NCPS Meetings are held at the Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities, in Southern Pines, NC. For Directions to Weymouth, see our directions page.
We also sponsor a monthly reading series in the spring, summer, and fall, in Chatham County. For more information about that, visit NCPS Readings at McIntyre’s Fine Books.
Upcoming NCPS Meetings:
Sam Ragan Day
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities, Southern Pines, NC
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), and an a capella performance from the trip Fleur-de-Lisa. During open mic, we’ll honor instrumental NCPS members by reading their poems. We hope you’ll join us for the fun!
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.
Schedule:
9:15 Registration; lunch orders ($10, cash or check payable to 195) until 10:15 am — or bring your own lunch; coffee, tea, and snacks. Sign up for afternoon workshops.
10:00 Business meeting with Priscilla Webster-Williams, President, presiding
10:15 Fleur de Lisa performance
11:15 Break
11:20 Commemorative open mic – read a poem from an NCPS member you’d like to honor
12:00 Lunch & socializing, enjoy the gardens and book room
1:00 Reading – Katherine Soniat
1:15 Poetry & Music – Diana Pinckney and Bill Blackley
1:30 Workshops
2:30 Open Mic
3:00 Announcements/adjourn
NCPS Awards Day
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities, Southern Pines, NC
NCPS Fall Meeting
Saturday, September 15, 2012
Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities, Southern Pines, NC
For a description of previous NCPS meetings, please visit our Previous Meetings page.
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