BURKE COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY CELEBRATES NATIONAL POETRY MONTH

On April 19, a fine Saturday, with redbuds abloom and gardens burgeoning, I drove over to Morganton for a special poetry event at the Burke County Public Library, one of the loveliest libraries I seen. Our libraries are the the heart of our communities, and being able to visit quite a few of them around our state has made my term as Laureate especially gratifying. This event pulled together four poets: Rand Brandes, Scott Owens, Ted Pope, and me. I'd not seen Rand nor Scott in years, and Ted was an unknown. I was looking forward to meeting him.

The event was spearheaded, in part, by Mindy Evans, whose work has appeared on this blog, as well as in the comments section. Mindy is hoping to further her development as a poet by enrolling in an MFA program. Which one remains a question mark. Any program would be lucky to have her.

Viranya Filipiak, the Adult Program Coordinator for the Burke County Public Library in Morganton,(828-437-5638 Ext.1208--just in case you want to give her a call to thank her for supporting NC poetry) organized the celebration and served as emcee. Here she is at the punch bowl afterward.




I was glad to see my old friends Rand and Scott and meet the kinetic Ted Pope, whose performance was riveting. The four of us made a pretty good team, if I do say so myself. Rand is Martin Luther Stevens Professor of English and Director of the LR Visiting Writers Series at Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory. Scott was my POET OF THE WEEK, two weeks ago. Ted has recorded two collections of his poetry performances and performs frequently in Hickory, where there seems to be a lively poetry scene in the making.

In the audience was a novelist with whom I'd communicated only through blogging--Joan Cannon, whose Hilltop Notes is well worth a visit. In the photo of Joan below, you can get a sense of the spaciousness this library offers its patrons. Joan has given me permission to quote in this post one of her brief essays from her blog.



Ted talks with a member of the audience after the reading.







(RAND BRANDES)


TWO POEMS FROM RAND BRANDES'S READING:


How Little Light is Left

How little light

Is left



When all the bulbs

Burn out



One by one

First here



Then there

Like stars



Disappearing

In a clear sky



On a moonless

Night



For no apparent

Reason



The Last Class


I want to leave them, them to leave me

Feeling the poems’ pulsing lines in their veins

Hammering at the forges of their hearts,

But it’s just “Intro. to Poetry” and they’ve already sold

Kinnell and Collins, Hughes and Heaney

For 50 cents each to the college bookstore.



The room has grown silent and sleepy in the late morning

Light. The papers are piled high on my desk,

Titles peeping out like “The Illuminated Blake,”

“Lawrence’s Ladies” or “What’s Eating Plath,”

Not wanting it to end like this I impulsively pull out

“Great Poems Read by the Great Poets Themselves”,



Slip the disc into the slot and hit play: Yeats chants,

Thomas rages, Williams chatters, and then

We come to Kinnell, the last poet, the last poem,

“The Last Gods”— a poem I do not know,

But should have. Suddenly the goddess is spreading

Her legs as the sea surges around the rock



Upon which she lingers, the god wades out to her

Sliding blueberries and blood between her wet lips.

Mortals that we are, we sit silent, embarrassed

By the gift we have been given in communion

In a classroom on a Tuesday in December.

This is what it’s all about, I say, the power



Of words to call forth a love so elemental, so powerful

And profoundly deep, that we must, like Stephen Dedalus

On the strand, exclaim “O’ Profane joy” as the bird girl

Wades forth lifting her dress over ivory thighs.

We have been blessed, I say again, blessed,

So now go study for your final and the real test.
----------------------------


(THE COVER OF ONE OF JOAN CANNON'S NOVELS)

Joan's post of April 9:

ARE MINDLESS TASKS A HELP?


There are some times in your life when you can't keep track--of time, of tasks, of conversations even. There's a group of landscape maintenance workers buzzing and roaring around the house today. Each of them plods or rides along, heads down, eyes ahead like donkeys intent on getting one foot in front of the other. I wonder if their minds are as blank as their faces. Is there some unacknowledged collateral benefit in mindless activity? I'm reasonably sure the answer to that would be a qualified yes. However, surely it must depend on the mind that's unoccupied during the performance of these repetitive, uninspired and uninspiring jobs. The world is so full of them and the people who perform them, it astounds me to think about it.

Right now, I believe that in some circumstances, this half-unconscious trudging from one end of a day to the other might be a blessing. What I can't believe is that a lifetime spent like that can be anything but a curse.

