COFFEE WITH THE POETS: LAURA HOPE-GILL, DEC. 16, IN SYLVA, NC

WHAT COULD MAKE A MORE BEAUTIFUL SEASON'S GIFT THAN THE SOUL TREE, A COLLECTION OF POEMS BY LAURA HOPE-GILL AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHN FLETCHER? COME MEET LAURA on DEC. 16 AT CITY LIGHTS BOOKSTORE IN SYLVA. SHE WILL READ FROM HER WORK AND SIGN HER BOOK FOR HOLIDAY GIVING.

(Published and printed in Asheville, North Carolina by Grateful Steps Publishing. )

LAURA HOPE-GILL will be at CITY LIGHTS BOOKSTORE THIS THURSDAY, DEC. 16TH, 10:30 a.m. to discuss her work. Please join us for coffee, tea, and pastries----and poetry by both Laura and attendees.

-- To say that Laura Hope-Gill and John Fletcher, Jr. have put together one of the most stunning books I've ever seen would be an understatement. Here is a collaboration that expands the definition of that word. It's a seamlessly interwoven collection of words and images that invite and inspire, in the the original meaning of that over-used term. Laura's poems show the depths of her poetic "inseeing, " as Rilke calls it, and Fletcher's photographs open up the landscape that Laura sings into being with her words. The Soul Tree speaks to the landscapes of internal and exterior reality. In this collection those two landscapes have found harmony through two artists working together in celebration of what they love.

Laura Hope-Gill is in the process of being certified as a Certified Applied Poetry Facilitator by the National Federation for Poetry Therapy, working under the mentorship of poet and psychotherapist Perie Longo. The Director of Asheville Wordfest, a free poetry festival which presents poetry as Citizen Journalism, she consciously pursues ways of revealing poetry’s relevance to every-day life and not merely an “art form” whose only use is to beautiful. The Soul Tree: Poems and Photographs of the Southern Appalachians (Grateful Steps, Asheville) is a collaboration with local photographer John Fletcher, Jr. and is an application of her vision of poetry as a conversation between inner and outer worlds. Renowned photographer John Fletcher has this to say about the beginnings of their collaboration. "After visiting my landscapes website in the spring of 2008, Laura replied with an email containing an attachment titled, 'The Soul Tree.' I was stunned after reading the poem, then I noticed that there were 35 more pages to the document. My jaw dropped a little lower each time I scrolled to the next poem…36 in all. I was speechless.Not only was her writing beautiful and poignant, but her poetry brought new life to the photographs. I was also quite overwhelmed by her choice of photos…not the pretty sunset pictures that most people like. She was inspired by the photos that were my favorites…the mysterious and more abstract images that I feel personify my experience and observations. Today I continue this pursuit by working as a staff photographer for the Asheville Citizen-Times, shooting weddings, and freelancing for regional and national clients including, USA Today, The Associated Press, MSNBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Asheville Chamber of Commerce."

Images and poems from The Soul Tree may be found at http://www.thsoultree.org/, along with ordering information and more about the two artists who have brought this lovely book into existence.

Here are two pages from the book.

THE GIFT OF POETRY FOR THE HOLIDAYS: Isabel Zuber's "Red Lily"

My friend Isabel Zuber has been writing poetry for many years. When I met her in 1977 at the Critz Writers Retreat with A.R. Ammons in Virginia, we felt an immediate bond. Isabel also wrote fiction, which I didn't know till a little later. She has published a novel, Salt, with Picador. Among her admirers are Ron Rash, Lee Smith, and Fred Chappell. Ron Rash considers SALT a novel that has not received the attention it deserves, that it will come to be seen as one of the best Appalachian novels from this period.

It's poetry, though, that I want to talk about today, because RED LILY, a collection of many of the poems Isabel has written over the years, has been published by Press 53 in Winston-Salem, NC. This is a splendid press, managed with energy and vision by Kevin Watson. And RED LILY is a splendid book. I am sharing some of favorite poems from this collection, so that you will be enticed to order copies for gifts, and if you don't already have a copy for yourself, then, what are you waiting for? Go to www.press53.com and click on all the right links to make your purchase.

