over the gravel.
This is truth.

Between the cast and the fish floats the fly.
All winter long a grown man with fat fingers,
under a high-intensity lamp, hangs above a tiny vise,
slowly wrapping silk and hair and fluff around a hook’s shaft
devising an amulet, having failed all summer long
to raise a fish. He knows a man is lucky
if even inspiration hits once or twice a lifetime,
though some, infinitely patient, gifted with presentation,
do better. This is art.

These lines also illustrate the geographical underpinning of the manuscript. Living in North Carolina, where there is a town named Sea Level, I expected these poems to be bound to a particular location, and they do, indeed, have a strong sense of place, albeit not the one I anticipated. In this case, the place is Machias Bay, Maine, where the author grew up and has periodically lived and worked throughout his life. This sense of place is captured in the luscious imagery of each poem, as in “Eucharist:”

. . . I plane full throttle, roar
down the black belly of the lake, cottages,
one lamp each, streaking by, then downriver
through the gullet beneath the green, rib-cage bridge,
its port and starboard lights, then out, out,
into the iodinic air, sheering weed-rafts
and swells of tide, deaf to what I am saying,
my mouth a seven mile windsock.

The sea level of the title, however, is not simply a place, but also a frame of mind (think of the imperative homophone “see level”), a philosophy almost, existential and environmental, stoic and transcendental. This very human and humble frame of mind is hinted at in the title poem, where the speaker wonders “What won’t I remember, inexactly?” and further developed in poems like “Sea Smoke,” which ruminates on the temporality of human striving:

. . . Now I am content with
dragonfly breath on my corneas, thinking
I may have scratched the surface.
I am aware of the long gray body of fog
still well off-shore, beyond Cross Island.
I see in my mind my wife’s beautifully articulate
bare feet on the marsh, the fading
impression she makes on moss,
goose and eel grass.

The final word on this perspective comes in the book’s final poem, “Springfall:”

I’ve heard the various faiths
mock the breaking lakes, inland,
the march of trees at the pasture edge,
swelling, thickening toward the bloom
of dropsy fruit, huge, ancestral
roots of blowdowns, gaping in air.
Not one such word of man
has delivered more than hope.
------------------------------------------
I have decided not to live at all,
at least, not by my own hand.

I don’t often find it useful to compare poets, but as I read through Sea Level, I find myself thinking of Gary Snyder repeatedly as Nelson creates a remarkably compelling riprap of human existence, a living testimony of a man apparently content with but never fully happy about life on Earth.

Poetry Council of North Carolina, January 15, 2009

In 1949 the Poetry Council of North Carolina was established in Asheville, NC, by four friends from that part of the state. The Council was devoted to essentially three purposes listed in its mission statement. The primary mission was “to foster a deeper appreciation and love of poetry among the people of NC.” Supporting that were two other purposes: “to carry on Poetry Day activities” and “to establish a Poetry Shrine.”
The Poetry Shrine mentioned in that mission statement was begun with a donation of 150 volumes of poetry, and since 1997 has also included copies of all entries in the organization’s annual book competition and copies of the annual awards anthology, first published in 1952. That shrine has been housed since its inception at Catawba College in Salisbury.
Poetry Day was designated by Governor William Kerr Scott to be October 15 in 1950. Since that time, the Council has conducted an annual Poetry Day Celebration in early October on the campus of Catawba College.
The primary activity of the Council has been the coordination of a series of annual poetry competitions, and the entry period for those competitions has arrived yet again. Between January 15 and May 15, residents of NC are invited to submit their poetry to whichever of the seven PCNC competitions best suits their work. Competitions are offered for the best book of poems and for the best individual poem in the following categories: traditional form poetry, light verse, free verse, free verse on the theme of family heritage. Two additional competitions are for elementary and middle school students, and high school and undergraduate students.
Prizes for competition winners range from $25 to $100. All winning poets, including 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place finishers as well as up to three honorable mentions in each category, are published in the Council’s annual awards anthology called Bay Leaves. Winning poets are also invited to read their work at the Poetry Day Celebration, which this year will be October 10 at Catawba College.
Supporting the Poetry Council of North Carolina, attending the Poetry Day Celebration, and entering the PCNC poetry competitions are all wonderful ways to get involved in the world of poetry in NC. For more information on the Council or any of its activities, including complete guidelines for the competitions, visit the Council’s website at www.oldmp.com/poetrycouncilofnc.com.