poetry

North Carolina poet Joseph Bathanti will present his latest book of poetry at the Jackson County Public Library on Saturday, August 6th at 3 p.m. Light at the Seam, a new collection is an exploration of mountaintop removal in southern Appalachian coal country. The volume illuminates and champions often invisible people residing, in a precarious moment in time, on the glorious, yet besieged, Appalachian earth. Their call to defend it, as well as their faith that the land will exact its own reckoning, constitutes a sacred as well as existential quest. Rooted in social and restorative justice, Light at the Seam contemplates the earth as fundamentally sacramental, a crucible of awe and mystery, able to regenerate itself and its people even as it succumbs to them. More than mere cautionary tale, this is a volume of hope and wonder. 

Joseph Bathanti, former poet laureate of North Carolina (2012–14) and recipient of the North Carolina Award in Literature, is the author of seventeen books. He is the McFarlane Family Distinguished Professor of Interdisciplinary Education at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.

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.

 Join us on Wednesday, March 16th at noon for a twin bill poetry reading featuring Brian Brodeur and Steve Scafidi. 

Brian Brodeur is the author of Every Hour Is Late. New poems and literary criticism appear in Hopkins Review, Gettysburg Review, Literary Matters, Southern Review, and The Writer’s Chronicle. Founder and Coordinator of the digital interview archive “How a Poem Happens,” Brian lives with his wife and daughter in the Whitewater River Valley. He teaches creative writing and American literature at Indiana University East.  

Steve Scafidi is the author of Sparks from a Nine-Pound Hammer, For Love of Common Words, The Cabinetmaker’s Window, To the Bramble and the Briar, and a chapbook Songs for the Carry-On. He works as a cabinetmaker and lives in Summit Point, West Virginia.

Masks are required to attend this event.

Robert Lee Kendrick will return to City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, October 30th at 3 p.m. He will read from his new collection of poetry, Shape the Bent Straight.  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. His first chapbook, Winterskin, was published by Main Street Rag in 2016. Iris Press released his collection What Once Burst with Brilliance in 2018. To reserve copies of his books please call City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, NC at 828-586-9499.

Join us in The Community Room of the Jackson County Public Library on Saturday, September 18th at 3 p.m. for a group reading of Crossing the Rift: North Carolina Poets on 9/11 & Its Aftermath. Edited by Joseph Bathantiand David Potorti, the poems come at 9/11 through a variety of lenses and its vast associated collateral fallout: Islamophobia, the vilification of immigrants and the undocumented, ramped-up xenophobia, nationalism and isolationism, war, and supercharged military budgets that continue to impoverish our nation, with accompanying losses of community, health, and hope, and concurrent rises in homophobia, transphobia, virulent racism, and domestic terrorism. The poems take head-on what Carolyn Forche calls “the poetry of witness” and its advocacy “for a shared sense of humanity and collective resistance.” Six local poets will be in attendance to share their contributions to this powerful anthology. 

Joseph Bathanti, former Poet Laureate of North Carolina (2012-14) and recipient of the North Carolina Award in Literature, is the author of seventeen books. Bathanti is the McFarlane Family Distinguished Professor of Interdisciplinary Education at Appalachian State University. He served as the 2016 Charles George VA Medical Center Writer-in-Residence in Asheville, North Carolina, and is the co-founder of the Medical Center's Creative Writing Program.

David Potorti is the co-founder of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. He served as the literature and theater director for the North Carolina Arts Council and is active in ONE Wake, a non-partisan, multi-ethnic, multi-issue group of religious congregations, associations, and other non-profits in the Wake County, North Carolina area, implementing systemic changes within society to achieve the common good.

Event attendees will be required to wear a mask as per the County mandate. To reserve copies of Crossing the Rift please call City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, NC at 828-586-9499. For more information about the event call City Lights Bookstore or contact the Library at 828-586-2016.

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Michael Hettich will be visiting City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, March 21st at 3 p.m. Michael will be presenting his latest book of poetry, To Start an Orchard, a collection of poems with themes about the mysterious and ever-changing relationships between humanity and nature. This collection of poetry has received praise from members of the literary community, with poets like Richard Jones, author of Red Deer, claiming “his dreamlike stories remind us how little we truly see and how often we sleep through the day’s deep revelations.”

Michael Hettich is a poet and has received multiple awards including The Tampa Review Prize in Poetry, the David Martinson-Meadow Prize, a Florida Book Award, and several Florida Individual Artist Fellowships. Michael also holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from the University of Miami, an MA in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Denver, and a BA in English from Hobart College. His work has appeared in many journals such as Orion, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, Poetry East, Alaska Quarterly Review, Witness, The Literary Review and many other notable outlets. 

Michael is a former professor at Miami Dade College, where he served as a professor of English and Creative Writing and Lead Professor in the Honors College. He also served as the co-advisor for their student literary magazine. During his time at Miami Dade, he received several honors including the Mac Smith Endowed Teaching Chair in Environmental Ethics before retiring in 2018. Michael currently resides in Black Mountain, North Carolina with his wife, Colleen. To order a copy of Michael Hettich's new book, To Start an Orchard,  please contact us at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, North Carolina at 828-586-9499.

Poets John Burroughs and Beth Copeland will visit City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, November 2nd at 3 p.m. They will share poems from their recent collections. 

John Burroughs of Cleveland is the 2019-2021 Beat Poet Laureate for the state of Ohio. His latest book, Rattle and Numb: Selected and New Poems, 1992-2019, was published in August by Venetian Spider Press.

Beth Copeland was raised in Japan, India, and North Carolina. Her book, Traveling Through Glass, received the 1999 Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Award, and her poems have been published in numerous literary journals, including e: The Emily Dickinson Awards Anthology (2002 and 2003), Hunger Mountain, The Kerf, The Ledge, Main Street Rag, Margie, Phoebe: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Feminist Scholarship, and Rhino.

To reserve copies please call City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, NC at 828-586-9499.

Catherine Carter will visit City Lights Bookstore on Wednesday, November 13th at 6:30 p.m. She will read poems from her new collection, Larvae of the Nearest Stars. Her third collection begins and ends by confronting the necessity--and the promise--to bear witness to the world as it is, addressing how we can manage to love the world in the face of everything that makes doing so a challenge. The poems in this engaging and meditative collection are sometimes dark, often funny, but always surprising.
 

Catherine Carter is also the author of The Memory of Gills and The 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.

Mary Ricketson will visit City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, November 16th at 3 p.m. She will read poems from Mississippi, The Story of Luke and Marian.  She will be joined by Cathrine Carter, author of Larvae of the Nearest Stars. Catherine will open up with a few poems of her own and then introduce Mary. 

 Mississippi, the Story of Luke and Marian, relates Mary’s family story in mostly narrative poems, from the perspective of racial tensions in troubled Mississippi, 1948-1969, and the parents who found a way through these tedious times.