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 Winter Meeting
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities
Southern Pines, NC
For directions to the Weymouth Center, see this page.
Winter Readings and Workshops
Come join us at the annual Winter Meeting of the Poetry Society! Our VP of Programs Lisa Zerkle has a nice write-up about our readers and workshop leaders for January. See her article at this page.
In the morning we will be delighted to present Lola Haskins as our featured reader, who will read from her collection called Still, The Mountain. Haskins will then lead a workshop in the afternoon, where, as Lisa Zerkle wrote in her article linked above, “she will use examples from her own rough drafts to show us how to best navigate into the current in our poetry.”
Later in the afternoon, publisher extraordinaire Kevin Watson of Press 53 will lead a workshop entitled “Creative Strategies for Poets”, where he will discuss the many opportunities writers have to be seen and heard, such as in social media on the internet.
Tentative Schedule:
9:15 Registration & lunch orders ($10 cash or check payable to 195) or bring your own; coffee, tea & light breakfast in the kitchen
10:00 Business meeting (Priscilla Webster-Williams presiding)
10:15 Reading by Lola Haskins
11:15 Open mic
12:00 Lunch, perusing book room, socializing
1 pm Workshop by Lola Haskins
2 pm Break
2:15 pm Workshop by Kevin Watson, Press 53
3 pm Adjourn
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.
Come join us at the annual Fall Meeting of the Poetry Society! 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.
Tentative 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
10:00 Business meeting with Priscilla Webster-Williams, president, presiding
10:15 Reading by Peter Makuck – Brockman-Campbell Book Award winner, and honorable mentions
11:15 Comments from NCWN representative, Reading by Dannye Romine Powell – Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition winner, and honorable mentions
11:45 Open mic
12:00 Lunch, socializing, walking in the gardens (weather cooperating!), and perusing the book room
1:00 Poetry and the Role of New Media: a discussion with Keith Flynn
2:00 More open mic
2:15 Reception and book signing
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. Poet Mary Jo Amani was selected as runner-up for the honor. Terri Kirby Erickson, Maureen Sherbondy, and Nancy Martin Young were selected for honorable mentions.
After lunch, Keith Flynn will lead a discussion about the evolving ole of new media as it relates to the poetry world. How is the advent of e-books changing publishing? What are the pros and cons of social media? What can we learn from the retooling of independent music stores in the face of iTunes and other digital powerhouses? In short, how can we as poets harness the power of new technology to connect with our audience, “ the immense minority” in the words of Octavio Paz. As a publisher, editor, poet and musician, Flynn is uniquely suited to address this topic.
Keith Flynn (www.keithflynn.net) is the author of five books, ncluding four collections of poetry: The Talking Drum (1991), The Book of Monsters (1994), The Lost Sea (2000), and The Golden Ratio (Iris Press, 2007), and a collection of essays, entitled The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz and Memory: How To Make Your Poetry Swing (Writer’s Digest Books, 2007). From 1987-1998, he was lyricist and lead singer for the nationally acclaimed rock band, The Crystal Zoo, which produced three albums: Swimming Through Lake Eerie (1992), Pouch (1996), and the spoken-word and music compilation, Nervous Splendor (2003). He is currently touring with a supporting combo, The Holy Men, whose live album was released in April, 2011. His poetry and essays have appeared in many journals and anthologies around the world, including The Colorado Review, Poetry Wales, The Cuirt Journal (Ireland), Takahe (New Zealand), Poetry East, The Southern Poetry Review, Margie,
Rattle, Shenandoah, Word and Witness: 100 Years of NC Poetry, Crazyhorse, and many others. He has been awarded the Sandburg Prize for poetry, the ASCAP Emerging Songwriter Prize, the Paumanok Poetry Award and was twice named the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for NC. Flynn is founder and managing editor of The Asheville Poetry Review. For more information, please visit: www.ashevillepoetryreview.com.
