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Congratulations to the winners of the 2012 NCPS Annual Contests!

The full list of Adult Contest winners is on our Winning Poets page, at http://www.ncpoetrysociety.org/winners.

The list of Student Contest winners is on the Student Winners page: http://www.ncpoetrysociety.org/student-winners

We’ll look forward to hearing all of the winning poems read on Awards Day in Southern Pines in May!

A Capella Trio to Delight at Sam Ragan Day
by Lisa Zerkle, VP Programs

The Sam Ragan Day Meeting will be a meeting of music and poetry workshops, as we meet on Saturday, March 24 in Southern Pines to remember the great North Carolina poet Sam Ragan.

Fleur-de-Lisa, a Durham-based a cappella trio comprised of Sarah Kenan Shunk, Deborah Stewart, and Sylvia Freeman, will perform. They write all their own music using lyrics by published poets, many of them North Carolina poets. Since they come from different musical backgrounds, they bring many disciplines together in their music, including jazz, rock, classical and country.

Their first CD Willow Songs was based on haiku by North Carolina poets from a book Underneath the Willow Tree. Since then they have used longer poems in their music and have a second CD The Unworn Necklace available for purchase. In 2010 they won a best original song award in the Mid-Atlantic Harmony Sweepstakes competition. The winning song was written by Sarah Kenan Shunk to words by haiku poet Roberta Beary. You can find out more and hear samples of their work at www.haikusongs.com.

Afternoon Workshops with Diana Pinckney and Katherine Soniat

Members will have the choice of two workshops featuring acclaimed poets Diana Pinckney and Katherine Soniat. Read on to learn which program will best jumpstart your writing.

• Workshop for the Persona Poem – Diana Pinckney

  Whether we call this type of poem persona or dramatic monologue, we will explore the ways to create other worlds by writing in the voice of another. Using hand-outs and examples from master poets of earlier eras, contemporary writers of today and various drafts of her own poems,
  Diana looks forward to an exchange of ideas in finding the different ways to create poems that allow the voices of others to speak through us and us through them.

• What We Write About When We Look at War and Peace – Katherine Soniat

  These two words are huge concepts which can encompass our personal lives and also refer to the world at large. Using a selection of appropriate poems from The Swing Girl, we will determine ways in which you can write a poem about chaos or calm. The technique of using quick intense imagery to create poetry offers your reader both panorama and startling invention. Come join in this exciting process!

• Diana Pinckney has published poetry and prose in such journals and magazines as Southern Poetry Review, Cream City Review, Tar River Poetry, Cave Wall, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Icarus International, Atlanta Review, Green Mountains Review, Main Street Rag, Kalliope, Iodine, Asheville Poetry Review, Calyx, RHINO, Charlotte Viewpoint Magazine, The Pedestal Magazine.com, Creative Loafing and many others. Her chapbook, Fishing With Tall Women, won North Carolina’s 1996 Persephone Press Book Award and South Carolina’s Kinlock Rivers Memorial Chapbook Contest. Nightshade Press, Troy, Maine, published her second book of poems, White Linen, in 1998. Alchemy, the third collection was published by Main Street Rag Publishing Co., Charlotte, N.C. in 2004. Her full-length collection, Green Daughters, was released by Lorimer Press, Davidson, N.C. in April, 2011.
• Katherine Soniat is originally from New Orleans and has taught at the University of New Orleans, Hollins University, and for 20 years as a member of the faculty at Virginia Tech. Now a resident of Asheville, she teaches in the Great Smokies Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. She is a widely-published and widely-traveled poet in whose work a sense of place and an immersion in a variety of cultures are central. She has published work in such journals as the Iowa Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, New Letters, and Quarterly West. THE SWING GIRL is her fifth collection of poems and was published earlier this year; it will be followed in 2012 by a sixth, A RAFT, A BOAT, A BRIDGE.

For more information, including a tentative schedule, and directions to the Weymouth Center in Southern Pines, see our page at http://www.ncpoetrysociety.org/events.

by Lisa Zerkle, VP Programs

Skilled kayakers seek to join the current, become one with the water, enjoy the trees and riverbanks as they glide past. But sometimes joining the current becomes an exercise in frustration as you hit a rock or get thrown off course into an eddy. Poets know writing can offer the same thrills and frustration. There’s nothing quite like writing when it’s going well, but the eddies challenge.

