North Carolina Writers & Books: April, 2008

| Poetry | Prose | 'Zines | Get Connected | In Memoriam

Each month North Carolina Writers & Books showcases work by North Carolina writers of poetry, prose, and literary translation. Here, too, you'll find news, interviews, and features related to North Carolina's literary community and links to other literary Web sites of interest.

North Carolina Writers & Books is a work in progress. If you have comments about this format or suggestions about content, please jot them down in an e-mail message: ncarts@ncdcr.gov. We'd appreciate your feedback and ideas. -- Debbie McGill, Literature Director, North Carolina Arts Council

Poetry

A Word from the Poet Laureate

I can think of no better way to celebrate National Poetry Month in North Carolina than to present an array of poets at different stages of their careers. Poetry in North Carolina today is rich and vigorous, and it will remain so as long as we continue to encourage our citizens, no matter their age, to love language and the written word.

They might begin, for example, by reading the work of Betty Adcock, our first featured poet. Betty Adcock came to North Carolina as a young woman, determined to become a poet worthy of recognition and acclaim. And such she has become. Her recently published collection, Slantwise, confirms her status as one of the finest poets writing in the U. S. today. She serves as an inspiration for younger poets, among them Malaika King Albrecht, herself a recent transplant to North Carolina.

Malaika has over the past few years become involved in literary activities in her region of the state (the Piedmont) and has published poems in a variety of magazines. I first met her via email when she sent me a poem written in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. That poem was featured on our website. I've been fortunate to have her in a poetry workshop, where her response to other participants' work impressed me with its sensitivity and intelligence. Her own poetry was pretty good, too!

Both Betty Adcock and Malaika Albrecht might easily serve as mentors for our third featured poet, Jessica Adams. A high school senior, Jessica recently impressed the audience at the Poetry Out Loud competition in Raleigh with her interpretation of poems by Carolyn Kizer and Edgar Allen Poe. She is also a talented poet, one who will make the state of North Carolina proud someday. Jessica and the young poets I have met during my tenure as laureate show me over and over again that poetry in our state is flourishing. They remind me that here in North Carolina, every month is Poetry Month! – Kathryn Stripling Byer

Betty Adcock

Day Lilies

Called ditchflowers, they call all summer
day      day     day     day their drumbeat
drawn out of dawn that lifts from green sleep
the tiger’s orange, soft melon and peach,
cadmium yellow, carmine, coral pink,
ivory pale as a corpse’s cheek—a range
so wide and subtle they might fabricate a dye wheel.

To rise again their one completion, mayflies
in stasis, they likewise last
                              one turn around
the sundial, and are so fast replaced no one imagines
when yesterday slipped, pleated with shadow,
into a fading curl.
                              The buds are long thin furlings
of crumpled silk, with only a glance of color
but ready to break into daybreak and rocket rubescent
into noon, trumpeting remarkable ancestry.

For their progenitors are at least as old as Egypt’s
tomb walls holding paintings of white flared
tumblers filled with light: the lilies of the field
we’re asked to consider. Consider them:
first flowers to come in from the wild;
the first to soothe, to celebrate, perhaps the first
thought to comfort the dead whose eternal dark
would be only the sleep of winter for these
recurring suns.

The originals were fists full of tomorrows,
knots of plumbless dreams: Hera’s milk
and the Silk Road to come, the imperial Regal,
and the medieval paintbrush clotted
with piety, tracing the Virgin’s purity
against her skyblue cloak.
                              Only old dreams, the thousands
of new names that play now in the garden’s mouth,
the countless, cloudless colors climbing the world
for beauty and brevity, knowing always
    one day     one day     one day     this
                              one day.

[More by and about Betty Adcock... ]

Malaika King Albrecht

The Artist and the Doctor

At night, the dogs across the river howl,
and she leans into darkness to paint the sounds.

He sleeps, dreaming nothing but daylight, scalpels
and sutures. At dawn, changing shifts, he rises

and she collapses, angry at the necessity of sleep.
Exact as a photograph, he says, "Now, dear,

I need my keys." She tosses them out the window.
Some mornings she stays awake, speaks another language,

says, "Hold me." He flips through the dictionary
for the right response. He cooks one pot dinners.

She performs a stand up routine for his meals. “Animals
may be our friends, but they won’t take us to the airport.”

He is her compass, and she sticks him to the dashboard
of her Ford. Without her, he would never travel.