Isabel was born and grew up in Boone, North Carolina, when it was a small town with few traffic problems. She graduated from Appalachian State University and received a master’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She has been a librarian, a small press publisher, a gardener, an inventive vegetarian cook, and a homemaker. She has served on the boards of the North Carolina Writers Network, the Salem College Center for Women Writers, and the Grassy Creek Neighborhood Alliance. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared inPoetry, The American Voice, The Small Farm, The Greensboro Review, The Arts Journal, Now and Then, Pembroke Magazine, The Laurel Review, The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Sandhills Review, Cave Wall, and other magazines. She has published two collections of poetry,Oriflamb, which won the North Carolina Writers Network chapbook prize, and Winter’s Exile, poems for her father. Her novel Salt was published by Picador in 2002 and was given the First Novel Award from Virginia Commonwealth University that year. She has received a Forsyth County Arts Council grant and, in 2009, a North Carolina Arts Council fellowship.

SOLSTICE

Longest night

the sacred sweep

from light to dark,

dark to light.

We draw the rhythm

of our breath

rise, fall, ease, flow.




In the kitchen

a woman sings

hymns of another

time, an earlier

faith, and a winter

rose blooms on

the window sill.

NIGHTWARD

A last enormous freedom

is to run into the dark,

barely enough day left

to see vague hydrangeas

massed along the drive and junipers up like spears

against the sky. Bound then in the dusk with all that

can be there light says is not.

Rush the yard on grass-lashed,

bug-bit legs, turn round

and round till stars collide

with spires, breaking the

huge dinning noise

of all those tiny voices. Such venture is less, or more,

than brave, for dew’s sweet

or bitter, and there’s always

the lighted doorway and

the sense that if one runs

far and hard enough

there are arms in the darkness also.

Guided, a Path

My fields, he said, my land
and increase for my kind,
flung his arms over rows and rows
of autumn gathering
under a sharp, clear sky,

but the downward beckoned.
When someone waved in silence
from the edge of the woods
he went to see, following
the bare curved track

through yellowed stubble
into forest, into soundless dark
and then, seduced, he never stopped,
not even when leaves,
trees, branches, light

all vanished and
she came in gold
bearing a cradle
under a silken weaving
of webbed and circling flowers.

Lifting a corner, the golden beast
showed him the infant curled
inside, small, glowing, no
shape he could name
and yet he knew

contained therein
was all he had ever been
and all that he would be again
and that everything
every thing is kin.

Bane and Simples

A current physic
curses me, administered
without trial, insight,

for recovery or else.
I war among prescriptions,
tear off labels, jumble

pills. It doesn't matter.
Some remedy or other
will seek me. I can't hide.

Old practitioner,
wherever you believe,
is cure there? In plant,

dull bone, grass,
hank of hair, a touch,
the outlawed prayer?

They

After we had destroyed them all
we came to worship their art,
would sit for hours in conquered, fretted
doorways to watch the play of fountains
on paved courtyards, fondling the while
those carved stone dogs. We wrapped ourselves
in sinuous robes of a fabric we could
not name, hid our rough invaders' faces
behind bland masks with narrow plucked brows.
The smoke of pipes polished as water
curled from our nostrils. We drank
the bitterest, the most severe of all
their remedies, forgot our own memories.
Flute, drums moved our bodies in dances
we never made and in time we prayed
to the very gods who could not save them.

When the Queen

When the queen hurried to
the garden to plead for
her life her judges were

nearly assembled, a
cold stone whetting an edge.
Heads of tall gaudy gay

dahlias nodded beside
the thyme-scented path. By
stifling then a private

theology she put
hand to her embroidered
heart, swore eternal faith,

and spoke so fair she saved
herself while her soul shrank
to the size of a fine

silver thimble. Something,
she thought, almost that small
could hold all of her blood.

