READING AND SIGNING: CHEROKEE LITERATURE

Reading and Book Signing: Cherokee Literature in Appalachian Heritage .

(Please go to http://ncpoetlaureate.blogspot.com/2009/11/appalachian-heritage-special-cherokee.html to see the post on this special issue.

The Museum of the Cherokee Indian will host a reading and book signing Sunday afternoon January 17 from 2-4 pm in the Multi-purpose room of the Education and Research Center. Michell Hicks, Principal Chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, will introduce Cherokee writers featured in the new issue of AppalacAppalachian Heritage: A Literary Quarterly of the Appalachian South. This issue features works by twenty-one members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, with cover artwork and illustrations by Sean Ross, (EBCI.) Featured author of the issue is Robert Conley (Cherokee Nation) who is also Distinguished Sequoyah Professor at Western Carolina University and keeps office hours at the Museum of the Cherokee Indian as well.

This volume is the largest collection to date of contemporary literary efforts by members of the Eastern Band, and includes poetry, prose, essays, stories from oral tradition, and artwork. The Editor, George Brosi of Berea Kentucky, will attend the event, where Conley will read from his work. Authors will be available to sign copies, which will be sold through the Museum Store at $8 each.

MARGARET RAAB: In Memoriam

Margaret (Peggy) Raab, one of NC's most accomplished and acclaimed poets, has died much too soon of cancer. Her funeral will be Friday in Chapel Hill. For her obituary, please go to http://www.chapelhillnews.com/news/story/54472.html. For a podcast of Peggy reading from her work, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu-Udyk_9PU.

Here are a few of Peggy's poems, as well as some comments by her many friends and admirers.

Paul Jones: Peggy was always talented and giving. In her last years, she realized many of her ambitions including becoming a full time faculty member in creative writing as director of the program at wichita statehttp://www.wichita.edu/thi

sis/wsunews/news/?nid=397
She also published at least three great chapbooks. Here she reads "Low Owl Illusion"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu-Udyk_9PU and "Transvestites in Waukegan"http://www.youtube.com/wat

ch?v=-ysVvVAz0Mo

Susan Meyers: Peggy was such an inspiration to so many, such a kind soul and so talented.

Dogwood Alarm

by Margaret Rabb

By pairs and threes they crash
and spin to the shoulder, drivers
stunned, unable to keep their eyes,
wheels, the tingle in their fingertips
from bark and open drifts of silk,
the looseblown momentary bloom.

April. They pass, retreat sideways,
floating away from the little accident.

A specimen tree in a suburban yard
is one thing, fertilized, gravid, buds
popped out all over, azaleas snapping
at its knees. But the woods at the edge
of plowed fields are another story, a waltz
at the dogwood diner, the dance that slays us:

four or five flowers hover over a branch,
crossed, notched, whiter than this world allows.

Two poems from Margaret Rabb's Shoulderable Shine

followed by a note on the author

Dante's Anteroom

1

In the middle of my life I found myself in a dark wood.

On one side, clouds settled like three or four trouble notes.

Then they moved, right to left, a slow freight

shuddering by the crossing grade. Or – I was looking

out the grate as a whistle shifted bars across the gate.

2

In the middle of life's way I found myself in dark woods.

On a landing a broom leaned out of a bucket.

Beyond the ferry wake, a slanted plume. Sunrays

slipped, then caught a jib and mainsail. Runnels hissed

to the rocks. White sheets cupped and held.

3

In the midst of life I found I was in a dark wood.

Rain scrimmed the air. It was all unclear,

a sandblasted flood I squinted through. Great,

I'd say, and try the other glasses in my pocket

but they only focused drops against the gray.

Just what I need now, cut loose and nearly blind,

an unknown coast closed in with rime.

4

Midway on life's journey I found myself in the dark woods.

At night the island might still be overgrown with fir,

starless but for piers and porches across water.

Black-green drooping boughs stir a diffuse

and moonish glow behind the clouds' light cover.

5

In the middle of the night my daughter's call –

old anger she'll never get over, oil and vitriol

against too much, too little, pitched and caught again.

