We'll wrap up Poetry Month with a special reading featuring three poets of wide repute. Join us at 1 p.m. on Sunday, April 24th when we'll host Jeffrey Franklin, Catherine Carter, and Keith Flynn as they read from their recent work. Franklin's recent collection is titled Where We Lay Down, of which James Najarian says, "These are multi-layered, thick, substantial poems that confront tough subjects: transformation, inheritance, deterioration, and our debt to the animal. Written in a startling array of forms, from blank verse to free verse, sestina to pantoum, they are full of knowledge, and they always adapt the form to the language, rather than the other way around, changing the reader's notion of poetic form in the process."
Jeffrey Franklin is a poet, scholar, editor, and teacher. His poetry collections are Where We Lay Down (2021, Kelsay Books) and For the Lost Boys (2006, Ghost Road Press). His poems have appeared in many literary journals, including Arts & Letters, Crab Orchard Review, Hudson Review, Measure, New England Review, Rattle, Shenandoah, Southern Humanities Review, and Southern Poetry Review. A poetry manuscript of his received the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, and his poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry. Since 2000 he has served as the poetry editor for the North Carolina Literary Review, selecting the finalists for the annual James Applewhite Poetry Prize. Originally from Signal Mountain, Tennessee, he now lives in Denver, Colorado.
Catherine W. Carter's most recent collection is Larvae of the Nearest Stars. Two earlier works, also from Louisianna State University Press, are Growing Gills and Swamp Monster at Home. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Orion, Ploughshares, Poetry, and elsewhere. She lives with her husband in Cullowhee, North Carolina, where she teaches at Western Carolina University.
Keith Flynn's collection, The Skin of Meaning came out in 2020. He is the award-winning author of seven books, most recently Colony Collapse Disorder (Wings Press, 2013) and a collection of essays entitled The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz and Memory: How To Make Your Poetry Swing (Writer's Digest Books, 2007). From 1984-1999, he was the 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 album, LIVE at Diana Wortham Theatre, was released in 2011. He is the Executive Director and producer of the TV show "LIVE at White Rock Hall" and of Animal Sounds Productions, both of which create collaborations between writers and musicians in video and audio formats. His award-winning poetry and essays have appeared in many journals and anthologies around the world, including The American Literary Review, The Colorado Review, Poetry Wales, Five Points, Poetry East, The Southern Poetry Anthology, The Poetics of American Song Lyrics, Writer's Chronicle, The Cimarron Review, Rattle, Shenandoah, Word and Witness: 100 Years of NC Poetry, Crazyhorse, and many others. He has been awarded the Sandburg Prize for poetry, a 2013 NC Literary Fellowship, the ASCAP Emerging Songwriter Prize, the Paumanok Poetry Award, and was twice named the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for NC. Flynn is the founder and managing editor of The Asheville Poetry Review, which began publishing in 1994.