Showing posts with label Catawba publishing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Catawba publishing. Show all posts

Monday, October 26, 2009

COLLOQUY IN BLACK AND WHITE by NANCY DILLINGHAM




Nancy Dillingham has a new book of poetry out from Catawba Publishers (www.catawbapublishing.com) titled Colloquy in Black and White. The poems are sometimes stark, always accessible. Nancy is a 6th generation Dillinghamm from Big Ivy in western North Carolina. She has published several books of poetry, as well as essays and articles. She lives in Asheville with her cat named Serendipity.


Nancy has been growing by leaps and bounds as a poet, and this new collection shows ample evidence of her growth. She is becoming a fearless poet, taking on subjects that might daunt others. She's a mountain woman who knows her landscape and its dark places well.

She can confront them, all the while singing the light and the love of place. She reads widely, she listens, she challenges herself, without losing the moorings that keep her steady as a poet and an inhabitant of these mountains. She will be at the Great Smoky Mountains Book Fair, and I hope that other festivals and reading series across the state will begin to take notice of her work.




Suite on Love

Sitting here
fifty years later
as you whisper me
happy birthday
and our younguns
sing around us
grown
with children of their own

I want to say
it is you
not the candles
on the cake
that takes my breath away

Too late coming to love
I made the usual blunders

A blush away from a baby
it was a tom-fool thing
for me to do
bringing you
country ham
cured sweet as honey
biscuits and gravy
stack cake

How could
I lie
with you
after you left me
for a roll
in the hay
with the first hussy
that gave you the eye?


Spitfire
you called me later
bleeding
like a stuck pig
where I struck
you with a piece
of stove wood
and you slapped me

Sitting here
as I think of all the pain
yours is the only music I hear
and I want to tell you
everything still seems the same
like the first time
clear as a bell

right as rain





Legacy

My aunt sat on her front porch
in a chair bottomed with strips of tires
slinging her crossed leg, dipping snuff

Your great-grandmother ruled
with an iron hand
and Grandpa was a rounder, she said

Double Dillinghams they were
cousins marrying cousins
Elbert and Mary

Owned land as far as the eye could see
all the way up to the Coleman Boundary

They say he courted her by bringing armfuls of flowers
picked by the roadside or out of other people's yards
traded his mule for a chestnut mare

Carried her around in a hand basket after they married
all the while making time with the hired help

The house stood right over there on the hill
where the graveyard is today--they gave the land

A smile threatened the corners of my aunt's wrinkled mouth
and a small rivulet of snuff ran down one side

After he died
Grandma didn't take to widow's weeds
said they didn't become her

She'd sit on the porch cooling Sunday afternoons in the summer
after cooking cut-off corn and baking soft butter biscuits
She'd throw back her head and cackle

I ought to have taken me a young lover
just to bedevil Elbert, she'd say

But he'd have dragged chains up and down the stairs at night
and, after my laying out, danced on my grave for spite

My aunt's face softened
A long time passed before she spoke again

We grandchildren would play on the porch
run the length of it back and forth
like fighting fire

or stand under the arbor eating pink grapes
clear as glass and sweet as honey
bees buzzing a halo over our heads

Sometimes when I look really hard
I can just see Grandma
coming over the ridge

her bright apron glowing
waving like a flag
calling me home


Signs

Whenever you go looking for what’s lost, everything is a sign.”
Eudora Welty


I have not bled
this month, Mother
and I am afraid

Just yesterday
a bird flew into the living room
losing its way

I didn’t sleep a wink last night
A dog howled outside my window
and the clock didn’t strike

Must have been midnight
I saw Will’s first wife plain as day
standing over my bed

glistening with sweat
crying with no sound
holding her dead baby

all the while
Will sleeping quietly
beside me

I felt the same fear
I saw in her face
this time last year

You remember, don’t you, Mother?
You asked me to help with the birthing
It was my first time

You cut cotton strips
and bound her wrists
to the bedposts

I placed the small, round stick
you handed me
into her mouth

bathed her face
as you commanded her
to bear down

I remember most the silence
as I watched you wrap the baby—stillborn
in the same soft cloth