Next night my mother's voice, scratched in pain,

near panic, twisted gut. Back to the ER

because – what else is there to do for her?

6

In my middle age, that darkening wood, I found myself

across the continental shelf from home. The flight back

skimmed high plains. Now I can't recall the place

for a waterglass, which drawer holds stamps.

No light outside since lightning hit the lamps.

7

Midway through my life in the dark wood

of Sylvania County, I found it was a hemlock forest,

a rhododendron hell. What could be more manifest

than native laurel thickets three stories high

holding pale petal spikes to claps of thunder in July?

My mother, nearly ninety, will not bathe or brush her hair

but sits askew all day in the black reclining chair.

8

After the middle of middle age a vision,

airy or ordinary, will not engage

but only aggravate a reader. Reactive fission

fuels the middle of middle age. A vision

from a line of Dante? Rescue mission.

Infernal fizzle pushed to the nuclear stage

over the edge of the middle. A middle-aged vision-

ary? Her ordinary will? Disengage

the dazzle. Any pen to any page.

9

For the straight road was lost. How hard a thing

to tell what wild, rough, dense or wooded was.

I turned too soon and drove too far, climbing

a one-lane gravel path. The gearbox buzzed,

the drop sheered off. Pines on that steep side.

Mills River understory ginseng and Solomon's seal.

I forced myself to turn back at the final hairpin.

10

For I had missed the right road. What hard work

to imagine for you, reader, this wood, savage and tangled,

and down where we breathe, air like condensed milk.

I lay low, gave in, adored the genes

that cool my children's bloodlines.

So bitter, so bitter is it, death is little more.

11

Past my mother asking for her father,

past my careless girls who husbanded nothing,

no harbor but clouds, no train but grief,

I left the right road. But the good I found

may be told: a shale never broken,

a shadow cove, whitewater at the cleft.

I stepped into the stream, sleepwalker woken

midway – myself dark words, dark woods.

Walking a Black Lab at Night

She pulled out to the leash's

end and disappeared.

From then on it was weird

air-fishing through the reaches

the cable gave her – reeling back,

casting and spinning – sudden slack

that dropped my wired wrist,

her hidden point I missed.

Margaret Rabb has been the artist in residence at the University of Central Oklahoma. She has taught at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, St Andrews College in Laurinburg, and the University of Washington in Seattle, and was awarded the 2006 Arts & Letters Rumi Prize by Coleman Barks. Her first book of poems, Granite Dives (New Issues Press, 2000), received North Carolina's Roanoke-Chowan Award. Her poems have appeared in journals from the Kenyon Review to Light Quarterly and have been awarded the Louisiana Literature Prize for Poetry, the Phyllis Smart Young Prize from the Madison Review at the University of Wisconsin, the Lullwater Prize from Emory, the Hackney Literary Award, and the Wood Award for Distinguished Writing from the Carolina Quarterly. Her new chapbook, Old Home, was chosen by Fred Chappell and published last November by New American Press. Next year Rabb will direct the creative writing program at Wichita State University.

"Dante's Anteroom" was first published in Chelsea; "Walking a Black Lab at Night" was first published by theCincinnati Review.

NAZIM HIKMET POETRY FESTIVAL CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

The second annual Nazim Hikmet Poetry festival competition is now open. The closing date is Feb. 19, so begin to think about the poems you wish to submit. For more information about the Festival, please go to www.nazimhikmetpoetryfestival.org.

The second annual Nâzım Hikmet Poetry Festival will be held on Sunday, April 18, 2010 in Cary, North Carolina. As we bring together poets and poetry lovers, participation of area poets will be an essential part of this Festival. Interested poets are invited to submit their poems by Friday, February 19, 2010. The selected poems will be published on-line at the Festival web site as well as in the Festival Chapbook, and the poets will be invited to read their winning poems and introduce their poetry at the Festival. Each finalist will receive an award of $100. Last year's winning poems can be found at the festival web site.The 2009 festival chapbook is available at Amazon.com.

