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Past North Carolina Poets Laureate
Arthur Talmage Abernethy
Appointed in November of 1948, Abernethy claimed the position as North Carolina's first poet laureate. According to Governor R. Gregg Cherry, Abernethy had an impressive array of credentials and interests that made him a positive candidate for office. Abernethy was a professor, advertising manager, prohibitionist advocate, magistrate and justice of the peace, pastor, writer for the Charlotte Observer, as well as publisher of the Philadelphia Record for 17 years. Still, Abernethy found time to pen and publish 53 books and thousands of poems while serving his post as poet laureate. He resigned five years later. |
James Larkin Pearson
James Larkin Pearson was born creating rhymes and matching lines. Raised by unlettered parents traveling from farm to farm for work, Pearson claims he was "self-taught" and from the time his first published piece received $8 from the New York Independent in 1900, he considered himself a "professional." Determined to forge a path through obstacles of poverty, the chronic illness of his wife, and deaths of loved ones, Pearson served a life term as N.C. Poet Laureate starting in 1953 until his death at age 101 in 1981.
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Samuel Talmadge Ragan
Branded and remembered as "an idea man," Ragan was appointed by Governor James B. Hunt, Jr., in 1982 and served until his death in 1996. Intent upon creating new ways to give back to the literary community, Ragan developed a poetry seminar course that he taught for nearly a decade at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. |
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Fred Davis Chappell
Truly representative of the diverse population of North Carolina, Fred Davis Chappell went from farmhand to Duke Scholar. His sophisticated writing demonstrates his rigorous studies, yet his words reveal the realities he faced growing up on a farm with hard physical labor and time spent with nature. Chappell represented the people of the state in an astonishing 250 public engagements over the course of his five-year appointment from 1997 until 2002.
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Kathryn Stripling Byer
Crowned with a real laurel wreath — a first in North Carolina poet laureate history — Byer became renowned for also being the first female appointed for this post. Byer claims her life heroes were always her grandmothers and their bravery. Byer's first published chapbook focused on the role strong women played in her development as a woman and a writer. As poet laureate from 2005 until 2009, she launched the position into cyberspace. She established the Writers & Books Web pages on the N.C. Arts Council's Web site, highlighting N.C. writers of poetry, fiction and nonfiction. She also started her own blog, My Laureate's Lasso, covering the literary scene of the state.
Read more about Kathryn Stripling Byer » |
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