[More by and about Malaika King Albrecht... ]

Jessica Adams

An Existential Crisis

I think I’m turning
into Sylvia Plath.

421

Highway 421 Seems to be missing something
emblazoned
On road signs.
It’s almost consecutive, but something left.
The 3 decided to give up and throw itself simultaneously
From every single signpost
    And crushed itself like a
        Butterfly in the treads
            Of travelers’ tires.
The three is rotting away in
Greasy spots along the highway—421—
That wash away gradually with
    Each rainfall
        And the spray of saline
            From the salt trucks in winter.
But I see it every day.
    The other numbers arranged themselves into equations:
        Memorials
In the page numbers of books
    And the digits of my phone number
        In prices
            In license tags
                In dates
                    In my eyeglass prescription
                    In pi
                    In sizes
                    In microwave buttons
Where, as I heat a cup of tea
Its portrait leans out and whispers
“Remember me.”

[More by and about Jessica Adams... ]

Prose

Robert Morgan

^{Photo: Jason Koski, Cornell University Photography}

Robert Morgan’s first major nonfiction work, Boone: A Biography, about the frontiersman Daniel Boone, has received a good deal of attention since its publication last fall. Jonathan Yardley, book critic for The Washington Post, included Boone among his top ten favorites for 2007. The book is one of five finalists in the biography category for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize—to be announced on April 25th. Boone is also the 2008 title for “Together We Read,” the annual community-based reading project of western North Carolina. Events there will run from June through December of this year.

Morgan was born and raised in Hendersonville and studied at North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He has taught creative writing at Cornell since 1971 but returns to his home state often.

Last November Robert Morgan was a keynote speaker at the North Carolina Writers’ Network’s fall conference, in Winston-Salem.

You can catch his presentation here and also the interview with him that followed, conducted by Georgann Eubanks.

'Zines

Iodine Poetry Journal is a biannual magazine based in Charlotte. Edited by Jonathan K. Rice, Iodine presents work by both emerging and established poets. The Spring/Summer issue, just published, features North Carolina writers Maureen Ryan Griffin and David T. Manning and poets from outside our borders, such as Rick Campbell, who is the director of Anhinga Press, and Anthony Seidman, author of Where Thirsts Intersect (2006). Single issues are $7; one-year subscriptions are $12; two-year subscriptions are $22.

Issue #44 of The Pedestal Magazine—an online journal of the literary and visual arts—is up and running. In addition to the magazine’s regular offerings of fiction and poetry are the winners of its 2007 Readers’ Awards. Malaika King Albrecht—one of the poets featured here this month—took first place for poetry.

Get Connected

Authors 'Round the South

Events

Press 53 celebrates the publication of Joseph Mills’s newest book, Angels, Thieves, and Winemakers, with a poetry reading and wine tasting at RayLen Vineyards & Winery, in Mocksville, on Saturday, April 5, at 6 p.m. Angels, Thieves, and Winemakers is a collection of more than 50 poems inspired during this writer’s work on his popular wine guide, A Guide to North Carolina's Wineries. You’ll find RayLen at 3577 Highway 158, in Mocksville.

Western Carolina University’s Spring Literary Festival runs from April 7-10. Russell Banks, Pat Conroy, Dagoberto Gilb, Thomas Lux, Lee Smith and others will be on hand in Cullowhee for readings and conversation.

On April 4, nonfiction writer and past NCAC fellowship recipient Karen McElmurray will read at ASU at 7:30. She’ll give a craft talk that same day at 3:30. Both events are in Plemmons Student Union. On April 10 poet Marilyn Kallett will read at ASU , to wrap up the Hughlene Bostian Frank Visiting Writers Series (which we fund). Her activities that day will follow the same schedule as Karen McElmurray’s the week before.

On April 12, Jon Scieszka will culminate “Little Read”—Lenoir-Rhyne College’s celebration of reading for Hickory-area schoolchildren—with a presentation of The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. The event will be in P.E. Monroe Auditorium on campus at noon.

April 12-22 in Winston-Salem, Kenan Writers’ Encounters hosts writers Jonathan Gilligan, Terry Tempest Williams, and W.S. Merwin, plus sculptor Herb Parker, for readings and conversations on the theme of “Earth.” Tickets are free but required: 336-758-3914.

