POETRIO: MARY ADAMS AND RHETT ISEMAN TRULL

Mary Adams reads from Commandment at this month's Poetrio.

Every month Malaprop's Bookstore features Poetrio, a gathering of poets, usually three, reading from their work on a Sunday afternoon. This month two of the featured poets were friends,

Mary Adams and Rhett Iseman Trull, along with William Swarts, someone I had the pleasure to meet at the reading. Mary's chapbook Commandment was published last fall by Spring Street Editions in Sylva, and Rhett's first book The Real Warnings was published recently by Anhinga Press.

Mary has been a friend for many years, first as a colleague at WCU and later as, well, a friend and sister poet, animal lover, and partaker of wine and pizza whenever we can get together. Her fist book, Epistles from the Planet Photosynthesis, was published by the U. of Florida Press. She is also a Milton scholar and expert in just about everything literary. I've devoted several posts to her, so I'll include the links-- http://kathrynstriplingbyer.blogspot.com/search?q=Mary+Adams. You may order her chapbook and her full length collection from City Lights Bookstore.

Rhett is editor par excellence of the new poetry journal Cave Wall, which she manages with her fabulous husband Jeff. She's a graduate of the MFA program in writing at UNC-Greensboro and a favorite of my ole friend Fred Chappell. I featured her as Poet of the Week last year on my laureate blog, so if you want to read more, which you certainly should, you should go to http://ncpoetlaureate.blogspot.com/2009/04/poet-of-week-rhett-iseman-trull.html

The third poet was William Swarts, whose book Strickland Plains has just been released. I'd not met Bill till this Sunday, but I can tell you that he will be the featured guest at Coffee With the Poets at City Lights Bookstore in the fall.

Here are some photos from this Sunday's Poetrio. Many thanks to Alsace and Virginia for making this series so enjoyable!

Mary responding to an unseen interrogator!

Mary's lovely mother Betty, on hand to hear her daughter read.

Rhett talks with members of the audience after her reading.

Rhett Trull signs the Malaprop's reader's registry.



In a dark cafe the author and friends drink to the publication of her chapbook and her reading at Malaprop's. (Actually it's Jack of the Woods, and it's dark because my flash wasn't working.)

Reading with Friends this Weekend

Mary Adams


I'm looking forward to this weekend when I get to read with three friends--Cecilia Woloch, Mary Adams, and Julia Nunnally Duncan. On Saturday Night, Cecilia, Mary and I come together at City Lights in Sylva to flaunt our new books. Mary's Commandment is hot of the press at Spring Street Editions. An NEA Fellow in writing, she saw her first book, Epistles from the Planet Photosynthesis, published by The University of Florida Press.

On Sunday, December 6, 2009, Malaprop's Bookstore/Café (55 HaywoodStreet in downtown Asheville, NC) will host poets Kathryn StriplingByer reading from ARETHA'S HAT: INAUGURATION DAY, 2009; Julia NunnallyDuncan with AN ENDLESS TAPESTRY and new, unpublished poems; andCecilia Woloch, author of CARPATHIA.

Julia Nunnally Duncan writes both poetry and fiction. She has
previously published two collections of stories and a novel, and her
second novel, WHEN DAY IS DONE, is just out from March Street Press.
Her Appalachian poems have appeared in scores of literary journals,
and her first published collection of poetry, AN ENDLESS TAPESTRY
(2007), was named a finalist for the 2008 Roanoke-Chowan Award for
Poetry. She recently completed the manuscript for a second collection
of poems, AT DUSK. Rob Neufeld, book columnist for The Asheville
Citizen-Times, wrote of Julia Nunnally Duncan that she is one of four
Western North Carolina "poets to watch." He remarked that her poems
"make the greatest possible use of line breaks, so that individual
phrases glow like haiku observations. Metaphors develop naturally and
emotionally." In a recent article in North Carolina Literary Review,
Jeffrey Franklin observed of AN ENDLESS TAPESTRY, "Duncan always makes
the place solid, the people real, the situation, in all its emotional
complexity and perilousness, rendered with a deceptive simplicity that
quietly resonates. . . .[Her] people are as recognizably human as any
in Shakespeare[.]" Like our other readers for December 6, Julia
Nunnally Duncan is at once a dedicated writer and an experienced
teacher; she has served as a full-time English instructor at McDowell
Community College for nearly two and a half decades. At Malaprop's,
she will read selections from AN ENDLESS TAPESTRY and from her
manuscript, AT DUSK.

CARPATHIA is Cecilia Woloch's fifth poetry collection. Published in2009, it went into a second printing about two months after itsofficial publication date. Natasha Trethewey, Pulitzer Prize-winningpoet, has written of CARPATHIA, "The poems . . . are guided by anexquisite lyricism and heartbreaking emotional honesty. . . . This isa gorgeous book by a poet who is passionately alive in the world."Cecilia Woloch has traveled widely and taught just as widely, offeringpoetry workshops for children and adults across the United States andin several locations abroad. She serves as a lecturer in creativewriting at the University of Southern California and is foundingdirector of the Paris Poetry Workshop. The recipient of numerousawards for her writing, teaching and theatre work, in 2009 alone,Cecilia Woloch has been recognized as a finalist in the CaliforniaBook Awards of The Commonwealth Club of California for her 2008chapbook, NARCISSUS; as a finalist for the Pablo Neruda Prize inPoetry at Nimrod; as the first prize winner of the New Ohio ReviewPrize in Poetry; and as a Fellow at the Center for InternationalTheatre Development/US Artists Initiative in Poland.
Please join us in welcoming three distinguished poets on December 6,and begin your holiday season with poetry!

Poetrio: Kathryn Stripling Byer, Julia Nunnally Duncan, Celia WolochSunday, December 6, 2009, 3:00 p.m.Malaprop's Bookstore/Café55 Haywood StreetAsheville, NC 28801(828) 254-6734http://www.malaprops.com/