GENERAL RULES:

Deadline: Entries received by Friday, February 19, 2010 will be considered for selection.

Submission Requirements:

(*) All entries MUST be submitted via www.nazimhikmetpoetryfestival.org

(*) All poems submitted to the Festival must be unpublished, original works.

(*) Each poet can submit up to three poems.

(*) The poems should be in English.

(*) The selected poems will be published on-line at the Festival web site as well as in the Festival Chapbookl. By submitting their poems, the poets grant NHPF all rights to publish the poems at these venues.

(*) After the festival, the chapbook will be available for purchase at amazon.com. The proceeds from the chapbook sales will be used to support future festivals.

(*) The poets will retain copyrights of their poems.

Selection & Notification

(*) Submitted poems will be evaluated anonymously.

(*) The contact information provided by the poets will not be disclosed to other individuals or organizations.

(*) The poets will be notified of their poem’s status by March 22, 2010.

POETRY SELECTION COMMITTEE:

John Balaban, Professor of English, Poet-in-Residence, NC State University

Kathryn Stripling Byer, 2005-2009 NC Poet Laureate

Greg Dawes, Professor, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, NC State University

Joseph Donahue, Senior Lecturing Fellow, Department of English, Duke University

Jackie Shelton Green, Piedmont Laureate

Hatice Örün Öztürk (ATA-NC Representative), Associate Professor, Department of ECE, NC State University

ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS:

This event is organized by the American Turkish Association of North Carolina (www.ata-nc.org )

Organizing committee: Buket Aydemir, Pelin Balı, Erdag Göknar, Mehmet Öztürk, and Birgül Tuzlalı

Contact: contact@nazimhikmetpoetryfestival.org

POET OF THE WEEK: JESSIE CARTY

No one deserves to be the first POET OF THE WEEK on my 2010 blog more than Jessie Carty. Jessie is a young poet determined to follow the call of her passion for poetry. She will unashamedly share that passion with you, including her ambition to reach readers and other poets through as many avenues as possible She reads widely, she works hard to revise her poems, she submits work, and she remains open to as many guides and guidelines around her as possible. She is a faithful blog visitor, leaving supportive and appreciative comments, for which I am grateful. Jessie is the sort of young poet who will continue to grow, whose work will expand as her spirit expands through reading and, I hope, staring out her windows and letting her imagination weave its webs. "You have to be stubborn to make it as a poet" Maxine Kumin told me years ago when I was struggling to find a publisher for my first book. I'm pretty Sure than Jessie is stubborn enough to "make it."

It's a pleasure to introduce her as Poet of the Week.

Jessie's poems and non-fiction have appeared in publications such as The Main Street Rag, Iodine Poetry Journal andThe Northville Review. Her first chapbook, At the A & P Meridiem, was released by Pudding House Publications in 2009. Her first e-chapbook/2^nd print chapbook, The Wait of Atom, was released by Folded Word Press in November 2009. Her first full length collection Paper House will be released by Folded Word Press in March 2010. Jessie works as a freelance editor, writer, and writing coach/teacher. She is also the editor of Shape of a Box, YouTube's first literary magazine. Jessie received her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. She is a member of AWP, Charlotte Writer’s Club, NCWN, NC Poetry Society and will serve on the new board for the Poetry Council of NC. You can find her around the web but most often at her blog http://jessiecarty.wordpress.com.

From Jessie's first chapbook “At the A & P Meridiem” (Pudding House, 2009)

6pm

Outside the pan, then inside its lip,

the rhythm of the dish rag

invokes a spell of domesticity

as the grease clumps

down the silver walls of the sink

and into the growl of the garbage disposal,

all hungry like a spirit animal.

I set the oven to preheat at 450

while I chop up a fruit salad.

Out the sliding glass door,

I toss rings of oranges

puckered like over tanned skin

into a brown compost pile.

Improvising, I prepare

a pot pie of mixed, frozen

vegetables and sliced chicken.

Here is a dash of salt, a turn

of the pepper mill, a finger

making a furrow across the top.

I taste the raw beginning.

I set a timer for 45 minutes.

