Performance poet and teacher, Michael Beadle

One of the brightest poets on the horizon is Michael Beadle who lives in Canton, NC. He does poetry performances and teaches poetry workshops across North Carolina, mostly with students but also with adults. Michael just finished this year’s Poetry Out Loud, a poetry recitation program that allows high school students to compete at local, state and national levels for cash prizes. He is teaching three weeks of writing residencies in Raleigh – a middle school for two weeks and an elementary school for one week.
A student from Cherokee High School won runner-up in the Poetry Out Loud competition in the state. You can read Michael’s article on her in the Smoky Mountain News (www.smokymountainnews.com) in the Art and Entertainment section.
Michael has lots of projects going. He says, “We writers don’t know when to stop.” He is also working on a history book on Haywood County’s bicentennial.

We are delighted Michael sent a few poems for the Netwest blog. He tells us about them below.

"A Town Too Small For Maps" describes the small town in Eastern North Carolina where I grew up. "Morning at Fontana Lake" is an imagist poem about an unforgettable early morning scene I once beheld while staying at a mountain cabin near Fontana Lake. "A Town Too Small For Maps" won 1st place in a writing contest last year at the Thomas Wolfe Memorial. It was also chosen by Kay Byer for the "Poet of the Week" feature on www.ncarts.com .

You can find more of Michael Beadles’ poems at ncarts.org where he was "Poet of the Week" in June and then in December of 2006.

A Town Too Small For Maps

Folks used to call her Sauls’ Crossroads,
but the postal service said the name was too long.
So, somebody thought on it, yelled “Eureka!”
Eureka, that ancient exclamation of inspiration.
The name stuck long enough to celebrate
her centennial. They say Sherman marched through
once, stopped for a drink, Atlanta ash still on his boots.

There’s time to think on a lot of things here.
The stoplight stays red long enough for drivers
to look both ways at boarded up storefronts.
Post office doubles as a town hall. Over there
used to be Sauls’ General Store. After school,
we’d meet for 3-cent gum and a 12-ounce coke,
maybe a run at Gallaga or Ms. Pac-Man.
In the pine-draped house a quarter mile down
lived Miss Nancy, a state representative.
I once sat in her house, a spell of dark wood.
Thick, bronzed plaques lined her walls. They say
she could match wits with the best in Raleigh.
The only grocery in town shut down last year.
A few gas stations keep a steady business
for the families and farms that remain.
The elementary school closed after consolidation.
Weeds spike through faded lines in the parking lot.

Outside town long rows of tobacco
lined the highways. How I’d pray
the harvester would get to the end.
Reach down, curl a hand around
the stalk, break off three, four leaves
from the bottom, dump it in the tray again
and again. Hands and forearms turned gummy black.
‘Baccer dew wet our shirts, dried stiff as blood.
Early mornings we’d top and sucker,
break off flower tops, pinch out buds,
flick fat, green worms from the leaves.
We’d stop mid-morning when the boss man
or the boss man’s son brought us
Little Debbies and a coke bottle I’d tilt sideways
to suck down faster, feel the burn in my cheeks.
By August, we’d be at the bulk barns, sifting
through crispy, golden leaf, toss out what’s burnt.
Burlap bundled plump, knotted, bound for market.
Stack ‘em high in the big trucks, boys!
Leaves littered the sides of highways,
like money spilled out of a stolen bank truck.
And the best brand of flue-cured that season
paid for school clothes and car payments.

Now those fields yield cotton, far as the eye
wants to see, rows that end in dark woods.
The sharecropper shacks and tin barns lean
like old men waiting to fall, ready to die.
Fields stretch on for miles to other crossroads —
Patetown, Nahunta, Faro, Black Creek.
When a lady asks me where home is,
I pause a moment to give her an approximation,
knowing she won’t stray too far to find
what lies in a town too small for maps.
Near Goldsboro, I say, about an hour east of Raleigh.


— Michael Beadle

Morning at Fontana Lake


ghost gods of fog
float in the coves
shade a vague horizon

dawn blooms
gauzy sun
scratches of gray

stars burrow
back into
their holes

a motorboat
unzips the flesh of lake
with its wake

things stir between trees
jazzy bees
bushy-tailed thieves
birds the size of fruit
perch on the deck
jerk their necks

silver creeks
mint stone coins
plenty for skipping

— Michael Beadle