North Carolina Poetry Society

Carolina African American Writers' Collective (CAAWC)

"We like to ensure that people who attend our workshops/meetings are able to take constructive criticism on their literary works and are capable of providing in-depth constructive criticism on the literary works of others members." — Lenard D. Moore, Founder & Executive Director, CAAWC

Guests are generally welcome to attend CAAWC meetings, but occasionally meetings are for members only. For more information, email L. Teresa Church — ltchurch@mindspring.com — Membership Chairperson.

Friday Noon Poets — Chapel Hill, NC

Friday Noon Poets meets at Amity United Methodist Church, 825 N. Estes Drive, Chapel Hill, NC. All poets are welcome. For more information, call David Manning at (919) 462-3695.

Friday Noon Poets is a poetry appreciation group that has been meeting weekly in Chapel Hill for nearly 40 years. Following a half-hour of conversation over bag lunches, group members take turns reading poems aloud in round-robin fashion for about an hour. Attendees may choose to read their own poems or poems by other poets that they admire.

Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet Series — Update

The Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet Series (GCDPS) 2009–2010

             ****Deadline to apply: November 1, 2009 ****

The North Carolina Poetry Society is happy to announce a seventh year of the GCDPS. In this Series poets in middle school, high school, college or university, and adults not currently enrolled in a curriculum are invited to apply to be mentored by a Distinguished Poet (DP) in eastern, central or western North Carolina. Three DPs will each mentor four student poets (12 total each year). On the North Carolina Poetry Website click on “G-C DPS Guidelines” for an application.

GCDPS student poets will work with DPs for four to six months on a dozen pages of their original poetry and then read at a regional college or university with other student poets and their own mentor Distinguished Poet in April 2010. In conjunction with the GCDPS each student may read with their DP in their local public library in a program sponsored by the North Carolina Center for the Book.

The NCPS is grateful to the family of the late Marie Gilbert (daughter, Laurie Sanford and husband, Dick Gilbert) for sponsoring this Series annually. Each year student poets and their mentors have given the Series excellent reviews. This is a great opportunity for growing poets.

GCDPS STATE Chairperson
Dr. Bill Blackley, MD wjblackley@gmail.com 336-835-4630
Questions may be directed to Bill Blackley or a regional chairperson.

The Distinguished Poets and chairpersons for each region for 2009 – 2010 are as follows:

EASTERN Region
Distinguished Poet – Dr. John Hoppenthaler, Asst. Professor of English and Creative Writing, East Carolina University
Chairperson – Dr. Becky Godwin, Director, Sam and Marjorie Ragan Writing Center
     rlgodwin@barton.edu 252-399-6364

CENTRAL Region
Distinguished Poet – Dr. Rebecca Gould Gibson, Associate Professor of English, 1989 – 2008, Guilford College
Chairperson – Dr. Ted Wojtasik, Faculty in English and Writing, St. Andrews Presbyterian College
     wojtasik@sapc.edu 910-277-3948

WESTERN Region
Distinguished Poet – Dr. Catherine Carter, Asst. Professor of English, Western Carolina University
Chairperson – Dr. Mary Adams, Asst. Dept. Head, English, Western Carolina University
     madams@email.wcu.edu 828-277-3269

North Carolina Haiku Society

The North Carolina Haiku Society was founded in 1979 to promote the writing and appreciation of haiku in English. Members support these goals by writing haiku and hosting an annual Haiku Holiday.

"If you come to our meetings, we assume that you want to write—or at least better understand—poems that would be generally recognized as haiku by readers who are familiar with the form. If you share these goals with us, we will spend some time learning how literary haiku work in English—or as the poet John Ciardi would say—how they mean." — Dave Russo

Please see the NC Haiku Society web site — nc-haiku.org — for meeting times.

Please contact Dave Russo, NCHS webmaster, before you come: web@nc-haiku.org

North Carolina Poetry Society — Journal Exchange

You are invited to exchange journals at each NCPS meeting at the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities in Southern Pines, NC. Meetings are usually held on the third Saturdays of January, May, June, and September. See the NCPS Poetry Events Calendar for the specific dates.

