Libby Campbell

2010 Pinesong Dedication Text:

If poets were wild-flowers, Libby Campbell would be the gardener broadcasting seeds until they burst into bloom and spread in vast expanses of promise and delight. One of her own sixth-grade teachers told Libby, "You are a born teacher. Do not let anything keep you from becoming one." And become one she did, pursuing a forty-year formal teaching career and now continuing a multifaceted informal one. Throughout her career, Libby's students let her know how they felt: "It's so hard to find a genuinely great teacher and I was lucky enough to have three years with one." "You let us express ourselves in our work like no other teacher would have the nerve to do." "You've taught me how to value myself and my gifts." "You've not only taught me how to write, you've taught me how to be."

A native of Iredell County, Libby began her career in Iowa, soon after college graduation. Prepared to teach high school English, she was asked to teach fifth grade and accepted that challenge. Her students begged to hear this new teacher "speak Southern," and the pronunciation contrasts became part of Libby's teaching approach: thereafter, she and her students used the dictionary extensively to explore such differences. That year was followed by fifth-grade and then high-school teaching in Kentucky, where Libby had an experience that powerfully confirmed her career choice. After a serious car accident, she received an outpouring of correspondence from her students, and, in her words, she learned "that young people care about a caring teacher." Libby later taught again in Iowa and then in Nebraska.

In 1970 Libby returned to Iredell County and began teaching seventh- through ninth-graders at Statesville's Brookwood School. Her students rewrote and performed Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream in modern English, wrote and presented Reader's Theatre performances, and offered Story Theater to younger children. Personal tragedy then indelibly shaped Libby's life when her sixteen-year-old son, Brent, died of leukemia in 1986. After Brent's death, Libby taught in extended day school and in summer school, with tenth graders who had failed English. Among those students, Libby shared accounts of her son's illness and death, and they, in turn, wrote about their own vulnerabilities, fears, and hopes. From these and many other students across the years Libby heard, "Thank you for teaching me how to put my feelings on paper."

The last thirteen years of Libby's formal teaching career were with academically gifted students in Iredell County schools, with the final nine of those years being at North Iredell Middle School among advanced language arts classes. In 1995 Libby attended a week-long Poetry Alive! seminar in Asheville and eagerly shared the experiences with her students. Together, they spread their love of poetry to eight elementary schools, community groups, the local Children's Museum, and several state conferences through Poetry Alive! performances, sometimes including their own poetry. Even while helping her students with enunciation, voice projection, and grammar, she always emphasized active enjoymentÑperforming poems as a group, with zest and feeling. To reinforce that focus, she partnered with such poets as Fred Chappell, Ellen Johnston-Hale, Joseph Bathanti, Bill Blackley, Diana Pinckney, and Ann Campanella to offer memorable classroom opportunities.

Libby has received numerous teaching awards, including North Iredell Middle School's Teacher of the Year, Iredell/Statesville System Finalist for Teacher of the Year, First Union's Ben Craig Award for Outstanding Educator, and the North Carolina Association for the Gifted and Talented Teacher of the Year. She has served as a member of Read magazine's advisory board, coordinated the six-week "NC Reads NC: Our Poets Speak" symposium, facilitated teachers' poetry workshops, coordinated a six-week series of Iredell Friends of the Library creative writing symposiums, served as the Carl Sandburg Student Poetry Contest judge, and had articles and poems in such publications as National Squares, Read, and the Iredell Citizen. For the past eight years she has also led a "Reading, Writing, Reminiscing" group at a local assisted-living home, visited students in grades 1-5 at a local elementary school, and coordinated activities in which the two groups share with one another.

The thriving North Carolina Poetry Society Student Contests owe much to Libby's inspired mentoring. Year after year, Libby's students received multiple awards, and Libby has continued to attend the annual Awards Day ceremonies to applaud the young people she so admires. For two years Libby served as the Student Contests chairperson, and she has been an invaluable advisor to various committees. From the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poets Series's inception, Libby has served on the Western regional committee, and she chaired that committee for 2006-2007.

"Poetry deals with the spirit and the soul," Libby once said. Indeed, that is what you continue to teach us so well, Libby. For your commitment, enthusiasm, radiance, and wisdom we offer our boundless thanks!

Pinesong Dedication Committee
Sharon Sharp
Leon Hinton
Nancy King
Susan Meyers

Flight

The six foot plus boy climbs the steps
gripping his science fair display
as if he fears someone may rip it
from his hands.

A Carolina blue cap covers his head
hiding the single sprig of hair remaining
from his battle against acute leukemia.

Like a fledging bird the boy ventures
forth to share a new world with his
teenaged classmates.

The clutched board reveals
Samples of his bone marrow slides,
An outline of his five-year protocol,
Complete with a list of the required
chemo drugs,
Plus their possible side effects.

One hour later this same boy descends
the stairs.

How did it go?

Fine, he responds.

And then...
Silence.

Did anyone ask you any questions?

One boy inquired,
'What would happen if you decided
you didn't want to take chemo anymore
and you quit?'

Your answer?
I just said,
I guess I'd die.