Before and after lunch, we’ll continue the open mic tradition. Please remember the one-page, one-poem policy—each person participating in open mic reads or recites one poem up to one page in length.
We’ll end the day with a reception and book signing for the Brockman-Campbell Book Award and Randall Jarrell honorees and 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.
Awards Day
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities
Southern Pines, NC
We’ll honor the latest student and adult winners of the North Carolina Poetry Society’s annual competitions and release the 2011 Pinesong (edited by Debra Kaufman).
Tentative schedule:
- 9:15 Register. Order a box lunch until 10:15 am ($10, cash or check payable to 195). Enjoy coffee, tea, and snacks. Buy the 2011 Pinesong (members and winners receive one free copy). Student contest winners meet upstairs.
- 10:00 Tony Abbott, president, presides at the business meeting in the great room.
- 10:15 Pinesong 2011 is dedicated to Bill Griffin.
- 10:30 Winner of the Poet Laureate Award reads, followed by the finalists. Student contest winners read. Annalee Kwochka reads, with an introduction by Libby Campbell on the role NCPS plays in fostering young poets. Adult contest winners read (Caldwell Nixon Jr. Award, Lyman Haiku Award, and possibly others).
- 12:00 Enjoy lunch, socialize, walk in the gardens (weather cooperating!), and peruse the book room.
- 1:15 Remaining adult contest winners read (Poetry of Courage Award, Poetry of Love Award, Thomas H. McDill Award, Joanna Catherine Scott Award, Mary Ruffin Poole American Heritage Award, and Katherine Kennedy McIntyre Light Verse Award, if they don’t read before lunch).
Sam Ragan Poetry Festival
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities
Southern Pines, NC
Saturday, March 12, 2011, will see the North Carolina Poetry Society (NCPS) celebrating poetry, music, and Sam Ragan at Weymouth.
This meeting features a very special event! We’ll enjoy a staged reading of the short play Sam Ragan: A Celebration, directed by Worth Keeter, a writer, director and producer with over 25 years experience in the motion picture and television business. Steve Bouser, editor of the The Pilot (http://www.thepilot.com), will play Sam Ragan. Lois Holt, Stephen Smith, Shelby Stephenson, and Talmadge Ragan will round out the cast. See below for full bios.
And at the end of the day, Shelby and Linda Stephenson, along with Stephen Smith, will entertain with music and poetry.
Before and after lunch there should be ample time for open mic and recitations. If you have a new book out and you’ve not yet had the chance to read a poem from it at a Poetry Society Meeting, use the colored paper to sign up for open mic, as we’ll invite those with new books to go first. Whether you’re reciting from memory or reading your own work, reading from a newly published book or sharing your latest creative efforts, please adhere to our one-poem-or-one-page-whichever-is-shorter rule, and keep comments to a minimum so we’ll be able to hear from as many of our talented members and guests as possible.
Bios:
- Worth Keeter has 23 feature films to his credit as well as over 100 television credits. He has directed projects for Disney, Fox, CBS, SciFi Channel, and USA Network in addition to his directorial contributions to the tremendously successful Power Rangers series.
- Lois Holt is an award-winning poet, freelance writer, and regular columnist for The Pilot. A past president of the North Carolina Poetry Society, she received a 2009 Sam Ragan Award presented by St. Andrews Presbyterian College.
- Stephen Smith is a columnist for The Pilot and teaches at Sandhills Community College. He is the author of a book of stories, The Great Saturday Night Swindle; a novella, The Honeysuckle Shower and Other Parables; a book of creative nonfiction, Worst I Ever Had Was Wonderful; and six books of poetry, including A Short Report on the Fire at Woolworths, Most of What We Take Is Given, Loose Talk, and The Complete Bushnell Hamp Poems.
