poetry

The exhibition career of Bea Nettles began in 1970 when her work was shown in “Photography Into Sculpture,” at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. Recognition as an experimental photographic artist followed and her work has been featured in over two hundred exhibitions throughout the world. Nettles' work is found in history texts and has been regularly reviewed in the media. Over 26 public collections contain her work and she has received two National Endowment for the Arts Photography Fellowships and grants from the New York and Illinois State Arts Councils.

She has delivered lectures and workshops internationally and is widely recognized for her innovations in mixed media photography and photographic books.

On Saturday, August 10 at 3 p.m. she will be sharing her latest artists books of poetry created with surnames that she photographs in cemeteries. With these names that function as parts of speech, she has written about the seasons, American History, an interpretation of Dante's Inferno, a version of the myth of Persephone, and most recently three stories of women's lives.

Fred Chappell will visit City Lights Bookstore on Friday, August 2nd at 6:30 p.m. He will present his new poetry collection, As If It Were.  Inspired by ancient, modern, and contemporary writings, Fred Chappell's sprightly new collection of verse, As If It Were, presents tales, anecdotes, pointed stories, and aphorisms to spark the conscience of readers young and old. Playful and even zany, the humor in these poems pulls readers into a world filled with noble lions, crafty foxes, predacious wolves, longsuffering asses, and fashionable peacocks. Chappell illustrates how the fable offers a timeless form of wisdom, surprising us with revelations that challenge what we think we already know, along with fresh observations of daily experiences. With its informal, even nonchalant tone of address and lush, polished language, As If It Were endows homespun materials with alchemical insights.

Fred Chappell is the author of more than thirty volumes of poetry and prose. He has received the Bollingen Prize, the T. S. Eliot Award, and the Thomas Wolfe Prize. His fiction has been translated into more than a dozen languages and received the Best Foreign Book Award from the Académie Française. He was the poet laureate of North Carolina from 1997 to 2002.

Thomas Rain Crowe will visit City Lights Bookstore on Friday, May 31st at 6:30 p.m.  He will present the collected poems of Yvan Goll he edited titled, The Inner Trees.  Yvan Goll is one of the most important but neglected European writers of the 20th century Because he wrote in several languages and was not claimed by any country his work is not well known here. This book includes translations spanning sixty years which have been out of print for decades. The translators include Kenneth Rexroth, Robert Bly, W.S. Merwin, Galway Kinnell, William Carlos Williams, Kenneth Patchen, Paul Zweig, and Nan Watkins.

Thomas Rain Crowe is an internationally-published and recognized author and translator of more than thirty books, including the multi-award winning nonfiction nature memoir Zoro's Field: My Life in the Appalachian Woods.

Swain county poet Benjamin Cutler will read from his debut collection on Saturday, June 1st at 6:30 p.m. Catherine Carter said of The Geese Who Might Be Gods, Ben Cutler’s first book of poems is rooted in a particular soil, or bone, of this world, the mountains and rivers of the southern Appalachians; but its branches and crowns stretch out to the hope of a post-apocalyptic tomato sandwich and back to Eden. Cutler’s imagination, like his vulture, is endlessly hungry, but it quivers, “lip-torn and breathless”, with empathy for and identification with everything it touches—bees, bats, children, god-geese whose necks write the letter S “for all their secrets.”  These are quirky, accessible poems full of the music of common language. The casual browser, in picking up this collection, need not fear being bullied or patronized—nothing too scary here, unless you count loneliness, death, the perils of love, or the end of the world. But it is in their setting that the poet’s perilous love for the world finds its context and its meaning. The Geese Who Might Be Gods will reward reading and re-reading with passage into a familiar world both rendered strange and seen anew, as on “the first day’s morning—// when everything first opened / and reached for the new light.”

Catherine Carter and Megan Lucas will also be on hand to read poems, prose and to introduce Benjamin. To reserve copies of The Geese Who Might Be Gods please call City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, NC at 828-586-9499.

Poetry Month Celebration

City Lights Bookstore will host four poets on Saturday, April 13th at 3 p.m. to celebrate National Poetry Month.

Dee Stribling writes poetry and prose primarily around rural landscape and culture. She is the current Poet Laureate of Hillsborough, N.C. Dee will be reading from her chapbooks, Just Down the Road and Appalachian Picture Book.