As I wipe down the counter

and scrub up the sink, I stop

once in a while to flick

the light inside the stove—

abra-cadab-ra.

From – The Wait of Atom, her 2^nd chapbook, Folded Word Press 2009

(first appeared in Wild Goose Poetry Review)

The Wait of Atom

It wasn’t that he wouldn’t wait for her

or not even that he didn’t want

to wait for her, he just couldn’t

stand still. She couldn’t stand it,

the way his eyes became nearly crossed,

how he jangled the change in his pocket.

She’d complained before.

To keep his face from registering

annoyance, he began mentally listing

the noble gases by weight: lowest to highest,

using his hands in his pockets to count each one.

He could do this without moving his lips.

His face relaxed even though she was still

transferring her personal items

from a brown purse to a black one.

She had explained, on more than one occasion,

how her purse had to match her shoes. How

his belt should match his shoes and he’d learned

to keep his eyes focused on a point

just over her shoulder while he let his brain

scan the periodic table of elements.

Her upcoming full length book Paper House will be out March 2010 from Folded Word Press.

Paper House

Fold a sheet of striped

notebook paper in half.

Draw the shape of a house.

Trim the edges to form a roof.

Where you want windows,

cut a flap.

Place pieces of furniture

or people to peer at

when you peep

through the paper windows.

On the first floor, in the kitchen,

Mom raises

her stick arms. She can almost

touch the ceiling.

She’s closest to the door.

Above her is a bedroom

a girl looks out a window.

She’s next to a desk

with her arms out straight

as if she was trying

3^rd grade calisthenics. To the girls’

right is another room

with a bed, a lamp. Downstairs,

next to the kitchen,

Dad lies on the couch wearing boxers.

Black and white can’t show

his cigarette dripping red-tipped ash

onto the carpet, forming a hole.

From a project in progress. Ology. First appeared in Blue Fifth Review

Far and Wee

I

Breathing on trees was my hobby. I’d sit on the browned pine needles, leaning my head against the bark and I’d suck in as much air as I could through my nose then I’d let it go with my chin pointed up to the branches. I’d pretend I was blowing up a balloon as I willed my carbon to keep the trees growing up and out.

II

I was never good at making balloons. Impatience perhaps? The first long breathes are almost futile. The balloon just spurts the air back at you, but if you keep pushing past that the plastic will eventually give and expand from the center rounding out.

III

Mom was the best at tying the ends of the balloons but my brother would do in a pinch. Like when we were waiting in the car once and to o entertain us, my brother blew up a balloon for each of us. My sister was in the front seat, bouncing her balloon back and forth against the windshield but I had taken a dare from my brother. I put the balloon under my shirt to pretend I was pregnant. I was rubbing my new rotund belly, saying, “Feel it kick!” When it popped, shrinking against the skin of my stomach it pulled the flesh up and in.

From an untitled project in progress but first appeared in The Dead Mule

Marrow

When the contractor began flattening the fields I had sold,

he turned over a small cache of bones.

From my back porch I saw him remove his hat, pull

his browning hand across his forehead.

He tossed the bones into the woods and leveled the spot,

prepping it for concrete.

In the dark of early evening I scooped up the bones. They were light

like bread and cold from the wet earth.

I warmed them in the oven of my palms, wondering if once

they were worn down by hours leaning into an axe,

or perhaps from grinding against a mortar to resize corn. They

could have been the foundation of skin, hope and tendon;

they could have belonged to the builders of pillars, of stone

circles, of sacrificial mounds, of children.

As I laid them down, I saw a body loose and those bones poking

through the skin like the skin was shale;

as the meat of the body moved down the shaft of the bone

like a candle melting on stone.

THE WORK OF WINTER

The Work of Winter (from www.ncarts.org)

By Kathryn Stripling Byer

This time of year poet Adrienne Rich’s words bubble up into my

consciousness: “The work of winter starts fermenting in my head / how with

the hands of a lover or a midwife / to hold back till the time is right.” She

urges to “trust roots” and “learn what an underground journey / has been,

might have to be; speak in a winter code / let fog, sleet, translate; wind, carry

them.”