The second annual Southeastern Literary Magazine and Small Press Festival brings some of the best editors and writers in the U.S. to the campus of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro April 23 – 25. Kelly Cherry, Leigh Anne Couch, Michael Chitwood, Michael McFee, A. Van Jordan, and Natasha Trethewey are headliners.

Asheville 2008 Wordfest takes place April 25-27. Featuring a notable array of writers, (Coleman Barks, Lee Ann Brown, Kathryn Stripling Byer, Galway Kinnell, Simon Ortiz, Glenis Redmond, Allan Wolf, among others) Wordfest is an intercultural celebration of language. Workshops as well as readings are planned to engage participants.

All month long: Poetry GSO—a program of the Greensboro Public Library and a host of community partners, with funding from the NC Arts Council—hosts activities for audiences of all ages in celebration of the power of poetry. A jam-packed schedule culminates in the Greensboro’s Carolina Theater on Sunday, April 27, with a presentation by celebrated poet, commentator, and activist Nikki Giovanni. Admission to all events is free.

Forsyth County celebrates National Poetry Month with “On the Same Poem.” A companion to the county’s “On the Same Page” community book-reading project, “On the Same Poem” invites everyone to read and talk about a particular poem during the month of April. The chosen poem this year is Kathryn Stripling Byer’s “Mountain Time”. Three events dot the “i” and cross the “t”:

• On May 1 at noon Kay Byer will read the poem and have a conversation about it over a brown-bag lunch at the Forsyth County Library; for reservations call 336-703-3011.
• At 7 that night, she’ll read selections from her new poetry collection, Coming to Rest, for the William M. Hendricks Memorial Reading in Shirley Recital Hall, Salem Fine Arts Center, on the Salem College campus, in Winston-Salem.
• On Saturday, May 3, at 7:30 in Hanes Auditorium, Salem Fine Arts Center, the centerpiece of Piedmont Chamber Singers’ “Made in America” concert will be the performance of a new work commissioned from William Bolcom and based on Ms. Byer’s poetry. Mr. Bolcom is a four-time Grammy Award winner and the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize and the National Medal of the Arts. For information about this ticketed event call 336-722-4022.

Literary Craft

The Writing Salon: Writing from the Imaginative Storm, a creativity retreat for artists, communicators, and writers at all levels takes place April 21-25 at the Black Mountain Center for the Arts.

The North Carolina Writers’ Network’s spring conference is set for April 26, on the campus of UNC-G, with intensive workshops in fiction, memoir, poetry, and publishing, plus a presentation by prizewinning poet Linda Gregg.

The North Carolina Haiku Society's 29th Annual Haiku Holiday Conference takes place on Saturday, April 26, 2008, at Bolin Brook Farm, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Wildacres Retreat Center is accepting applications now for its annual spring gathering, which brings writers and other artists together for a week of creativity and sharing. The dates are April 28 – May 2.

In "The Writing Place," which appeared in the News and Observer on April 6, N&O staff photographer Takaaki Iwabu provided glimpses of the literary process of four North Carolina writers: poets Michael Chitwood (1990 North Carolina Arts Council fellowship recipient) and Jaki Shelton Green (who won the 2003 North Carolina Award for Literature), Allan Gurganus (who received that same prize in 1999), and Scott Huler. The N&O's web site offers video, audio, and photographs to take us further inside the worlds of these writers.

Poetry Out Loud

Poetry 2.0 is a webcast of a workshop on the performance of poetry, recorded on November 20, 2007. State Poet Laureate Kathryn Stripling Byer and well-known poet Michael Beadle explored the performance of poetry with high school students from Kevin Norris's English class at Cherokee High School and Julie Osmon's English class at Manteo High School. The workshop, sponsored by the North Carolina Arts Council and the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, will be helpful for all students and teachers who are interested in poetry.

Read about Cherokee High School student Sara Tramper’s experience in this year’s Poetry Out Loud statewide poetry recitation competition, sponsored by the North Carolina Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Op/Ed

Kakalak editor Lisa Zerkle explains in an essay published last month in the Charlotte Observer how reading a poem a day can teach even those who equate poetry with Brussels sprouts to love it.

Resources

The literary trail guide is the third such collaboration between the North Carolina Arts Council and UNC Press. Also available are Blue Ridge Music Trails and Cherokee Heritage Trails guidebooks.

