poetry

The world of creative writing can be divided into three broad categories:  fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction.  When I first met Chris Arvidson about six years ago, she was known primarily as a writer of creative nonfiction. She wrote personal essays about such topics as her love of the North Carolina mountains and her passion for baseball.  Recently, however, Chris has taken an interest in writing poetry.  In 2022, she published her debut poetry chapbook titled The House Inside My Head. This month Finishing Line Press brought out Nobody Cares What You Think, her first full poetry collection. Curious about how and why Chris made the transition from creative nonfiction to poetry, I reached out to her and asked about this development in her writing career.  Here is what she sent to me:

Poetry is a relatively new genre for me. I have often tried to figure out how this MFA in Creative Nonfiction person ended up wandering into poetry. I think I have a couple of ideas about how that has happened. When I moved back to Charlotte in 2019, I started attending a weekly prompt-driven workshop at Charlotte Mecklenburg Library’s Uptown branch. And, somehow, I started responding in poetry? It just started pouring out of me. I have kept a running notebook ever since, using it as a master collector of writing from every workshop I attend, which includes many with Charlotte Lit (where I now serve on the Board), Charlotte Writers Club, and Table Rock Writers Workshop at Wildacres, as well as the library. I especially find Jay Ward’s monthly Saturday series at University City Library a fun and always productive couple of writing hours.

I suspect the appeal of poetry is partly driven by my age. With a poem you can respond to a prompt or notion, play with it, revise it, and FINISH it in a reasonable amount of time. I figure that I’m naturally gravitating to things that I can finish. Call it done. Move on to the next thing I want to say something about, and know that I’ll be around long enough to do so. I also think that the poetry I am writing in this book very much runs right up into memoir, and in that way, the MFA in creative nonfiction plays a role in my thinking and writing. Many of the sort of “principles” feel the same, attention to the telling detail, the universality in personal stories, and observing the world through a unique-to-you lense.

I’m going to do a book launch for Nobody Cares What You Think at Charlotte Art League’s gallery on February 14, 6-9:00 p.m., in conjunction with a show opening there that I co-curated called “Latrina Ekphrastic” — it’s art and words from local poets and artists and it’s going to be hung in the gallery bathrooms. I think readings that night will definitely be in order, maybe not IN the bathrooms, but just outside.

For readers who want to know more about Chris and her creative endeavors, please click on the following link:  https://www.chrisarvidson.com/index.htm

I congratulate Chris on the publication of Nobody Cares What You Think, and I thank her for her many and varied contributions to Storied Charlotte’s creative side.  

A month or two ago, one of my students stopped by my office and asked me about the meaning of a literary term that she had come across in her reading for a class that she was taking on literary theory.  After I answered her question, she said, “I wish I could be like you and know the meaning of all of these fancy words and terms.”  I assured her that in reality I do not know the meaning of all the literary terms that are bandied about these days. I think that she might have been a little disappointed in me.

I am in my late 60s, but I am still adding new words and terms to my vocabulary on a regular basis.  Recently, for example, I looked up the meaning of the term ekphrastic poetry.  My friend Chris Arvidson, a Charlotte poet and artist, had mentioned to me that she had taken an interest in writing ekphrastic poetry, but I wasn’t sure what she meant by this term.  Although I associated the term with art, I didn’t know exactly how art figures in ekphrastic poetry.  Well, I turned to the Poetry Foundation’s “Glossary of Poetic Terms,” and I found out that an “ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art.”  Intrigued, I asked Chris for more information about her interest in ekphrastic writing.  Here is what she sent to me:

I’ve always considered myself a writer first, then an artist, but the two have really begun to meld together, so the ekphrastic form lends itself tremendously to my general artistic adventure as a result. I think about ekphrastic writing in the most general of applications. I have run into those (usually academics) who take a very strict view of what the ekphrastic form precisely must be, and I resist this notion with fervor.  In this strictest sense, the form is seen only as the production of a description of a piece of art. I see many more possibilities. To me ekphrastic writing is about where a piece of art takes the writer. And, in this way, the combination of the work of art and the writing done in response to it, become a whole of its own—the sum becomes another kind of whole. And it needn’t only be poetry. 

This idea of creating ekphrastic work led to an exhibit at Charlotte Art League last Spring, a show of works by artists from around the country, paired with writers who shared their art-inspired work. It was a tremendous success by any measure and has inspired the Art League to mount another such effort for May of 2024. To pull the show off this year, I teamed up with Jay Ward, Charlotte’s Poet Laureate, and Caroline Kane Kenna, the immediate past President of the Charlotte Writers Club. We herded the cats, as it were, pouring through the entries and created “pairings” of writers and artists. Jay and Caroline are on board again for the 2024 show 1 + 1 = 3. And we’ve decided to up the stakes a bit and make it a juried exhibition. Opening night, we’ll bring the writers to the stage to read their art-inspired work. 