This time of year my imagination wants to trust roots. To go underground

where so much of our inner journey takes place. In other words, it wants

time to think about the origins of memory and language. It’s a time when I

pull out my Oxford English Dictionary, hold up the magnifying glass and

look up the sources of words I use everyday. Where did they come from?

How have they changed? Inevitably, this always leads me back to the

question, “How have I changed?”

Because I recently turned sixty-five, a truth that women of a certain age are

not supposed to own up to, I’ve been thinking a lot about the word “old.” I

don’t feel old, I just feel as if I’ve been around for a long time, learned a lot

(though not enough) and that I’m in my prime.

When I turned to the origins of the word “old,” I found that it’s a very old

word indeed, and that its root many centuries ago meant “to nourish.”

Tracking it into Old English, I discovered that it becomes “oeld,” meaning

mature and lasting, something to be valued. The word appears numerous

times in medieval writings, and nearly always in a positive context.

Knowing this, I now no longer mind thinking of myself being described as

“old.”

When we begin to think about how our language began, we are drawn back

to a speech that sounded earthy, no trace of Latin in it. A language of

survivors in a cold, rough landscape. Over the years that language changed

by absorbing words from all over the planet, but mostly words from French

and Latin. Just about any word one picks out of a dictionary contains a piece

of that history. The renowned English poet W. H. Auden once said that

every one of his poems is a hymn of praise to the English language. A poet

in any language feels the same way about what we call the mother tongue.

Our mother tongue nourishes us. Just as the word “eald” meant centuries

ago.

Each morning my husband reads a page from his “Calendar of Forgotten

English,” a ritual that began 5 years ago when I gave him the 2000 calendar

for Christmas. These calendars collect words no longer in use, or not often,

and they lie on our table, waiting to be read while my husband drinks his

coffee. Words like “flaws” (gust of wind) and “blague” (humbug). Old

words. And, finally, not forgotten. Here they lie beside the cereal box, the

jam and butter, another morning’s invitation to look back and realize what

the word “old” really means. Still here. Ready for another year. Pick a word.

Any word. And it will carry you back to the roots of our language, and

forward into a present made even richer for knowing how the past spoke

itself.

WORDS SHINING IN THE NIGHT

I wrote this column for my Language Matters series during the winter of 2006. it seems as resonant now as it did then. I wish all my blog visitors a warm, safe, and restorative holiday.

Words Shining in the Night


By Kathryn Stripling Byer

Nothing brings our language into brighter focus than religious holidays. As we gather to

hear the words of this holiday season, we have lately become more aware of how those

words can both bind us together and push us apart. Just last Christmas, there was an

uproar over greeters at various stores using Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas,

as if the former somehow diminished the latter. Yet, many Americans do not celebrate a

traditional Christmas and many others do not celebrate it at all. Some, like certain Native

American tribes, never have, welcoming the solstice instead with their age-old earth-

based rituals.

So, what to do in our increasingly pluralistic society, where Latino, Arabic, Jewish, African, and

Asian voices are joining the chorus of celebrations? Can we agree at least on the meaning of this yearly

turning, that it pulls us back into the light, if we let it? And that the light can bring us

together, if we let it?

Perhaps learning some new words for light would be a good place to start. Tara, for

example. We English speakers think of Ireland and Scarlett O’Hara’s plantation. But the

word is also Urdu/Hindi for star, descended from the Sanskrit for “shining.” And this

time of year the star shining in the night carries special significance. In Spanish it is the

beautiful word estrella, and in French, etoile. The German star rings in the season as

stern, whose light cuts through the darkness and leads the way to revelation. In Arabic,

the haunting word shihab means flame. How can we deny this light shining in the

darkness, regardless of which word a culture uses to say it? We all light our candles this

time of year and watch the flames dance in the night.

I like the word shihab because it is the given name of a poet I admire, Naomi Shihab

Nye, American-born daughter of a Palestinian journalist and an American Montessori

teacher. For years she has worked to bridge cultural and religious differences, to heal the

divide that keeps us from being able to communicate with one another. Her voice shines

like a candle flame in this season’s dark night of suffering and war.