Do you have an Oriental rug? A handmade basket? Even an Aran Island sweater? I knit (I used to knit a lot), but I can't do anything interesting without extreme concentration, and even then, I find mistakes that have to be corrected. How long does it take to get so skilled that you can stop paying attention? If you reach that stage, can the work become a kind of meditation? Try to imagine the hours and days, even years invested in producing beautiful crafts. Is the guy behind the walking mower making up poetry or a protest essay in the din of his machine?

That's the rub for me. I'm trying to make this little piece of disconnected verbiage fill that need for distance. Somehow, writing doesn't seem to fill that bill. A long time ago, there was a man who invented what he called "automatic writing." The name is self-explanatory. It was supposed to be helpful for the mentally ill. That is not what I want to do, not just out of the fear of embarrassment, but because it would be too self-serving and of no interest to a reader.

Maybe when enough time has passed after the loss of the person who was half me, not just mine, I'll find out how to use this craft of putting words on paper (or into the ether). If some day I think I can, maybe that's how I'll know I'm returning. Maybe what I should do is go and prune the pyracantha. It should take a long time.

I HEREBY DECLARE......

that April 1 is the beginning of National Poetry Year. A month is not long enough. Let's have a whole year of poetry and study it, celebrate it, read it, and, yes, write it. I'm beginning the month with a poem by my friend and former NC resident doris davenport. She now lives in Albany, GA, teaching at Albany State University, just a few miles from the farm on which I grew up. Doris will be performing at the Asheville Wordfest in late May (more about that later), and she has just completed a memoir, Azalea Love.



(Endless Collaboration) Poem for National Poetry Month - April 2009

How is your POEM today?

Write a poem.
Create a poem.

Bailout a poem. Underwrite a poem. Manage a poem.
Send more troops to assist a poem. Legislate a bi-partisan poem.


Compose a poem. Play a poem. Dance a poem.
Sing a poem. Paint a poem. Dream in poetry.
Dream a poem. Hug a poem.

Have a poem today.
Remember a poem.
Be a poem today. and tomorrow.

Memorize a poem.

Pet a poem.
Eat a poem.
Feed a poem.
Rent a poem.
Buy a poem.
Thank a poet.

Hug a poet.

Make love to a poem. Propagate a poem. Marry it.
Cherish a poem. Love a poem. Love poetry. Now.





(doris davenport at Malaprop's Bookstore)

Article in Raleigh News & Observer

Today's Raleigh paper has published an article on the Student Laureate Awards. The link is www.newsobserver.com/105/story/1464403.html

Teachers, now is the time to begin thinking about student work to submit.

Tomorrow is the start of National Poetry Week. Get ready to dance! The flamenco, of course!

REVVING UP FOR NATIONAL POETRY MONTH: Calling all Elementary School Students

and teachers! Let's get ready for April--National Poetry Month by writing some lists. I am making lots of lists of things I need to do for the BIG MONTH. What I'm talking about, though, is list poetry. A "list poem" like this one by Bruce Lansky. (http://www.gigglepoetry.com/POETRYCLASS/bugshelp.html)

What Bugs Me

When my teacher tells me to write a poem.
When my mother tells me to clean up my room.
When my sister practices her violin while I'm watching TV.
When my father tells me to turn off the TV and do my homework.
When my brother picks a fight with me and I have to go to bed early.
When my teacher asks me to get up in front of the class and read the poem I wrote on the school bus.

I could write many list poems about what bugs me! I can also write some about what I love waking up to:




Waking Up

I hear Byron snore on the bed at my feet.
I hear Ace of Dogs sigh on the floor by the bed,
waiting for me to say, "Come on up."
I hear Bro shake his 80 pounds of fur,
saying "Let me out of here!"
And now I hear Bro and Poo Bear barking at nothing
outside. I feel Ace's
tongue on my hand hanging over
the bed. I hear rain
falling on the roof,
and I look out the window
where daylight comes slowly as falling
asleep comes when I don't want the day to end.

OK, let's write some list poems together. You send me yours over the next few weeks, which I will post on this site, up and down the side bar, as well as in special posts. And when April, National Poetry Month is over, I will pick one or more poems whose authors I will send special notebooks, where you can continue to write lists, lists, and more lists!



(A Visual List Poem!)