Kim Blum-Hyclak makes her home and her garden in Lancaster, SC, but her roots remain in Ohio. She writes an eclectic mix of poetry and prose, with grace and beauty being the common thread. Kim will be reading from her poetry book, In the Garden of Life and Death ~ A Mother and Daughter Walk.

Sue Dunlap lives in Walland, TN, in the foothills of the Southern Appalachians. She writes poetry and prose, mainly about the culture of her people. Sue will be reading from two collections of poetry: The Story Tender and Knead.

Laurie Wilcox-Meyer was born in Louisiana and now lives in Asheville, North Carolina.  While at Northwestern University and Florida State University she studied piano and music theory.  She worked as a counselor, facilitating parent-child communication and co-wrote a children’s book, Who’s Ms. Sand Dollar? A Visit With the School Counselor. Her chapbook, Circling Silence, was published in January 2018 by Finishing Line Press and her full-length book of poetry, Of Wilderness and Flight, FootHills Publishing, was published in March 2018. Laurie will be reading from two collections: Of Wilderness and Flight and Circling Silence.

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

Dana Wildsmith and Susan O’Dell Underwood will visit City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, May 25th at 3 p.m. They will read from their latest collections of poetry, One Light and The Book of Awe, respectively.

Dana Wildsmith is the author of a novel, Jumping, and an environmental memoir, Back to Abnormal: Surviving With An Old Farm in the New South, which was a finalist for Georgia Author of the Year. She is also the author of five collections of poetry. Wildsmith has served as Artist-in-Residence for Grand Canyon National Park and for Everglades National Park. She lives with her family on an old farm in north Georgia and works as an English literacy instructor at Lanier Technical College.

Susan O’Dell Underwood is currently a Professor of English and the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Carson-Newman University. In addition to The Book of Awe she has published two chapbooks, From and Love and Other Hungers.

Poets Beth Copeland and Tina Barr will read poems at City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, October 13th at 3 p.m. Beth serves as the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for Central North Carolina and teach creative writing at St. Andrews University. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She has written three full-length collections of poetry.

Tina Barr has six volumes of poetry and her work has appeared in American Book Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Atlanta Review, The Chattahoochee Review, The Crab Orchard Review, Kestrel, The Pisgah Review, Tar River Poetry, and Zone 3. Barr teaches in the Great Smokies Creative Writing Program out of University of North Carolina at Asheville. For more information please call City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, NC at 828-586-9499.

Poets Catherine Carter, Mary Ricketson, and Joan Howard will visit City Lights Bookstore on Saturday, September 15th at 3 p.m.  Catherine Carter has written three collections of poetry and directs the English Education program at Western Carolina University. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Orion, Ploughshares, Cider Press Review, Cortland Review, North Carolina Literary Review, and Best American Poetry 2009, among others.

Mary Ricketson of Murphy NC, has been writing poetry for 20 years; to satisfy a hunger, to taste life down to the very last drop. She is inspired by nature and her work as a mental health counselor. Her poetry has been published in Wild Goose Poetry Review, Future Cycle Press, Journal of Kentucky Studies, and the anthologies, Lights in the Mountains, and Echoes Across the Blue Ridge. Her two collections are Freeing Jonah, and her chapbook I Hear the River Call My Name.

Joan Howard is a retired teacher who lives in Hiawassee and Athens GA.  Her poetry has been published in Poem, The Road Not Taken: The Journal of Formal Poetry, the Aurorean, Lucid Rhythms, Victorian Violet, The Wayfarer, The Deronda Review and other literary journals.She has two books: Death and Empathy: My Sister Web and Jack, Love and the Daily Grail.

Asheville poet, Alida Woods will read from her collection on Friday, July 20th at 6:30 p.m. at City Lights Bookstore. “Disturbing Borders is filled with wonder(s). This is a collection of unique homecomings in which “borders” take on the many expectations both made manifest and broken, and promises reknit into stronger fabrics. The reader follows happily through literal and figurative landscapes of shadowy tints that only Alida Woods could create,” said Katherine Soniat, author of Bright Stranger.

A native of New England, Alida Woods lives in Asheville, North Carolina. She has spent her life among school children as a teacher, school principal, and mentor. Her poems have appeared in The Avocet, The Great Smokies Review, The Westward Quarterly, Front Porch, and The Amsterdam Quarterly.

Franklin native and resident, Merrilee Bordeaux will read her poetry on Saturday, June 16th at 3 p.m. Her collection, A Song of Life and Other Poems focuses on fond memories and family.