THE GIFT OF POETRY FOR THE HOLIDAYS: Janisse Ray's " A House of Branches"

Before she became the acclaimed author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, Wild Card Quilt and Pinhook, Janisse Ray was a poet, a calling she has never abandonedd. Nor has it abandoned her. How heartening, therefore, to see her first love given its full-throated voice in Waking in the Forest! These poems are indeed about waking up, looking around at the world, and discovering how to live within it. Often they seek relationship with that world, speaking to the birds, for example, and begging of them, "Oh kinglet, Oh oriole/tell us what you know.” Janisse Ray know show to listen to what our world has to tell us, and she knows how to transform that listening into language that kindles our imagination, which after all desires nothing less than to be utterly alive in our landscape. “No matter how rich/we become, or old,/ or unable, won’t /some part of us desire to weave/a basket in which to forage/the last of the grapes? “ the poet asks. Ray’s poems weave for us such a basket. They show us how to gather and cherish the things of this world.

To order this book, go to Wind Publications, where Charlie Hughes, poet and editor, runs one of our best regional small presses. Or for a signed copy, order directly from Janisse Ray, 895 Catherine T. Sanders Rd., Reidsville, GA 30453. $16 for paperback, $27 for hardback (includes shipping.)

(Janisse Ray talking with my brother, Charles Stripling, at the Joseph F. Jones Ecological Center in Baker County, Georgia)

Riding Bareback Through the Universe

The earth does not move steadily,

spinning at one speed through the heavens,

but with the motion

of a wild stallion at full gallop

across a painted desert,

which is sweep and fall, sweep and fall.

The earth is waltzing.

Its cloud-tail streams behind like a comet’s.

Not only the earth. Every heavenly body

once thought steady, plodding even,

flings itself along with senseless joy.

In the sky an ecstasy of stars

stampedes through the universe.

You and I ride standing

on the back of earth,

feet firmly planted, side by side,

our love for this life

so thunderous and billowing

so wild and powerful

we finally understand celestial motion.

Around us thousands of leaves

leap up and down on their stems

and summer flowerheads

surge with the wind.

Field Guide for Wildlife Clinics


The goshawks in their cages
do not wish to hear recordings
of the boreal forest, a particular
longing of wind in aspens, calls
of saw-whet owls and the skitter
of red-backed voles in leaves.

Nor do broken-winged warblers
in wicker baskets desire the
piped music of eastern deciduous
slopes in late spring, exaltations
of redstarts and thrushes, a honking
of cranes like sky-flowers.

Nor record for the swallow-tailed kite
staring with one good eye
the relief of waves lapping a beach
after migration, purl of dolphin, yaw
of curlew and boat-tailed grackle,
wind arranging black needlerush.

There is no returning.
Better to play Nina Simone, oh
children, go where I send you.
Or Van Morison, Etta Mae Baker.
In your own room, broadcast
swamp-moans while you sleep.

Secret


I know where
the ribbon snake
lives--
under the maple
by the barn.
One day when I
was there
a dead leaf
crackled like fire
and I saw her,
slip of green
I followed
around the waist
of the tree,
through already
dying grass.
When she turned
to face me, eyes
burning, she
studied me.
I -- wanting
to feel her softness,
her certainty, the stove
of her tiny heart –
touched one finger,
only one,
upon her perfect tail.
At that moment
the tree opened
and she wound
inside,
passageway
dark and narrow.
Long before
I turned away,
no doubt,
she lay
on her mat of earth
at the bottom
of the maple,
among the roots,
strip
of brilliant
kindling.

Boat Ride at Wakulla Springs

By lying about the fare and hustling them

past the ticket counter, we hoodwinked

our parents onto a flat-bottomed boat

that circles the Wakulla River.

They preferred a flea market, they said,

where you can take something home, until

the river wrapped its arms around them

like sleepy children. Disappearing sun

struck wide across the swamp, alligators

on high tussocks. Moorhens with scarlet

beaks scuttled among swaying grasses,

unchaining great pearls of apple snails.

Our father, on and off his feet, praised

the deer, anhingas with wings outspread,

water snake draped through wild roses,

gray log knotted with seven Suwannee cooters.

Wood ducks parted the blue pickerel-weed.

Turkey vultures, readying for night,

lowered by the dozens in easy loops, knitting

a black curtain slowly through the cypress.

When the ride ended, it was true.

We walked off the boat empty-handed.

THE GIFT OF POETRY FOR THE HOLIDAYS: Nancy Simpson's "Living Above the Frost Line"

December first and time to begin to think seriously about holiday gift-giving! Over the next two weeks I will be making recommendations for poetry lovers--and for those who think they don't like poetry but will change their minds once they read these books.