Together with generous support from Friends of Weymouth, the Poetry Society is pleased to welcome poet (and kayaker) Lola Haskins as our featured reader and presenter for the January meeting. A prolific and gifted writer, Ms. Haskins will read some of her recent work in the morning session and lead us in a workshop in the afternoon. She will use examples from her own rough drafts to show us how to best navigate into the current in our poetry. Her tenth book of poetry, The Grace to Leave is forthcoming from Anhinga Books. Her ninth book, Still, the Mountain, won the Silver Medal for Poetry in the 2010 Florida Book Awards. She is the author of a book of poetry advice, Not Feathers Yet: A Beginner’s Guide to the Poetic Life and teaches in the low residency MFA at Pacific Lutheran University.

Haskins excels at collaboration, working with dancers, actors, musicians and visual artists. Some of her collaborations include a performance called “Forty-Four Ambitions for the Piano” and Solutions Beginning with A, a book of fables about women illustrated by Maggie Taylor, among many others. Please join us as we hear Lola Haskins’ poetry in the morning and learn from this multi-talented artist in the afternoon.

For the Right Brain: Creative Strategies for Poets

Later in the afternoon, it’s a switch to the right side of the brain to learn about smart strategies for promoting yourself on the web. In the Creative Strategies for Poets workshop, Kevin Watson, founding editor of Press 53, will discuss the many opportunities writers have to be seen and heard. Social media offers numerous ways to reach your readers, but how much is too much? Watson will discuss how to best use social media to promote yourself and your work.

Kevin Morgan Watson is founder of Press 53 and serves as Editor in Chief with a special focus on Short Stories and Poetry. As a publisher, he has worked with writers ranging from first-time published authors to winners of the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize. As a writer, his short stories, poetry, and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including the 2002 TallGrass Writers Guild/Outrider Press anthology Take Two—They’re Small, where his short story “Sunny Side Up” won first prize. Press 53 is an independent publisher of literary fiction, poetry and non-fiction located in Winston-Salem, NC. Their impressive internet presence can be found at www.press53.com and on Facebook.

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Coming in March: Sam Ragan Festival
A Sneak Peek
On March 24, 2012, the Sam Ragan Festival continues the celebration of the Poetry Society’s 80th year with readings and workshops from poets Diana Pinckney (Green Daughters) and Katherine Soniat (Swing Girl). During open mic, we’ll honor instrumental NCPS members by reading their poems. And it wouldn’t be the Sam Ragan Festival without music. We hope you’ll join us for the fun!

The time is here to  start thinking about submitting to the NCPS 2012 Poetry Contests! February 1, 2012 is our deadline, and that may seem like a long way away, but time flies.

The NC Poetry Society has two categories of contests:

• our Adult Contests (find the guidelines here).
• our Student Contests, which includes students grade 3 all the way up to university undergraduates (find those guidelines here).

Winners and honorable mentions of all of our contests receive a free copy of Pinesong, our annual awards anthology book, and an invitation to read at the Awards Day meeting, on May 19, 2012 in Southern Pines.

Submission to all of these contests is completely free for NCPS Members (except for the Poet Laureate Award, which is still a bargain at $5), and reasonably-priced for non-members. So go ahead and dig out your favorite poems to submit. You never know which one might be a winner!

We also sponsor the Brockman-Campbell Book Award for books published in 2011. You can read the guidelines on the Brockman-Campbell page, here. Entries for this award are due on May 1, 2012.

Join us at the upcoming Fall Meeting of the NCPS!

NCPS Fall Meeting
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities
Southern Pines, NC
For directions to the Weymouth Center, see this page.

Featuring the Brockman-Campbell Book Award winners and the North Carolina Writers’ Network Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition winners, and an afternoon talk from Keith Flynn.

The morning will feature readings by the 2011 Brockman-Campbell Book Award winner, Peter Makuck, and Malaika King Albrecht and Joe Mills, two of the poets selected as honorable mentions.

We’ve also invited the winner and honorable mentions in the 2011 Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition, sponsored by the North Carolina Writers’ Network (NCWN), to read. The poem “I Am the Girl” by Dannye Romine Powell was chosen, from almost 100 entries, as the winning poem by acclaimed poet Dan Albergotti.

After lunch, Keith Flynn will lead a discussion about the evolving ole of new media as it relates to the poetry world.

Before and after lunch, we’ll continue the open mic tradition, and we’ll end the day with a reception and book signing for the Brockman-Campbell Book Award and Randall Jarrell honorees and Keith Flynn.

Visit our events page for a full schedule, a writeup on the day’s events, and more about the afternoon workshop from Keith Flynn.

And after the meeting, Keith Flynn is giving a workshop in nearby Aberdeen, NC. Check out the local events page for more information about this event.