Netwest at the Coffee House in Hayesville - a writer's evening, for sure.

We had a great time at The Corner Coffee and Wine Shop in Hayesville, NC last evening. In spite of a concert on the square, Brent Martin NCWN-West Rep from Franklin, NC and Ben Cutler, NCWN-West Rep from Swain County impressed a room full of writers and story-tellers with their poems and essays. We all enjoyed getting to know both of these fine, award-winning writers.

An Open Mic session was held and five people read poems, stories, or told a story.

We gave away two door prizes which we do also at Coffee with the Poets and Writers. None of the winners were members. We hope they will come back to other events held by NCWN-West.

Glenda Beall, Brent Martin and Ben Cutler

Joan Howard reads a poem at the Corner Coffee Shop where NCWN-West held a reading on Friday night, July 26. In front row are Mary Ricketson, Bob Grove and Don Long, members of NCWN-West. 

This was a well-received event and I hope, if we do this again in this venue, we will have more members participate. Wine and Coffee are available for purchase here. We can bring in food if we want. I like this venue and so do others I have heard from. 

You Want to Be Here - Brent Martin and Ben Cutler at the Corner Coffee and Wine Shop Friday evening, 6:30 PM - Hayesville, NC

Review by Lawrence Holden
  of Brent Martin's poetry.

An old woman watches television in "her beat up house trailer/ the home old man Passmore built / next door sinking into the weeds" as the poet wanders her winter fields looking for pot shards - remnants of a lost past. In town a homeless man sells weeds, bouquets of common clover he's pulled from cracks in the sidewalk, holding out a bouquet "so delicately he could be holding a baby," saying "this one is called Everyday People."

Walking old Indian mounds, two friends recite together Robinson Jeffers' defiant poem "Shine, Perishing Republic," "his hand slapping my back for emphasis, / where water now flows in rivulets / down upon the abandoned rail lines..." Such poems take us lovingly to a place most of us already know within ourselves - the place where we struggle to come to terms with circumstances of loss, impending change, a world in the harsh throes of modernity, and yet, unaccountably, still nascent with hope.

Downriver

by Brent Martin

The Ferryman tells me to fish downriver,
the crusty bastard, standing on his porch
cursing everything upstream.

He curses the town a while,
then he curses its conservative
church going citizens,

and as he is waving like the Queen
as I depart in my little red boat,
he tells me that Jimmy Sang

has been catching redeyes in the evening,
smallmouth in the afternoon.

You gotta Fish them v's though, the spot where the water
funnels through them old fish weirs.

Old angry and happy ferryman
with your bright river rolling on
birthing your final somber days.

Downriver, he says again, downriver.
Fish them v's and to hell with upstream.

Brent Martin & Benjamin Cutler to read 7/26/2019, Hayesville, NC at 6:30 PM, at the Corner Coffee and Wine Shop

Diane Lockward of Terrapin Books says:

I'm happy to tell you that A Constellation of Kisses is almost here! I could not be happier with this anthology. So many wonderful poets and poems. The official release date is July 15, but the book is available now for pre-order at Amazon where it's discounted at 30%. By the way, in case you've ever wondered, Amazon sets discounts, not the publisher. Amazon may drop or change the discount at any time, but the pre-order discount is guaranteed.

Please keep in mind that Terrapin Books will be open for submissions of full-length poetry manuscripts from August 1 thru August 31. I look forward to reading some wonderful collections. Mark your calendar. And of course, read the Guidelines.

Diane

Author P.C. Zick Featured at Coffee with the Poets and Writers

           

Coffee with the Poets and Writers (CWPW) will feature best-selling author P.C. Zick on Wednesday, July 17, at 10:30 a.m. at the Moss Memorial Library in Hayesville, NC. The event is free and open to the public. 

An open mic will follow her presentation. Bring a poem or a short prose piece to participate. CWPW is sponsored by North Carolina Writers’ Network-West (NCWN-W) which also includes writers in Towns, Union, Fannin, and Rabun Counties in Georgia.

Ms. Zick writes in a variety of genres, including romance, contemporary fiction, and creative nonfiction. She's won various awards for her essays, columns, editorials, articles, and fiction. Her novels range from environmental sagas set in Florida to contemporary romances with a variety of backdrops from Florida to Chicago to Long Island to the mountains of North Carolina. Her nonfiction writing includes books on gardening, travel, and writing.

 She wrote the four novels in her Smoky Mountain Romance series after moving to Murphy, North Carolina, several years ago. Drawing on the mountain view from her cabin, she fashioned a community of people who find hope and love in southwestern North Carolina. Strangers become friends and friends become family in the fictional town of Laurel. Local readers will easily recognize the landmarks in and around Cherokee and Clay counties.