I will begin with my longtime friend and sister in the art, Nancy Simpson, whose Living Above the Frost Line: New and Selected Poems was published this fall by Carolina Wren Press. It's a beautiful, elegant book, with French flaps (a shawl-like dust jacket/cover) and cover image that is gorgeous. Just click on the image above to enlarge and see what I mean.

What's inside is even more beautiful, the better part of a poet's lifetime of work, illuminating in its passion for place and, yes, peace in the midst of so much ongoing war. I have known Nancy's work for over 3 decades, and my regard for her work shows, I hope, in the introduction I wrote for this book, a portion of which follows.

Nancy Simpson has enriched the literary community of North Carolina for over thirty years. Her work was first heralded by the late Richard Hugo when he read and celebrated her poems at the Callanwolde Literary Festival in Atlanta, shortly after she began to show her poetry around to friends and readers in the far reaches of western North Carolina. He praised her rich inner life and her ability to give expression to it as it manifested itself in her everyday life. Whether driving over the Nantahala Gorge in “Night Student,” expressing the complexity of self in “Driven into the interior,” or documenting the carnage of the first Gulf War in “Voices from the Fringe,” she brings the inner and outer worlds of her experience into a harmony that resonates like the current giving voice and shape to the mountain creeks she loves. Living Above the Frost Line: Selected and New Poems traces the growth of a poet determined to survive despite the obstacles raised by age, mortality, and the inevitable losses that come from being alive in this world. Through her poetry she greets that half-drowned woman, harking from her Florida girlhood, who appears as her muse in “Bridge On the River Kwai, “ bearing gifts of memory and sustaining images. In return the poet gives her “a mountain, the safest place to be.” Rarely has the relationship between poet and muse been so beautifully expressed.

Nancy, on the porch of her Cherry Mountain home.

I'm delighted to be able to offer several of my favorite poems.

Tanfastic

At 12:17 this Sunday

he is uninhibited

in front of God and

everybody traveling

I-75 South, a man

lounging in the bed

of his red pickup truck.

He is getting his tan

the fast way, 80 mph

stretched out

on his chaise lounge,

his black bikini

drawing the sun down.

He is holding a blue

tumbler in his hand.

I can only guess

what he is drinking.

I want to make a pass,

I mean, get past him

in this god-awful traffic.

I want to see

the face of the woman

at the steering wheel

who is taking him for a ride.

The Gleaners

In the last days of the age

word went out that women

therefore must be allowed

to participate in creation.

And there came forth an artist

calling to us, Come hither!

In the center of a cornfield

in Brasstown Valley,

she sculpted an assembly

of corn women. She fashioned

husk bodies, worked six days

making in her image. She dressed

the corn women in gauze gowns

and entwined eglantine in their

cornsilk hair. Come hither!

We entered the cornfield,

our capes waving

in the evening breeze. We

circled the corn women,

lit a circle of small fires

and danced in firelight.

In the morning we came forth

to sculpt, to paint, and to write

the story that is left to tell.

Looking For the Sons of My House

I am looking for the sons of my house,

grown from babies into boys,

three of them with dark brown eyes.

Where are they now? The one

who brought a snake down the hall

into my room. The one who

had to fall off the porch, to test every rule?

The young one who flew half-way

around the world to be my son?

Their bikes are wrecked, tossed

in the landfill with their outgrown shoes.

One day I saw they were no longer boys but men,

the one who drove me to night class in Asheville

when he was a teen, the same one

I stood with as mother of the groom.

Where are they now?

One whistles on a hillside, feeds his dogs.

One is stuck in rush-hour traffic, stuck

in a marriage I blessed. The young one

climbs today on a mountain in Switzerland.

All of them far from the mother house.

Skin Underwater

1.

From the top of the mountain we see

Town Valley submerged in clouds.

You say the word ‘ocean’ and a gull

flies from the branch of an oak,

squawks his squawk.

I know a lie when I see one.

Seagulls do not live in the mountains.

It is the woodpecker men call extinct,

alive, soaring above oaktops.

