Storied Charlotte
Storied Charlotte
  • Home
  • Storied Charlotte
  • Monday Missive

Contact Me

Office: Fretwell 290D
Phone: 704-687-0618
Email: miwest@uncc.edu

Links

  • A Reader’s Guide to Fiction and Nonfiction books by Charlotte area authors
  • Charlotte book art
  • Charlotte Lit
  • Charlotte Readers Podcast
  • Charlotte Writers Club
  • Column on Reading Aloud
  • Department of English
  • JFK/Harry Golden column
  • Park Road Books
  • Storied Charlotte YouTube channel
  • The Charlotte History Tool Kit
  • The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Story

Archives

  • May 2025
  • April 2025
  • March 2025
  • February 2025
  • January 2025
  • December 2024
  • November 2024
  • October 2024
  • September 2024
  • August 2024
  • July 2024
  • June 2024
  • May 2024
  • April 2024
  • March 2024
  • February 2024
  • January 2024
  • December 2023
  • November 2023
  • October 2023
  • September 2023
  • August 2023
  • July 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013

Tags

American West anthology Black History Charlotte Charlotte Lit Charlotte Readers Podcast Charlotte writers Civil Rights Movement cookbooks dog fantasy adventure novels fantasy stories fiction foodways genre fiction grand reopening graphic novel historical fiction historical novels Judy Goldman lesbian characters Main Street Rag memoir middle-grade novel mystery novel mystery novels mystery series nonfiction novel novels Oz pandemic picture book picture books poetry poetry collection President Jimmy Carter Promising Pages Reading Aloud The Independent Picture House urban fantasy used books Verse & Vino Writers young adult fantasy novel

Irene Blair Honeycutt’s New Poetry Collection

January 25, 2025 by Mark West
Categories: Storied Charlotte

Irene Blair Honeycutt has played a major role in Charlotte’s literary circles for many years. During her tenure as a faculty member at Central Piedmont Community College, she taught creative writing to countless students.  In 1993, she founded CPCC’s Spring Literary Festival and served as its director for fourteen years. This festival expanded into CPCC’s Sensoria Festival, a celebration of literature and the arts. Upon her retirement in 2006, CPCC established the Irene Blair Honeycutt Distinguished Lectureship in her honor.

Besides teaching and doing community engagement work, Irene has a long record as a published poet.  Her first poetry collection, It Comes as a Dark Surprise, appeared in 2001. She then brought out Waiting for the Trout to Speak (2002), Before the Light Changes (2008), and Beneath the Bamboo Sky (2017).  Her fifth and most recent poetry collection, Mountains of the Moon: Poems & Pieces, came out last month from Charlotte Lit Press. I contacted Irene and asked her for more information about her new poetry collection. Irene responded by sending me a reflective piece that she titled “Thoughts on Writing Mountains of the Moon.”

Poetry surprises us with its unexpectedness.  We have a dream that haunts itself into becoming a poem. We honor a deceased friend. Our words keep the departed alive. Then we turn the page. Write a poem to honor a living person who has graced our lives in a special way. We write of moments that are already past. This moment is already past tense. One day, we receive a call that stops the clocks: that person we wrote about not long ago has died unexpectedly in his pickup truck. Frozen in the mountains.  But unexpectedness is about more than the dying. Or the leaving.

As Annie Dillard says, “We are here to abet creation and to witness it, to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed.”  The heron’s wings opening to the Book of Ages. A melody pulsing beneath Serkin’s fingers and all those trout swimming. The moths. The moon. The echolocation. The orientation of stars. 

A poem at a glance is like the tip of an iceberg. What is easily discernible remains on the surface.  What lies beneath the layers of a poem ventures into the deep unknown. To scramble the metaphor for a moment, I said to my dentist not long ago, not thinking of poetry, but of a possible root canal: A lot of life has gone into that tooth!

The same is true of Mountains of the Moon. All the life that went into this book contains years of being taught by incredible teachers of literature that go all the way back to elementary school. It contains days of childhood when I sat inside my bamboo hut nurtured by nature and wrote tiny poems and hid them in the ground. Biblical stories and hymns—rich imagery was part of that childhood. In my professional life in Charlotte, opportunities to hear amazing poets came my way via CPCC’s Sensoria, including Robert Hass, Mary Oliver, Linda Pastan, Edward Hirsch, Mark Doty, Natasha Tretheway, Li Young-Lee, and Stephen Dunn.  Too many to name.  And marvelous years of mentoring students from whom I also learned came my way. The Charlotte Writers Club provided a welcoming place for leadership roles and fellowship for beginning and experienced writers.   

We live in intervals. Each poem is never at the same place in the river of Time. Mountains of the Moon, my fifth, is a hybrid collection of Haibun, mini essays, dramatic, informal and experimental forms. Two of the poems were published in 2011 and 2012. The most recent in 2024. Sections vary: Motifs highlight living during the pandemic, relying on the human and the nonhuman for inspiration, joying in playing with language in new ways, mourning the loss of my dog. And the saving moon from childhood is a constant influence.  I aimed to capture the unexpected, to allow intuition to lead.  And then I learned anew how the poem, if we trust it, becomes wiser than the poet.  

Poetry gives the breath of life to memory. I’m not the first to say that elegiac poetry is a celebration of life, not death. And I love that T. S. Eliot said “…every poem [is] an epitaph.” 

I am grateful to Charlotte Lit, to all nonprofit independent presses, to the Charlotte Writers Club and Storied Charlotte for celebrating and preserving poetry for the good of us all. 

For more about Mountains of the Moon, read Irene’s book page at https://www.charlottelit.org/press/mountains-of-the-moon  Charlotte Lit is sponsoring a launch party for Mountains of the Moon.  This event will take place on Sunday, February 16, from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. at Charlotte Hygge Coworking, 933 Louise Avenue.  Copies of Irene’s collection will be available at the event to buy and have signed, but you can also purchase it online from Charlotte Lit Press. The event is free, but seating is limited so please register here.

I congratulate Irene on the publication of Mountains of the Moon, and I thank her for her many contributions to Storied Charlotte. 

Tags: poetry collection
Skip to toolbar
  • Log In