Where To Turn

The North Carolina Arts Council released the 2008–2010 Touring Artists Directory in February, with a downloadable version available online here. The directory lists literary artists of demonstrated ability who are available to offer presentations of their work in communities across the state.

The North Carolina Writers' Network is the oldest and largest statewide literary organization in the U.S. Its mission is "to connect, educate, and promote emerging and established writers" through a variety of programs and services. The Network’s new web site features an up-to-date calendar of literary events, announcements of competition deadlines and calls for submission, articles on the craft and business of writing, literary and book-trade news, plus more in the sector of the site accessible only by Network members.

North Carolina Public Libraries on the Web lists all public libraries by county and takes you to web sites where you can search their shelves.

The National Poetry Map—an online project of the Academy of American Poets—tracks poetry state by state. It’s a useful bookmark to take you to poets, poems, events, literary journals, writing programs, poetry organizations, and more.

Back to top

In Memoriam

Remembering Marie Gilbert (1924 – 2007)

^{Photo by Rodney Coffman}

Marie Gilbert. Gracious, generous, kind, extraordinarily insightful. One could go on searching out terms in an attempt to pay homage to Marie and her memory. She was, in the words of my colleague George Bruce, "a great encourager." Marie was a fine poet and peerless friend. She encouraged people to appreciate one another. She encouraged writers of all ages and persuasions. By example she taught us to analyze and to empathize. By being a great learner, she taught us by example never to cease from exploration.

Twice the head of the North Carolina Poetry Society, she worked in its ranks for decades and was the originator of the annual Gilbert-Chappell poetry competition. A constant student herself, Marie was a ceaseless champion of learning and of St. Andrews Presbyterian College, on whose Board of Trustees she was an inspiring member. It was my privilege to count her as a friend for nearly four decades.

When her devoted husband, Dick, was called to serve in both World War II and the Korean War, Marie held the fort at home in the tough role of single mom—again, the great encourager of two wonderful (and successful) children as well as her husband, fighting in the field in the grimmest of circumstances.

Marie's hope for the future of humankind never dimmed, nor did her belief in the power of the written and spoken word as useful tools to great ends. Upon her death on November 2nd the outpouring of sadness was a torrent deeply felt by present and past students of all ages and circumstances whom she had nurtured over the years. Typical of the many dozens that came my way, I must pass along two: A student of several years ago said, "She always left me feeling better about being alive and about being a writer." And the words of a colleague: "She always asked me how my writing was coming along—even if she was the celebratory reader of the night."

Marie received both the Sam Ragan Award for contributions to the fine arts of North Carolina and the Fortner Writer and Community Award from St. Andrews. She was a constant supporter of Cairn: The St. Andrews Review. She was always a pixie of humor, whether performing "Walking to Conway" or dressing up as Uncle Sam on the occasion of St. Andrews' Press's 25th birthday (and singing a celebratory song).

Marie authored numerous books of poetry to high acclaim. It is impossible to do her memory justice. Let me offer, in closing, one of her poems attesting to her respect and affection for learning and for St. Andrews.

Ron Bayes joined the faculty of the English department at St. Andrews Presbyterian College in 1968. During his tenure there he founded the literary magazine St. Andrews Review and also St. Andrews Press, in which he continues to take an active interest. Mr. Bayes has published thirteen books of verse (including Ron Bayes: Greatest Hits, Pudding House Publications, 2003), two plays, a book of short stories, and a work of criticism on John Reed.

Campus Off Season

by Marie Gilbert

Quiet dignity, the bell tower offers its Celtic cross up to the blue depth, and
down to the still lake
water lilies lie listless in shallows.

Strangely quiet ducks and geese
leave spreading wakes.
We breathe the silence.

In the heat, waiting for students
the clean graffiti wall stands
blank stone.

Students will return with crumbs for the water fowl and
a summer's worth of questions.
Professors will return, stir new thoughts.

For now, breathe silent anticipation.

Remembering Sallie Nixon (1915 – 2008)

Three summers ago, Sallie Nixon came from her Lincolnton home to the Sam Ragan Poetry Festival in Southern Pines, where she was once again honored by the North Carolina Poetry Society. Already in her nineties, her figure was slim and graceful, her eyes twinkling, and her reading was energized by quick intelligence and a sprightly sense of humor—a happy memory for those North Carolina writers who have long admired both her writing and her generous nature.

Although she didn’t begin writing poetry until she was in her f