And I can never forget the look
in Will’s eyes at the funeral
when he finally raised them

and gazed at me
as if seeing me
for the first time

Tiny shivers
ran up and down my spine
and my whole body shook

as he took a sprig of white lilac
from his wife’s casket
and handed it to me

He’s out there now
on the front porch
drinking his coffee

staring over the valley
looking at rows and rows
of newly-planted fields

seeing the cattle
grazing on the hill
below the graveyard

the headstone visible still
in its rising up
and shining in the light



Daddy’s Girl


With a wink and a leer
her daddy holds
the cold open can of beer
tantalizingly near

tickling her nose
Through bow-like lips
eager as a baby bird
she sates her thirst

with a single sip
laughs a giggly
hiccupping laugh
then burps

Putting up one perfect hand
she catches a trickle of froth
as it bursts like broth
from her soft pink mouth










Saturday, October 10, 2009

FASHIONS FROM THE PAST TO THE PRESENT

Recently I acquired a copy of Celia Miles and Nancy Dillingham's new anthology, Clothes Lines, a book filled with stories and poems about, what else, clothes.


Among the writers I know in this book are Nancy Sales Cash, author of three novels and she is working on number four. Nancy is a native of Murphy, NC and spends much time in the Cherokee and Clay county areas. We met at the Daily Grind and Curiosity Shop Bookstore, had a cup of coffee and discussed readings of Clothes Lines and my poetry book Now Might As Well Be Then.



Some of the writers in the far southwest area of North Carolina and north Georgia who have work in Clothes Lines are Kathryn Stripling Byer, Joyce Foster, Nancy Sales Cash, Karen Paul Holmes, Carole R. Thompson, Glenda Barrett, Jo Carolyn Beebe, Janice Townley Moore, Blanche Ledford and Brenda Kay Ledford, and Peg Russell.

A number of our Netwest members throughout the region also appear in this interesting book by 75 western North Carolina Women.

Celia and Nancy published Christmas Presence last year through Catawba Press and used the same press for Clothes Lines. The book is made more interesting by the use of a few black and white pictures all done by Mary Alice Ramsey.
Be on the lookout for readings from this anthology in your town.

Monday, November 10, 2008

New Anthology Showcases Fourteen Women Writers of Henderson County

New Book Showcases Talent of
Fourteen Henderson County Women

A new Christmas anthology from Catawba Publishing features stories, poems and artwork from 14 Henderson County residents.
Titled Christmas Presence: from 45 western North Carolina women writers, the book includes holiday reflections, short fiction and poems. Edited by Celia Miles and Nancy Dillingham, both of Asheville, the material in the collection is set in a range of locations—from Appalachia to wartime Britain.
Cover art for the book (front and back) is from original watercolors by long-time Hendersonville resident Nancy Elliott Irving. Henderson County authors and poets whose work appears in the book are Sherry Austin, Joan Blessing, Dare Ford, Marian Gowan, Lana Hendershott, Exie Henson, Jessica Heriot, Karen Jackson, Polly Kent, Martha O’Quinn, Susan Snowden, Tonya Staufer and Cecily Wells.
Women writers from Buncombe, Haywood and Transylvania counties also contributed to the anthology.
Christmas Presence may be purchased at area book stores or by ordering from Catawba Publishing in Charlotte (http://www.catawbapublishing.com/; 704-717-8452). 221 pages; $18; ISBN 978-1-59712-259-7. For more information contact the editors at celiamiles@fastmail.fm or nandilly@earthlink.net.

submitted by: Susan Snowden ssnowden1@juno.com

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Christmas Anthology by WNC women

Thanks to editors Celia Miles and Nancy Dillingham, forty-five western North Carolina women writers have had their Christmas stories, poetry, essays, or memoirs, published in an anthology titled "Christmas Presence." It is a beautifully bound book "filled with the unique voices of women writers who have roots in and connections to western North Carolina. These works add seasoning to the cultural landscape of a region already rich in custom and lore. Most of the writers are members of the NCWN and include Glenda Barrett, Celia Miles, Nancy Dillingham, Dee Dee Parker, Nancy Purcell, Susan Snowden, Barbara Ledford Wright, Lana Hendershott, to name a few. The book, "Christmas Presence," can be ordered from Catawba Publishing Company at (704) 717-8452 or http://www.catawbapublishing.com/. It will be available in local book stores and if not, they can get it for you. ISBN #: 978-1-59712-259-7. The stories will bring back fond holiday memories and the book would make a fine gift for a reading friend.

Editor Celia Miles and Nancy Purcell will be reading stories from "Christmas Presence" at Highland Book Store in Brevard, across the street from the college, between 10am and 12 noon on October 25. Please join us for this early touch of holiday spirit. The event will be in conjunction with Brevard College's Homecoming Weekend. Books will be available for sale.