poetry

Poet and former Haywood County journalist and teacher Michael Beadle will be reading from his latest poetry collection, Primer, at City Lights Bookstore in on Saturday, November 11th, at 3 p.m. The book features poems about childhood and family, discovery and disappointment, triumph and heartbreak. Primer was a national finalist in the 2016 Cathy Smith Bowers Chapbook Contest, sponsored by Main Street Rag. Bowers, a former NC Poet Laureate who served as the judge for

the contest, writes, “With courage and a kid’s heart, Michael Beadle brings to life the rites of passage of a small-town boy inching toward the threshold of adulthood.” Beadle is the author or co-author of four books on Haywood County history, including the local history Arcadia series books Waynesville, Haywood County and  Canton. A former reporter with The Mountaineer and Smoky Mountain News, Beadle  was active in the Haywood County arts community for nearly two decades, performing poetry at downtown Waynesville festivals, acting on stage at Haywood

Arts Regional Theatre, emceeing events at Folkmoot festivals and teaching creative writing courses through Haywood Community College.

As a writer-in-residence based in Raleigh, he teaches poetry and creative writing workshops throughout the state and serves as the director of the NC Poetry Society’s student contests and the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poets Series. To reserve copies of Primer please call City Lights Bookstore at 828-586-9499.

M. Scott Douglass will visit City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, October 21st at 3 p.m. to read from his new collection of poetry, Just Passing Through. The author of four other collections of poetry, Douglass is also the managing editor and book designer for Main Street Rag, the publishing company he helped found in 1996. His poetry has appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, Gargoyle, Iodine Poetry Journal, Midwest Review, North American Review and others. To reserve copies of Just Passing Through please call City Lights Bookstore at 828-586-9499.

The Coffee with the Poet series continues on Thursday, September 21st at 10:30 p.m. at City Lights Bookstore. The September gathering will feature Kelly Lenox and she will present her collection The Brightest Rock. Her poetry has been featured in Kakalak and Cave Region Review. The Coffee with the Poet gathers the third Thursday of the month and is co-sponsored by the North Carolina Writer’s Network. For more information on Coffee with the Poet or to reserve copies of The Brightest Rock please call City Lights Bookstore at 828-586-9499.

The Coffee with the Poet series continues on Thursday, July 20th at 10:30 a.m. at City Lights Bookstore. The July meeting will feature Winston-Salem poet, Sam Barbee. His poems have appeared Poetry South, Crucible, Asheville Poetry Review, The Southern Poetry Anthology VII: North Carolina, Potato Eyes, Georgia Journal, Main Street Rag, Iodine, and Pembroke Magazine, among others. His fiction has been recognized by the Norfolk Society for the Arts and published in Atlantis.

His second poetry collection, That Rain We Needed (Press 53), was published in April of 2016, and a nominee for the Roanoke-Chowan Award as one of North Carolina’s best poetry collections of 2016.  He was awarded an "Emerging Artist's Grant" from the Winston-Salem Arts Council to publish his first collection Changes of Venue (Mount Olive Press); has been a featured poet on the North Carolina Public Radio Station WFDD; received the 59th Poet Laureate Award from the North Carolina Poetry Society for his poem "The Blood Watch"; and is a Pushcart nominee.

Sam lives in Winston-Salem with his wife and has two children, and retired from his day job of 32 years with the Winston-Salem Recreation Department.  He is the 2017 President-Elect for the NC Poetry Society and Past-President of Winston-Salem Writers. The Coffee with the Poet series gathers the third Thursday of each month and is cosponsored by the North Carolina Writers Network. For more information please call City Lights Bookstore at 828-586-9499.

The Coffee with the Poet series continues on Thursday, June 15th at 10:30 a.m. at City Lights Bookstore. The June gathering will feature Clemson, SC resident Robert Lee Kendrick. He will read new poems and present his wonderful collection, Winter Skin. His poems have been featured in Tar River Poetry, Xavier Review, Louisiana Literature, South Carolina Review, Kestrel, The Cape Rock, The James Dickey Review, The San Pedro River Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, and The Main Street Rag.

The Coffee with the Poet series gathers the third Thursday of each month and is cosponsored by the North Carolina Writers Network. To reserve copies of Winter Skin please call City Lights Bookstore at 828-586-9499.

The Coffee with the Poet series continues on Thursday, September 15th at 10:30 a.m. The September gathering will feature Richard VanderVeen as he presents his collection The Act of Going.  

Richard VanderVeen was born in Grand Rapids, MI and holds a BA in English. He has taught high school English in Cherokee, High Point, and Asheville. For more information on Coffee with the Poet or to reserve copies of The Act of Going please call City Lights Bookstore at 828-586-9499.

On Saturday, September 17th at 3 p.m., Linda Parsons and Sue Weaver Dunlap will visit City Lights Bookstore for a joint poetry reading. Linda will read from her fourth collection, This Shaky Earth. Parsons's poems are leavened with a hunger to understand the growing pains of childhood, to face the turning seasons with grace, to know that all will be well as we navigate this sometimes shaky earth. She is a poet, playwright and an editor at The University of Tennessee. Her poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, The Georgia Review, Asheville Poetry Review and others.

Sue will read from her collection, Knead. Georgann Eubanks, author of the Literary Trails of North Carolina series, said of Knead, “Sue Weaver Dunlap has laid the table full. These warm and aromatic poems combine to create an Appalachian family memoir.” She lives in the deep Southern Appalachian Mountains in Tennessee.

To reserve copies of these poetry collections please call City Lights bookstore at 828-586-9499.

Katherine Soniat will return to City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, September 24th at 3 p.m. to read her latest collection of poetry. In her beguiling new collection, Bright Stranger, Katherine invites readers to celebrate the unfinished and unsure. The poems in this volume to not demand or offer certainty, existing instead in the spaces between the real and the imagined, between past, present and future. They explore the human connection with nature, contemplating loss in the erosion of rock spires and rebirth in the blossoming of an amaranth