Her poem “Red Brocade,” begins: "The Arabs used to say,/When a stranger appears at

your door,/feed him for three days/before asking who he is,/where he’s come from,

/where he’s headed./That way he’ll have strength/enough to answer./Or, by then you’ll be

/such good friends/you don’t care. "

"Let’s go back to that," she pleads in the line that follows. No matter the language used, this

time of year we call out to light, not only to the flame of the sun returning to our

hemisphere, but also to the light of understanding. This season challenges us to believe

that our words for that light matter. Call it luz, lumiere, shihab, tara, it means the same

thing: the realization that we are called by the light to live together in peace.

HOLIDAY GARLAND OF BOOKS, part 1

It's holiday book-buying time, so here are some additional suggestions for gifts. For more ideas, go to the side bar and take a look at the Books of the Week, as well as Poets of the Week. You'll find plenty to entice a reader there.

In part one of our garland, I've gathered three current books NC or former NC writers.

Here's a new book of stories by a long-time friend of mine, poet and Editor of Shenandoah, R.T Smith. I met Rod many years ago at the Critz Writers Workshop, where A. R. Ammons held forth to a motley crew of us aspiring writers in Virginia. Rod has published numerous books of poetry and has edited Shenandoah right up into the top ranks of the country's literary magazines.



This new collection, as Ann Pancake says, "is part bluegrass symphony, part speaking in tongues... it is the most beautifully sung story collection I have read in years."

George Singleton calls some of the characters "wonderfully warped, melodic, Appalachian" and others "flat-out idiomatic poetic," which ought to whet any one's appetite.

On the menu (consider them appetizers):
Cockers for Christ
Tastes Like Chicken
Sugar
Fig Honey
Red Jar
Ruminants.....
Sound good? You can go to http://www.irisbooks.com/ to order the boo

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John Amen's new book, At the Threshold of Alchemy, holds the same intensity and surprising turns of language and perspective that have marked his earlier work. I find his poetry energizing, instructive, exhilarating, and for those long dark nights that follow Christmas, it would be ideal for keeping one's imagination pulsing. John will be coming to WCU in the spring to take part in our WCU Spring Literary Festival, so I will be posting more about him in March.



"Poems such as these, and there are plenty in this book—John Amen’s third—keep resounding in the mind the way great poetry does...."
—Ricardo Nirenberg, Offcourse Literary Journal

John is the author of three collections of poetry: Christening the Dancer (Uccelli Press 2003), More of Me Disappears (Cross-Cultural Communications 2005), and At the Threshold of Alchemy (Presa 2009), and has released two folk/folk rock CDs, All I’ll Never Need and Ridiculous Empire (Cool Midget). He is also an artist, working primarily with acrylics on canvas. Amen travels widely giving readings, doing musical performances, and conducting workshops. Further information is available on his website: http:///. Contact: pedmagazine@carolina.rr.com

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Linda Annas Ferguson now lives in Charleston, SC, but she is a native North Carolinian. Her latest book, Dirt Sandwich, is just out from Press 53 in Winston-Salem.

Linda is the author of five collections of poetry, including Bird Missing from One Shoulder (WordTech Editions, 2007); Stepping on Cracks in the Sidewalk (Finishing Line Press, 2006); Last Chance to Be Lost (Kentucky Writers’ Coalition, 2004); and It’s Hard to Hate a Broken Thing (Palanquin Press, University of S.C. Aiken, 2002). She was the 2005 Poetry Fellow for the South Carolina Arts Commission and served as the 2003-04 Poet-in-Residence for the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, S.C. A recipient of the Poetry Fellowship of the South Carolina Academy of Authors, she is a member of the Academy’s Board of Governors. She was a featured poet for the Library of Congress Poetry at Noon Series. Her work is archived by Furman University Special Collections in the James B. Duke Library. A North Carolina native, she now resides in Charleston, SC. Visit her website at http://www.lindaannasferguson.com/.