Now driving through fog in the valley

you show me things not seen before.

Men are swimming on the courthouse lawn.

Women stare fish-eyed from their gardens,

their mouths turned up.

2.

Barnacles collect on the pier.

Count one for every life you were young:

the schoolgirl, mute,

who spoke only underwater

hoping no one could decipher.

In water memories converge.

Shell is sharp to touch.

Seaweed is soft as hair, and skin

is the large sensor. Skin

keeps its own record of the day

you slit your forearm, diving

into green ocean at South Beach.

Look how barnacles bashed by waves

hold on. Some are encased in stone.

They could cut you bloody, Girl.

3.

Looking back I see my mother

was misinformed, promised an abortion

though it was illegal, five doctors

dead sure I was damaged, and certain

she would die if she gave birth.

She did sort of die, seeing me hideous

in her dream, seeing a ball of hair

bouncing in the room, in the afternoon

when she tried to rest.

I heard from her lips

how she fell down praying.

My mother was devout. I knew

she could not kill. Don’t you see?

I was in the best possible position.

A voice from a dream

Sleep again.

Dream yourself

on the north bank of the river

inconspicuous as deadwood.

Drift ashore

where grass glows at sunrise,

where light is found all day.

Dream a new body.

a blue robe, and you

walking home.

We stand over the carcass of a jellyfish.

It has given up the ghost, grown opaque.

Moon Jelly, I say, we knew you when

you lit the sky of the underworld.

And we count out loud the lines on its body

as if in counting we might learn

how long it lived in the ocean.

Gulls show interest in our arithmetic.

They circle. They fly down

to the sound of our voices.

Are we going to reach the end

of the island? Are we moving in a circle?

Light-headed we walk.

6.

It interests me seeing

the hermit scuttle away

with a moon shell for a new house.

Look how furrows of silt create

a frontal lobe. We are walking,

don’t you think, on gray matter?

I will always say yes

to almost everything you ask. Yes,

it is possible to imagine

intelligence beneath our feet.

7.

Evening turns out just as imagined.

We walk the length of the beach

and lie on the sand. We enter

the surf, our bodies submerging.

In hearing distance of a wave’s yes,

earth is a woman with plans.

What She Saw and What She Heard

On the mountain a woman saw

the road bank caved in

from winter’s freeze-thaw

and April rain erosion.

Trees leaned over the road the way

strands of hair hung on her forehead.

She gaped, her face as tortured

as the face she saw engraved in dirt.

Roots growing sideways shaped brows,

two eyes. Humus washed

down the bank like a nose.

Lower down, where a rock

was shoved out by weathering,

a hole formed the shape of a mouth.

The woman groaned, Agh!

Her spirit toppled

to the ground, slithered

under the roots of an oak.

She stood there asking

What? Who?

Back to reason, back home

she finished her questions:

What can one make of the vision, that face

on the north side of the mountain?

Reckoning comes, a thought:

It is not the image of a witch nor a god,

but Earth’s face, mouth open saying,

Save me.

Penn-Griffin Students Sweep Awards at Phoenix Literary Festival

Rachel Thompson, one of the Student Poet Laureate Award winners in this year's NC English Teacher's Association writing awards, has just received the prestigious Thomas Walter's Award for Literary Excellence. Her teacher, John York, has mentored many young writers over the past years, and Rachel is his third student to win the Walters Award. Rachel's first place poem follows the announcement below. Congratulations to all the students who were recognized for their writing and to John for being such a splendid teacher and poet.

John's Naming the Constellations was published this fall and has been featured on Verse Daily and on facebook's Spring Street Editions page. Follow the link above to read about his book and enjoy some poems from the collection.

Three students from Penn-Griffin school for the arts won prizes at the Phoenix Literary Festival at High Point University on November 19: Cameron Bello received an Honorable Mention for Poetry; Chelsea Hansen, an Honorable Mention for Poetry; and Rachel Thompson, an Honorable Mention for Short Story, First Place for Poetry, and the Thomas Walters Award for Literary Excellence.

The festival, an annual event, is sponsored by the HPU English Department. Students attend workshops led by area writers, as well as a reading by an outstanding writer from the state. This year’s reader was Daniel Wallace, who wrote the novel Big Fish and teaches at Carolina.