Please observe the following guidelines for these Journal Exchanges:

LEAVE only those journals you don't mind parting with.

TAKE all you can read (but read all you take).

RETURN the journals you borrowed at the next meeting.

NC Poetry Society — Poetry Contest Overview

The NCPS sponsors "blind" contests, meaning that the judges, all but one of whom live outside North Carolina, receive no identifying information about the authors: the judges see only the poem-entries. Each annual contest is held in the fall/winter, with an early January deadline for receipt of entries.

Well in advance of each contest, 15 highly qualified poets are selected as judges. Bios of the judges are typically posted on this web site at the end of each contest, which is marked each May by Awards Day, at which winners are invited to read their poems, all of which are published in Pinesong, the annual contest anthology.

The 9 adult and the 5 student contests all have different judges. The Poet Laureate Award has two such judges: a Preliminary Judge, who selects 10 poems as finalists; and a Final Judge (usually the North Carolina Poet Laureate) who selects one of the ten as the winner.

Guidelines for the adult and student contests are posted on this web site. Select "Adult Contests" and/or "Student Contests" from the Home Page menu.

NC Poetry Society — Program Endowment Fund

As part of the North Carolina Poetry Society's long-range plans, the NCPS welcomes contributions to its Program Endowment fund.

A fully funded endowment will enable us to increase the quality and outreach of our programs in pursuit of our mission, as we continue to promote poetry throughout the state--and beyond.

Donations are tax-deductible. Please check to see if your place of employment matches donations. Contributions of all sizes are much appreciated.

When making a donation, you may designate any particular area that you want to support or you may contribute to the general fund.

Mail your checks (payable to "NCPS") to:
Kay Cheshire 5410 Chatfield Sq., Greensboro, NC 27410

NC Reads NC: Our Poets Speak — Poetry in the Library

If bringing a humanities scholar or poet to your community for a six-session poetry series interests you, here's a wonderful opportunity — the North Carolina Center for the Book has developed a reading, viewing, and discussion series for your public library. Programs are led by humanities scholars/poets and are free to the public.

The NC Center for the Book loans the books and videos for use during the series: The North Carolina Poetry Society anthology Word and Witness: 100 Years of North Carolina Poetry, edited by Sally Buckner; and The Language They Speak is Things to Eat, edited by Michael McFee.

Videos are from the two six-part Poetry Live! series produced by UNC-TV and hosted by Dannye Romine Powell and Charles Kuralt. The programs feature interviews with 24 North Carolina poets reading and discussing their work.

Here's how it works:
1) Your local group contacts Frannie Ashburn (contact info below), to set up the program and reserve the books and videos.
2) Frannie Ashburn will recommend a poet or humanities scholar if you don’t already have someone in mind, and she will contact them for you.
3) Your group and the poet/scholar arrange suitable dates and times for the series.
4) Your local group rounds up the attendees.

Mini-grants are available from the North Carolina Humanities Council to provide an honorarium and travel reimbursement for the scholar/poet.

INTERESTED IN A PROGRAM IN YOUR AREA? — CONTACT:
— Frannie Ashburn, Director, North Carolina Center for the Book,
at 919-807-7416 fashburn@library.dcr.state.nc.us
OR
— Pat Riviere-Seel, NCPS President, at patriviereseel@yahoo.comt

NC Reads NC is sponsored by the North Carolina Center for the Book, with additional support from the North Carolina Humanities Council.

Writers' Ink Guild — Fayetteville, NC

The Writers’ Ink Guild, the oldest writers' group in Fayetteville, with a history of more than 30 years of service to the community, is looking for enthusiastic new writers to join the group. Meetings are from 6:00pm to 8:00pm on the second Thursday of every month except July. Bring copies of your latest endeavors for the members to critique.

The Writers' Ink Guild sponsors Fields of Earth, an annual poetry competition that has been held for more than twenty years, open to all regional poets.

For more information, contact Joe Haymore at "JoeHaymore@windstream.net" or call (919) 499-6600.

[Editor's Note: Information current as of June 2008.]