With strong characters, inspiring settings, and surprising plot twists, Ms. Zick imparts her love of family and nature in all her writings. She and her husband enjoy gardening, kayaking, golfing, and exploring waterfalls and mountain vistas throughout western North Carolina. It all serves as her inspiration for creating stories that express her philosophy of living lightly upon this earth with love, laughter, and passion.

            For more information about this event, please contact Glenda Beall: glendabeall@msn.com.

Memoirist & Poet at Writers' Night Out, July 12

 Reading + Open Mic in Blairsville GA

“I know I was a male Chauvinist pig in a past life, 

and they made me come back as a woman in corporate America.” 

- Victoria Barkan in The Monkeys Rule

Writers' Night Out

Friday, July 12

7 pm 

reading followed by open mic

Featured Readers:

Local poet, actor, student Ryvers Stewart

Atlanta author Victoria Barkan 

Union County Community Center 

Blairsville, GA.

Victoria Barkan will read from her new memoir The Monkeys Rule, which covers her successes as well as the discrimination she faced in her 20-year career in the burgeoning, then booming, cable TV industry. Her story continues with her spiritual journey that helped her recover from the ordeal.

Barkan’s long career included 11 years at Cox Communications where she became Director of Marketing Operations. She also travelled the globe extensively as Cox’s consultant to Southwestern Bell in the UK. She is now writing her second book and also focusing on her art, with paintings in an upcoming art show in Alpharetta, GA. She has a BS in art education from Bowling Green University and painted the artwork on her current book’s cover.

Ryvers Stewart hails from Murphy, NC. She has written poetry since middle school, but in high school truly fell in love with it, as well as with acting. She is working on her Associates in Fine Arts degree at Tri-County Community College with graduation on track for 2020. Stewart is also an actress who performs locally. On the weekends she can be found participating in the roleplaying games, D&D and Pathfinder. She is currently working on her first poetry book.

Writers’ Night Out takes place on the second Friday of every month through November. Anyone wishing to participate in the open mic can sign up at the door to read three minutes of poetry or prose.

The Union County Community Center is located at Butternut Creek Golf Course at 129 Union County Recreation Rd., Blairsville, Georgia 30512, off Highway 129 near the intersection of US 76, phone (706) 439-6092. Food and drinks are available for purchase in The View Grill, but please arrive by 5:30 pm to get served.  

Writers meetings and workshops in July

MOUNTAIN WRITERS MEETING IN WAYNESVILLE, NC

1) From our idea man Bob: Our July meeting follows the July 4 weekend, so when we get together let’s talk about fireworks. Not the explosive kind, unless you’re speaking metaphorically. Let’s talk about passion and subtext and intrigue and how to inject those things into your story. We’ll borrow some advice from the romance writers, so that should be fun. Join us for “fireworks” at noon on Tuesday, July 9, at Panacea coffee shop for the next meeting of the Mountain Writers of North Carolina.

VALERIE NIEMAN

Novelist and poet

Saturday, July 6, 1:00 – 4:00 PM

Moss Memorial Library, Hayesville, NC

Under Pressure: Creating Complex Characters in Poetry and Prose

         You don't want to miss this great opportunity to get to know and to learn from a well-published writer of novels and poetry. She teaches at the JC Campbell Folk School and is a regular presenter at conferences. We are fortunate to have her come to our area and for such a nominal fee because she is sponsored by NCWN-West. Her novel, Red Clay, is one of my favorite books. Read about it on her website.

Nieman graduated from West Virginia University and Queens University of Charlotte. A former newspaper reporter and editor, she now teaches creative writing at North Carolina A&T State University and at venues ranging from the John C. Campbell Folk School to WriterHouse.

Valerie will have handouts and materials for poetry and prose writers. Check out her website: www.valerienieman.com   

Fee: $40.00         Contact Glenda Beall regarding registration. 828-389-4441 or glendabeall@msn.com

Coffee with the Poets and Writers - Wednesday, July 17, 10:30 AM, Moss Memorial Library, Hayesville, NC, featured writer, Patricia Zick, novelist and nonfiction writer.  Open Mic follows. Public is invited.

Quote from Joseph Bathanti, poet laureate of NC, 2012 - 2014

Accessibility

When I first started writing poetry as a high schooler, I adopted what I call “The Seven Layers of Enigma” model. I wrote a verse that I did not understand, but was sure that others would marvel at simply because it was so inscrutable. 

I wrote this way because I had found few poems – dished out to me in school by well-meaning teachers – that I understood in the vein that one understands prose. Once I began reading on my own and discovered poems and poets that used clear language that told stories, I was evangelized, and my poems became more narrative, more rooted in stories, often about working-class citizens, and much more accessible to hopefully everyone, including folks who don’t typically like poetry. Robert Lowell, in his poem, “Epilogue,” writes “Yet why not say what happened?” I ascribe to that.

