Poets and poetry lovers from around the state will converge on the Colloquium Room at the Lenoir Rhyne University Library in Hickory, NC, from 11:30 to 3:30 P.M. on April 2 for this year’s celebration of Poetry Day. This event co-sponsored by the NC Poetry Society and Lenoir Rhyne will feature readings and workshops by this year’s winner of the Lena Shull Book Award, Stan Absher, and noted poet and scholar Kathryn Kirkpatrick of Appalachian State University.
The Lena Shull Book Award is presented annually at Poetry Day by the NC Poetry Society to the best new poetry manuscript by a NC poet. This year’s winner, “Mouth Work” by Dr. Stan Absher, will be published by St. Andrews Press. Absher, received his PhD in 18th century literature from Duke University in 1986. He is also the author of The Burial of Anyce Shepherd (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2006) and Night Weather (Cynosura Press, 2010).
As part of the day’s events, Dr. Absher will read from his award-winning book and lead a workshop entitled “The Very Word Is Like a Bell.” Using examples from several poets (e.g., Keats, Elizabeth Bishop, Philip Larkin, Henry Reed), the workshop will focus on how a shift in diction or an image or metaphor can transform and enlarge the working space of a poem to include multiple, even conflicting, points of view and bodies of experience. Participants will look at strategies for introducing and exploiting these shifts to create richer poems that, via text or subtext, embrace more of life and see more deeply into its complexities.
Dr. Absher’s reading and workshop will be complemented by a reading and workshop from poet and scholar, Dr. Kathryn Kirkpatrick. Author of six collections of poetry, including,Our Held Animal Breath, winner of the NC Poetry Society’s Brockman Campbell award, Dr. Kirkpatrick is a literary scholar in Irish studies and the environmental humanities at Appalachian State University. She has published essays on class trauma, eco-feminist poetics, and animal studies. She is also editor of Cold Mountain Review, a literary journal founded at ASU in 1972.
Dr. Kirkpatrick’s workshop will be entitled “Running Aground: When Poets Get Stuck, and will offer suggestions for cultivating flexibility in our creative lives, especially in response to getting stuck in writing projects. Participants will address how their subjects might be asking us for a change of poetic form and how a shift in the circumstances of their lives invite them to engage in a different writing practice. Participants are asked to bring the draft of a poem over which they feel they’ve run aground so that they can work to get themselves back into the creative flow.
Poetry Day will also include an Open Mic (limited to 10 participants) and book sales for NC Poetry Society members in attendance.
Poetry Day is sponsored by the North Carolina Poetry Society and Lenoir Rhyne University
Readings are free and open to the public. Workshops cost $10 each. Register by contacting Scott Owens (828) 234-4266 or asowens1@yahoo.com
Scott Owens www.scottowenspoet.com www.scottowensmusings.blogspot.com www.poetryhickory.com www.wildgoosepoetryreview.com www.234journal.com www.ncpoetrysociety.org