April Again

National Poetry month was as busy this year as ever. On April first, I traveled to Young Harris College, just over the North Carolina state line in Georgia, to meet with students and give a reading in the evening. I always enjoy traveling to the far westernmost part of North Carolina, because some of our state’s best poets live there--Nancy Simpson and Janice Townley Moore, who reside in Hayesville, to name only two. Nancy's work with Netwest can be found in my first blog post.

Other writers who sat in the audience for my reading at Young Harris were Steve Harvey, Bettie Sellers (past Poet Laureate of Georgia), Brenda Kay Ledford, and Mary Ricketson. Although it was April Fool’s day, none of us felt the least bit foolish about celebrating the beginning of National Poetry Month.


(Bettie Sellers delivering a lecture while serving as Georgia Poet Laureate)

The following week I squeezed in a reading at Mitchell Community College. in Statesville, and then headed back home to Cullowhee, where Western Carolina University celebrated its sixth annual literary festival (www.litfestival.org). While I was Poet-in Residence at WCU, our writers series consisted of a half-dozen writers giving presentations throughout the year. Now the university supports a full-fledged festival, bringing in authors with regional and national reputations. When Mary Oliver came to read fifteen years ago, she told me that WCU looked like Shangri-la, tucked away in its valley surrounded by mountains.



On opening night the standing-room only event featured Lee Smith and a performance of Lee's latest novel, ON AGATE HILL, a mesmerizing one-woman show presented by Barbara Bates Smith, with spine-tingling dulcimer music by Jeff Sebens.


(Barbara Bates Smith and Jeff Sebens)

Two days later I hosted a poetry reading, Laureate's Choice, by Carolyn Beard Whitlow, Joseph Bathanti, and Sarah Lindsay, all three of whom have been featured on the ncarts.org web site and whose work you can find in our archives. What a diverse trio of voices! And what a grand time we had visiting with each other at poet Carolyn Elkins' country cottage afterward! Yes, Carolyn, too, is in our ncarts.org archives. Here are the fabulous three who helped me advance the cause of N.C. poetry on the WCU campus!

(Joseph Bathanti)
(Sarah Lindsay)
(Carolyn Beard Whitlow)


Closing out the reading was Sara Tramper, first runner-up in this year’s Poetry Out Loud competition. A Cherokee High senior and valedictorian of her class, she arrived late, because she couldn’t find a parking place in the afternoon traffic on campus! She gave us a finale to remember, with the audience cheering after she completed Sherman Alexie’s "Powwow at the End of the World."


Three young writers from the region had their chance to shine the next day when Cathy Smith Bowers, Distinguished Poet for the western region, presented emerging poets Caleb Beissert, Haley Jones, and Tom Lambert as part of the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet Series. This important program supports the mission of the North Carolina Poetry Society to foster the reading, writing, and enjoyment of poetry across the state. Three Distinguished Poets, one each from the east, central, and west of North Carolina, mentor a middle-school, a high-school, and a college or university student. For more information, see the North Carolina Poetry Society web site. Caleb's poetry, by the way, was featured shortly thereafter on our ncarts.org site.


( Cathy Smith Bowers}

Mary Adams, director of the festival, hopes to keep this event alive and well far into the future. Some of Mary’s new poetry can be found on kathrynstriplingbyer.blogspot.com. She will have a chapbook published soon.

(Mary Adams at the Poet Laureate's dinner table, discussing plans for next year's literary festival)



With only three days to catch my breath, I headed to Wilson for a reading sponsored by the Wilson County Public Library on April 16th. What a memorable day that was! I was squired around by Jane Wood, one of the county’s—and I daresay the state’s—most valuable cultural resources. I visited the dynamic space occupied by the Wilson Arts Council and stood in speechless admiration in front of the project Jane keeps going throughout the year--Art Park, featuring poetry by local students, whose classrooms Jane visits throughout the year, bringing poetry and her love for the written word to them on a regular basis. Then I visited fourth-grade classes at St. Therese’s school and Greenfield School, telling about my job as Laureate, reading some poems, and wishing I’d brought several Milky Way cakes to share with these energetic and enthusiastic students. You can find work by the Greenfield students in the North Carolina Writers & Books archive for June.



(Discussing poetry with the students!)

My next post will feature Jane Wood and Art Park in Wilson, North Carolina. I was enchanted by what Jane has done with this project. I left Wilson County feeling encouraged by the energy and creative vision I found there.