I’m decidedly a narrative poet, although I don’t let that get in the way if I want to step outside those lines and fool around with other kinds of deliveries, and I’m also very fond of writing sonnets, as well as writing in other traditional forms. Nevertheless, I do find my central story in narrative because, at heart, I’m a storyteller. Robert Creeley once famously said, “Form is never more than an extension of content.” I do start a poem with a notion of style and shape, but tend to allow Creeley’s dictum to guide the ultimate temperament and form the finished poem will take.

Bathanti will be one of the presenters at A Day for Writers, August 24, in Sylva, NC at the Jackson County Public Library. 

The Changing Blue Ridge Mountains: Essays on Journeys Past and Present

If you love the southern Appalachians and Wendell Berry and Annie Dillard and Gary Snyder, read this beautifully written and deeply thought-provoking book.

--Charles Frazier, author of Cold Mountain

June 21, 7:00 PM, Macon County Public Library, Franklin, NC

 Brent Martin will read from his new book: The Changing Blue Ridge Mountains: Essays on Journeys Past and Present

Announcement of newest Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo

Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901 New York, NY 10038 info@poets.org

Please join us in congratulating our Chancellor Joy Harjo on being named our nation’s newest Poet Laureate! Harjo was elected an Academy Chancellor earlier this year and received the Academy’s Wallace Stevens Award for proven mastery in the art of poetry in 2015. As a poet, a teacher, and a literary leader Joy Harjo has touched many lives and many communities. She now has what is one of the largest platforms a poet can aspire to and it is a well-deserved honor. We're thrilled for Joy and for the nation on this historic appointment. We’ve enjoyed wonderful partnerships with our Poets Laureate. Since the position was created in 1937—a year after our organization was incorporated—more than half of the poets in this esteemed role have been Academy Chancellors. We look forward to continuing our tradition of celebrating our nation’s Poet Laureate and supporting Joy however we might. Read this special Q&A with Joy about her new role.  Learn more about Joy Harjo. Read poems by Joy Harjo.

DAVID JOY - novelist speaks in Waynesville, NC at Blue Ridge Books June 22nd

Saturday, June 22nd, 3:00 PM - BLUE RIDGE BOOKS - WAYNESVILLE, NC

Each year books are sold at the Friends of the Library Annual Meeting. This year’s speaker is a local author with international acclaim—David Joy. 

David has published 3 novels and a memoir, as well as numerous essays and stories for national publications such as The New York Times Magazine. Joy’s most recent novel, The Line that Held Us won the Southern Book Prize for fiction.

An excellent interview about David Joy who is a presenter for A Day for Writers.

https://www.newsobserver.com/living/article216273940.html

SUCCESSFUL MOVE TO COMMUNITY ROOM AT JCCFS FOR LITERARY HOUR

We had a good audience at the Literary Hour in the Community Room of the John C. Campbell Folk School Wednesday evening. With a larger venue there is more seating available and it is more comfortable than the chairs in the Library. We hope this will entice even more visitors to our monthly reading.

I could see that more JCCFS students attended, and we hope that trend will continue. Mary Ricketson was host and the three readers, Maren Mitchell, Ryvers Stewart and Richard Cary, all members of NCWN-West, were entertaining as they read their poetry.

As always we thank the John C. Campbell Folk School staff for setting up chairs and making us welcome.

We also appreciate the support of the Folk School through their advertising on our website and our blog. We reach out to writers around the world with our online presence including our Facebook Page.

We ask our readers to click on the John C. Campbell Folk School logo on the sidebar of this blog post. There you will see the writing classes offered at this venerable campus that attracts students from our local area, our state and from other continents.

Some of the best writers have taught at John Campbell Folk School for many years including the late poet laureate of NC, Kathryn Stripling Byer. Other poets were the late Nancy Simpson, outstanding poet and first Program Coordinator of NCWN-West.  Dr. Gene Hirsch taught poetry at the school for many years and is responsible for the Writing Program at JCCFS. Dr. Hirsch will be in Hayesville, NC on Wednesday, June 19, 10:30 AM at the Moss Memorial Library. Everyone is invited to come and hear him read at Coffee with the Poets and Writers.

Dana Wildsmith, Valerie Nieman, Karen Holmes, Rosemary Royston, Ruth Zehfus, R.T. Smith, Carol Crawford, and so many others have brought inspiration and knowledge to those of us who create with pen on paper or with a keyboard and monitor.  I, personally, owe my writing career to those teachers who have come here to the far western mountains of North Carolina, to the little town of Brasstown, to share their wisdom with us.


Valerie Nieman will teach a three hour session on Under Pressure: Creating Complex Characters at Moss Memorial Library, Hayesville, NC on Saturday, July 6, 1:00 - 4:00 PM.
Fee: $40 - pay to NCWN-West. Mail to PO Box 843, Hayesville, NC 28904

Read more from Val Nieman Here.