The Thomas Walters Award goes to that student who excels in both genres, poetry and fiction, and brings with it a substantial cash prize. The students from Penn-Griffin were sponsored by John York, who teaches English and creative writing at the arts magnet, which is part of Guilford County Schools.

He has published three poetry collections, most recently Naming the Constellations, published by Spring Street Editions of Sylva. Many of his students have won literary awards over the past decade, and Rachel is the third of his students to win the Walters Award.

Grow

His feet sprout roots

that lift him from the ground

till his hair is a cloud

and his limbs harbor finches.

His green fingers

stroke the air

as leaves fall from the sky.

Then the clouds are his tunic.

He pats the nest

on his head.

Birds chirp and jump

onto his fingers.

He grows and grows

till his eyes become stars

and he sees the Sahara

and the glowing North Pole.

He watches big movies:

the birth of a star,

the galaxy collision,

brilliant Andromeda.

He laughs as a comet

streaks his smile.

But the men don’t see stars

only flames, smoke.

He’s not one to mourn,

so he waves and smiles

as the men

torch his feet.

--Rachel Thompson,

Penn-Griffin School for the Arts,

High Point, North Carolina

NC STUDENT LAUREATE AWARDS FOR MIDDLE SCHOOL: LINDSEY DODGE, CAITLIN PARRIS, AND ABRIANNA BERRY

Macon Middle School in Franklin, NC, swept the Middle School category in our third annual NC English Teachers Association Student Poet Laureate Awards, judged by Cathy Smith Bowers, our state Poet Laureate. They are receiving their awards today at the annual conference held at Wake Forest University. Falecia Metcalf was our Second Prize winner last year. Addie Fairchild has been among the winners of the Mount Jefferson State Park's annual poetry contests. Congratulations to these five young poets!

Abrianna Berry, Caitlin Parris, and Lindsey Dodge, Macon County Middle School








First Prize: TIE


Everything




Everything is the same
Her clothes still hang in the closet
Pictures sit there gathering dust
There's still her place on their bed
Pawpaw doesn't disturb


by Lindsey Dodge, Macon Middle School, Franklin, NC




Kathy


I loved to watch her
in her big sun hat,
wiping the sweat
from her face,
kneeling on the ground
like she was praying.


The flowers she planted
were the most beautiful things
I have ever seen.


When she watered them,
the water would dance across them,
the sun shining over them.




Caitlin Parris
Macon Middle School








Second:


Squirrel Hunting With My Dad


We went up the mountain where
My dad hunted when he was little.
It was cold, the wind
Whipping up the holler, trees shaking.
Me and Daddy went to the top of the mountain.
We sat down and waited and had
A silent talk.


*******
by Abrianna Berry, Macon Middle School




Honorable Mention:




Child of the Wind,

by Falecia Metcalf, N. Buncombe Middle School, Weaverville


Sing to me,
with a soft melody.
Talk to me,
as if to a child.
Comfort me,
as if I were yours,
because in my heart
I am.
Whisper to me,
with words of joy.
I belong right here,
spinning around and around.
Guide me,
with a helping hand.
Lead me,
for without that
I'd be lost forever.
Stop me,
and make me think clearly.
I've always felt this way
no way to make it stop.
Not always in this place,
but always remembering
that special feeling
of belonging
I'm always look for.
Cradle me;
I'm yours,
a child of the Wind



I FEEL THE SEASONS (Mount Jefferson)


I feel the winter coldness on my face,
the trees that cover me are all frozen
My nose is frozen.
The air is windy

The snow is all around me.

I feel the spring breeze through my hair,

From the bottom up I'm green all over.

Animals waking everywhere,
Flowers swaying along with the wind,
Flowers all around me.

I feel the summer sun on my shoulders,

People climbing to my peak.

The fiery warmth touches me day and night,

Picnics on my tree covered skirt,

Fireflies all around me.
I feel the chill through my ruffled coat,

As time changes, days get shorter.

Leaves are falling through the brisk air,

The temperature is dropping down low,
Bright Colors all around me.



Addie Fairchild
6th grade, Westwood Elementary
Jefferson, NC