Photo by Glenn Dickerson - Talmadge Ragan is a professional actor. She moved to Los Angeles in 1989 where she worked in television and films and, with Worth Keeter, started Blue Kiss Media (http://www.bluekissmedia.com), a production company for films, commercials, and audio books. Their first audio book, The Sign of the Salamander, produced by Keeter and narrated by Ragan won the Moonbeam Children’s Book Award in 2008. She and Keeter have recently returned to North Carolina and now reside in Charlotte.
- Shelby Stephenson’s Family Matters: Homage to July, the Slave Girl won the 2008 Bellday Prize for poetry from Bellday Books and the 2009 Oscar Arnold Young Prize from the Poetry Council of North Carolina. For more about his poetry and music, visit http://www.shelbystephenson.com.
Photo of Shelby and Linda Stephenson by Jan Hensley
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
- 10:00 Business meeting with Tony Abbott, president, presiding
- 10:30 A staged reading of Sam Ragan: A Celebration
- 11:15 Open mic and recitation
- 12:00 Lunch, socializing, and perusing the book room
- 1:00 Open mic and recitation
- 2:00 Music and poetry by Shelby and Linda Stephenson and Stephen Smith
- 3:00 Adjourn
NCPS Winter Meeting
Saturday, January 22, 2011 Weymouth Center Southern Pines
Winter Readings and Workshops at Weymouth
With generous financial support from Weymouth, the Poetry Society will welcome John Balaban, Morri Creech, and Dorianne Laux on Saturday, January 22, 2010.
Laux, Balaban, and Creech
Please note this is the fourth Saturday in January, rather than the usual third Saturday. After a short business meeting at 10:00 am, we’ ll hear our three featured poets read from their own work. In the afternoon, you’ll attend one of three 90-minute morning workshops with the poets.
“The Building Blocks of Poetic Structure” with Dorianne Laux In this process workshop, participants will review work by Ruth Stone, Mark Doty, B.H. Fairchild, Belle Waring, and others and then write their own poems based on these models.
Laux teaches poetry in the MFA program at North Carolina State University. Her book of poems Facts about the Moon received the Oregon Book Award and was short-listed for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Laux is also author of Awake, What We Carry (finalist for the National Book Critic’ s Circle Award), and Smoke, as well as two fine small press editions, Superman: The Chapbook and Dark Charms. Co-author of The Poet’ s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry, she’ s the recipient of two Best American Poetry Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Recent poems by Laux appear in The American Poetry Review, Cimarron Review, Cerise Press, Margie, The Seattle Review, Tin House, and The Valparaiso Review. W.W. Norton will publish Laux’ s fifth collection of poems, The Book of Men, in February 2011. For more, see http://doriannelauxpoet.com.
“Poetcraft” with John Balaban Whether writing in traditional verse or free verse, poets are makers. Indeed, before the word “ poets” came into English, they were called “ makers” or “ shapers.” In this workshop, participants will look at poets’ varied means of making, using examples from Balaban’ s essay called “ Poetcraft.”
Balaban is poet-in-residence and professor of English at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, where he also serves as the director of the Creative Writing Program. He is the author of twelve books of poetry and prose, including four volumes, which together have won the Academy of American Poets’ Lamont prize, a National Poetry Series Selection, and two nominations for the National Book Award. His Locusts at the Edge of Summer: New and Selected Poems won the 1998 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. In 2003, he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2005, he was a judge for the National Book Awards. His latest books of poetry are Path, Crooked Path (Copper Canyon Press, 2006) and Like Family (Red Dragonfly Press, 2009). In addition to writing poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, he is a translator of Vietnamese poetry. For more, see http://www.johnbalaban.com.
“Metrical Tools, Free Verse Contexts” with Morri Creech This workshop will briefly define elements of prosody and look at how their application can lend texture, tension, and expressiveness to free verse composition.