Joan Howard and Gene Hirsch are featured at CWPW June 19

Coffee with the Poets and Writers (CWPW) will feature poets Joan M. Howard and Eugene Z. Hirsch, MD, on Wednesday, June 19, at 10:30 a.m. at the Moss Memorial Library in Hayesville, NC. The event is free and open to the public. An open mic will follow their presentations. Bring a poem or a short prose piece to participate. CWPW is sponsored by North Carolina Writers’ Network-West (NCWN-W) which also includes writers in Towns, Union, Fannin, and Rabun Counties in Georgia.

           

Howard's poetry has been published in POEM, The Road Not Taken: The Journal of Formal Poetry, the Aurorean, Lucid Rhythms, Victorian Violet, the Wayfarer and other literary journals.  She published the book Death and Empathy: My Sister Web in 2017. Her latest book is Jack, Love and the Daily Grail.

Howard is a former teacher with an MA in German and English literature.  She is a member of the North Carolina Writers' Network West and North Carolina Writers Network.  She enjoys birding and kayaking on the beautiful waters of Lake Chatuge near Hiawassee, Georgia.

           

Hirsch has taught clinical medicine for forty years. During his career he volunteered at the Cleveland Free Medical Clinic, conducted poetry workshops for health professionals as a way of dealing with emotional stresses of patient care, and lectured medical students on death and dying. He has published two poetry books and assembled six anthologies. Dr. Hirsch has been a valuable asset to the local writing community for twenty-five years. His poetry has appeared in medical and non-medical journals. He received First Prize in the 2019 Westmoreland Cultural Society He instituted and taught poetry at the John C. Campbell Folk School and co-founded the NCWN-West with poet Nancy Simpson with whom he was a close friend for many years. Hirsch professes that Murphy, North Carolina, is his second home (perhaps even his first).

            For more information about this event, please contact Glenda Beall at: glendabeall@msn.com.

The Literary Hour Readings at John C. Campbell Folk School to feature poets Richard M. Cary, Maren O. Mitchell, and Ryvers Stewart, on Wed., June 12, 2019, in the Community Room

On Wednesday, June 12^, 2019, at 7:00 PM, John C. Campbell Folk School (JCCFS) and NC Writers' Network-West (NCWN-West) will sponsor The Literary Hour. At this event, NCWN-West members will read at the Keith House on the JCCFS campus, in Brasstown, NC. This event is now held in the community room. The Literary Hour is held on the third Thursday of the month unless otherwise indicated. This reading is free of charge and open to the public. This month's featured readers will be Richard Cary, Maren O. Mitchell, and Ryvers Stewart.

Richard Montfort Cary began writing poetry in high school and continues to this day. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 1964 with a BFA in Theatre Arts. He spent six years in regional theatres, before moving year-round to Nantucket Island MA, as a designer & builder of custom homes. In 1985, he founded Actors Theatre of Nantucket and served as Artistic Director for twenty years. Richard and his wife Cheryl moved from Asheville NC to Hayesville NC in 2017. 

Cary’s claim to fame is that his Great Aunt, Olive Dame Campbell, founded The John C. Campbell Folk School. Cary is currently editing over 60 years of his poetry for a collection.

Maren O. Mitchell, a North Carolina native, lived in Bordeaux, France, in her childhood, and in Kaiserslautern, Germany.  She now lives with her husband on the edge of a national forest in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia.

Mitchell has taught poetry at Blue Ridge Community College, Flat Rock, NC, and catalogued at the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site. For over thirty years, across five southeastern states, she has taught origami, the Japanese art of paper folding. 

Mitchell’s poems appear in The Cortland Review, The MacGuffin, POEM, The Comstock Review, Tar River Poetry, Poetry East, Hotel Amerika, Appalachian Heritage, The South Carolina Review, Southern Humanities Review, Appalachian Journal and elsewhere. Work is forthcoming in POEM, Slant, The Comstock Review, Poetry East and Chiron Review. Two poems, “X Is a Kiss on Paper” and “T, Totally Balanced,” have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. In 2012 she received 1^st Place Award for Excellence in Poetry from the Georgia Poetry Society. Her nonfiction book, Beat Chronic Pain, An Insider’s Guide, (Line of Sight Press, 2012), www.lineofsightpress.com is on Amazon. 

Ryvers Stewart has been writing poetry since middle school, but it was in high school she truly fell in love with it (and acting). She is in the graduating class of 2019 at Tri-County Community College with an Associates in Arts degree, she plans on graduating 2020 with an Associates in Fine Arts. 

On the weekends Stewart can be found playing D&D and Pathfinder. She is currently working on her first poetry book.

For more information on this event please contact Mary Ricketson at maryricketson311@hotmail.com.