Henderson County Open Mic Night features poet Kimberly Sims; event is changed to January 22, 2018, due to the MLK holiday

Subject: Open Mic Night date change and guest reader 

Dear Writing Friends, 

As I announced at our last meeting, because of Martin Luther King Day, the library will be closed on January 15, which is the 3rd Monday of the month, so we will be having our open mic night, same time, same place, on the following Monday, January, 22. 

Open mic sign up will begin as usual at 5:30 pm. Then, we will have a special reading by Kimberly Simms, who was the poet-in-residence at Carl Sandburg house a couple of years ago. She will be reading from her new book that was featured in an article by Bold Life magazine--Lindy Lee: Songs on Mill Hill. Here is a link to the article: http://www.boldlife.com/threading-life-work/#comment-6897

Following the reading will be our regular open mic readings--3 minutes for poetry and 5 for prose. We will need to adhere more strictly to the time limit this month, so please read over your selection several times and be sure it adheres to the time limit. 

Hope to see you at our special evening to start off a year of Henderson County's Literary Open Mic Nights--a function of the North Carolina Writers' Network-West. 

Katie Winkler

Co-Representative,

NCWN-West, Henderson County

The Writers' Workshop of Ashville, NC is sponsoring its 29th Annual Poetry Contest, deadline is February 28, 2018

 The Writers’ Workshop of Asheville, NC, is sponsoring its 29th Annual Poetry Contest,  open to any writer regardless of residence.  The guidelines are also posted at theirwebsite, www.twwoa.org.  For questions, email writersw@gmail.com or call 828-254-8111.

29th Annual Poetry Contest

Deadline: Postmarked by Feb. 28, 2018

Awards:

1st Place: Your choice of a 2 night stay at The Mountain Muse B&B in Asheville; or 3 free online workshops; or 10 poems line-edited and revised by our editorial staff.

2nd Place: Two free workshops; or 8 poems line-edited.

3rd Place: One free workshop, or 5 poems line-edited.

10 Honorable Mentions

Guidelines:

All work must be unpublished. Each poem should not exceed two pages.

Multiple entries are accepted.

Your name, address, phone email and title of work should appear on a separate cover sheet.

The entry fee is $25 for every 3 poems. All entries receive comments from the judges.

Enclose self-sealing SASE for comments and winners' list, and mail to: 
Poetry Contest, 387 Beaucatcher Road, Asheville, NC 28805

Emailed submissions may be sent to writersw@gmail.com with "Poetry Contest" in the subject.

Entry fee is payable online at www.twwoa.org.

_____

Karen Ackerson, Exec. Director
The Writers' Workshop
387 Beaucatcher Rd.
Asheville, NC 28805

828-254-8111
www.twwoa.org

The Ashes Are Falling by William Everett

I am re-posting this blog post by William Everett. He is a member of NCWN-West and writes an interesting blog each week. He is author of fiction and nonfiction and is also, a poet. I think you will like it.

Posted on December 27, 2017 by William Everett

Living in one of the world’s great temperate hardwood forests, I become familiar with the trees around me. Not all, by any means, because we have such an expanse of species, but I do know those that can be transformed into the bowls, turnings, cabinetry, and sculpted artifacts that release their beauty and strength into our realm of use or beauty. Trees talk to each other, support each other in the wind, share their resources, and dance their seasons of green, gold, red, grey, and brown. Some became old friends whose signs of age raise our concern, whose loss of limb or crown distress us, or whose seedlings volunteer to fill the spaces left by those long gone.

Over the centuries, they have adapted to their environment and the slow epochal changes of ice ages and hot or humid times. They live at an evolutionary pace. But we humans have dragged them into the faster tempo of our history. As we have spread across the globe, we have brought sicknesses and parasites that have overcome their natural resistance. The chestnut blight from China reduced the mighty chestnut to struggling sprouts among the stumps that testify to their former glory. The Dutch elm disease took down those stately witnesses to our streets and parks. The wooly adelgid decimated our balsams. The hemlock adelgid is still making its way through the moist coves and stream beds of these mountains. And now the emerald ash borer has made its way to us from Michigan, where it arrived from Asia in some wooden pallets. Sometimes, given time, the trees can stimulate their own resistance, but other times we lose them entirely, except for specimens in labs and arboretums.

We identify with these trees. They inspire us with their strength. patience, and endurance. Tended well, they supply us with things of use and beauty. This winter we will have to cut down one of our friends, whom the borer is reducing to a skeleton. I share with you my lament as we watch its demise, among many others, and hope that some of it can find its way into a new life.

My ash trees are dying,

            their leaves are faces of grief,

            they are weeping bark,

            my saw is chewing them into firewood,

            they are rendered into ashes in our stove,

            I am turning their limbs into plates and bowls,

            their trunks into table legs and planks..

The emerald beetle eating out their life

            rings their trunks with burrows for its larva,

            girdling them with living death.

The borers will move on,

            the ash their only home.

They do not know

            of baseball bats and tables,

            rakes and chairs and hoes.

They eat,

            lay eggs,

            hatch,

            and leave destruction in their wake.

Why do I stand among the ashes in amazement?

Did we not bring these predators?

Is our destruction not the same?

Will there be survivors

            who will weep for me?

Thank you, Bill, for allowing us to re-post this on the NCWN-West blog. 

Learn more about Bill Everett on his site: http://williameverett.com/about-me/

In my teaching career I authored eight books and numerous articles in social ethics and religion. After over thirty years of academic work — in Germany, India, and South Africa as well as in the United States — I wanted to turn my hand to writing that was more poetic and expressive. I also wanted a more viable balance between my work with words and my work with wood, especially furniture for worship settings. For more about my woodworking, go to www.WisdomsTable.net, where you will also find galleries of artwork by my wife Sylvia, whose ancestors were the original inspiration for Red Clay, Blood River.    ----William Everett