Creech teaches in the undergraduate and graduate writing programs at Queens University of Charlotte. He is the author of two collections of poetry—Field Knowledge (Waywiser, 2006) and Paper Cathedrals (Kent University Press, 2001)—as well as two collaborative, museum-quality editions with the photographers Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The New Criterion, The New Republic, The Southwest Review, The Hudson Review, Crazyhorse, Critical Quarterly, Sewanee Review, Southern Review, and elsewhere. He has received the Stan and Tom Wick Award from Kent State University Press, a $15,000 Ruth Lilly Fellowship from Poetry Magazine and the Modern Poetry Foundation, and an artist’s fellowship from the Louisiana Division of the Arts.
Before and after lunch, we’ ll enjoy open mic and recitation. Remember the one-page, one-poem policy—each person participating in open mic reads or recites one poem up to one page in length.
Tentative Schedule
Registration; lunch orders ($10, cash or check payable to 195) until 10:15 am—or bring your own lunch; coffee, tea, and snacks
10:00 — Business meeting with Tony Abbott, president, presiding
10:30 — Readings by John Balaban, Morri Creech, and Dorianne Laux
11:30 — Open mic and recitation
12:00 — Lunch, socializing, and perusing the book room
1:00 — Open mic and recitation
1:15 — Workshop with Balaban, Creech, or Laux
2:45 — Adjourn
First (hopefully) Annual Arts-Crafts-Poetry Festival
23 October 2010 at FlyLeaf Books in Chapel Hill, NC
10 am until 3:30 pm
ARTISTS and CRAFTERS: Do not let this opportunity to be showcased by the NCPS go by just because you are not in the Triangle area.
- 9 artists and crafters have reserved tables already. There is room for 15 vendors; members of NCPS will not pay a fee to set up (non-members will pay $20.00).
- NCPS provides 8-foot tables and tablecloths. There will be room to lean framework against the walls to increase display space. Let us know what you need! Reserve space now! Vendors will handle their own money.
- POETS: Open mic for poets will be part of the mixture of the day. Poets who have books to sell and want to read, will sign up for 15 minutes at the top of an hour. For open mic, poets without books can sign up for 5 minutes at a time, but only once per hour. There will be a table devoted to members’ books; books will be sold through FlyLeaf. Choose your mic time now!
To reserve your space for vending or reading, email Jo Taylor at paintedangels@bellsouth.net with contact information and a description of your wares.
Added attraction: From 1:30-3:30 John Amen will hold a workshop in which participants will explore the art of energetically and creatively presenting poetry to an audience. We will explore various techniques to “juice up” delivery of poems, including breathing, pacing, articulation, and “targeting.” We will also discuss the similarities between public presentation and acting, exploring ways to both strategically and playfully step into desired roles. In addition, we will consider the usefulness of props: Each participant should consider bringing fun and inspiring clothes—jackets, shirts, dresses, shoes—as well as make-up, masks, and/or musical instruments, elements that can distinguish and expand your presence as a reader. Each participant should also bring 1-2 poems for possible presentation. Cost: $15, checks payable to NCPS and send to Alice Osborn, 9660-138 Falls of Neuse #294, Raleigh, NC 27615. The workshop will be followed by a Pedestal Magazine Reading Event from 4-6 pm
Fall Meeting
18 September 2010 at the Weymouth Center in Southern Pines, NC.
Featuring the Brockman-Campbell Book Award winners and the North Carolina Writers’ Network Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition winners.
Schedule:
9:15 Registration.
- Order a box lunch ($10, cash or check payable to I95) until 10:15 (or bring your own lunch).
- Enjoy coffee, tea, and snacks.
10:00 Business Meeting, Tony Abbott, presiding
10:15 New Website
10:30 Randall Jarrell winners read
11:15 Open mic
12:00 Enjoy lunch, socialize, walk in the gardens, peruse the book room
1:00 Brockman-Campbell winners read
2:00 Reception, book signing
2:30 Open Mic
Also, read about this event on Eventbrite here: http://ncps2010fall.eventbrite.com/
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