In preparation for the submission process, I’m doing several workshops – in hopes of inspiring writers to participate. First off, I’ll be doing a workshop for Charlotte Writers Club on Saturday, January 13, 10-12:00 p.m., at Providence United Methodist. Then on Saturday, January 20, I’m teaming up with Charlotte Lit and the Charlotte Art League from 10-12:00 p.m. at the Art League, to do a very specific ekphrastic adventure. Finally, on February 17, I’ll be leading one of Jay Ward’s Poet Laureate Workshops at the University City Library from 1-3:00 p.m. The deadline for entries for the May show is February 26. (To see how we plan to put this all together, go to the Charlotte Art League’s website and the Call to Artists 1 + 1 = 3 page for more details https://charlotteartleague.org/call-to-artists1- or just drop me a line for more information: chris@chrisarvidson.com.)

And, in January at the Art League, I’ve got an ekphrastic piece in the show called “It’s Never Just Black and White” which includes two collages and a poem. 

I thank Chris for sharing this information about her ekphrastic adventures and for her willingness to share her interest in ekphrastic writing with the rest of Storied Charlotte. 

Shortly after I joined UNC Charlotte’s English Department in 1984, I met Jay Jacoby.  He had joined the department six years earlier, so I naturally looked to him for guidance as I set out to build my career as an English professor.  I remember talking with Jay about publishing, and I was surprised to learn that he regularly published poetry in addition to his scholarly articles on the teaching of writing and on Jewish literature.  He shared with me a few of his poems at the time, and I liked the way he drew on his teaching experiences in his poetry. 

Jay retired some years ago and moved to Asheville, where he hosts a monthly book group at Malaprop’s Bookstore, leads a weekly study group associated with his local synagogue, participates in three different writing groups, teaches literature and creative writing classes at UNC Asheville’s College for Seniors, and plays competitive Scrabble as a member of the Asheville Scrabble Club. However, he remains in touch with his former colleagues at UNC Charlotte, and he continues to write and publish poetry.  Earlier this year, ArsPoetica brought out a collection of Jay’s poetry titled Lessons Learned & Unlearned. For more information about Jay’s collection, please click here.

 I recently contacted Jay and asked him for more information about this collection.  Here is what he sent to me:

Most of the poems in this collection, written over a period of nearly sixty years, reflect many things I have been taught and that I have gone on to test, either through experience or imagination. They represent not only lessons I have learned over the years, but also those I have not.  Several of the poems were written during my 27-year tenure at UNC Charlotte, including elegies for former colleagues and reflections on my writing conferences with students.

In many of the poems, I have followed the advice of Sir Philip Sidney: “Look into your heart and write.” In many more, I was just messing around with language, engaging in wordplay but, as Frost once noted, “play for mortal stakes.” There are a number of “found poems” and centos in this collection, occasioned by my “stealing” and juggling words of other writers. There’s an acrostic, a few anagrams, dictionary poems, shaped poems, and ekphrastic poems inspired by works of art. And there are poems constrained by fixed forms: haiku, tankas, sonnets, villanelles, even a golden shovel.

Jay also shared with me one of the poems in his collection.  Titled “Untethered in Dixie,” this poem was written on the occasion of his leaving Pittsburgh for his tenure-track position at UNC Charlotte:

UNTETHERED IN DIXIE

Ten years of marriage finally gone South

and so, to my greater surprise, will I.

Despite early vows otherwise, I will

now traverse that Mason-Dixon line

though still haunted by Life’s images

from childhood:  Emmett Till, Little Rock,

Pickrick’s Drumsticks, and bodies managed

so easily with firehoses and vicious dogs.

My pride and prejudice now also managed, 

worn down by the promise of a paycheck.

***

An itinerant Pennsylvania Yankee will soon

descend to serve in Queen Charlotte’s court.

***

Farewell Steel City, a.k.a. “City of Bridges,”

all four hundred and forty-six of them

spilling us into ninety-one enclaves.

Gert Stein, your native daughter, was right:

“A Holubky is a Gołąbki is a Golubtsy.”

A cabbage roll by any other name 

would smell as sweet. In Blitzburgh,

they’d tell me, “These lines need fixed.”

***

So I roll down from your sooted hills

And into the khaki piedmont flatland.

***

Hello Queen City, a.k.a “City of Churches.”

There’s one or more at every intersection,

all ready to serve me country ham biscuits,

seven-layer salad, Cheerwine or sweet tea.

I am now a stranger in a strange land, like

Geronimo stranded among the white-eyes

Indeed, everyone is blond; here we cannot

sing of ochi chyornye or schwartze oygen.

***

I explain that I am a recent transplant,

happy to exchange my “yinz” for “y’all.”

***

I am amazed by all this southern charm.

I wasn’t expecting Deliverance, but this?

other than my asking “What’s Cheerwine?”

At every 7-Eleven, they all invite me to

“Come back and see us.”  And I always do.

I asked myself why I stayed north so long?

In a year or so I would have my answer.

I thank Jay for the information about Lessons Learned & Unlearned and for sharing “Untethered in Dixie.” Although Jay is now a resident of Asheville, as far as I am concerned, he is still tethered to Storied Charlotte.

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet Jericho Brown’s Upcoming Lecture at CPCC – I am pleased to report that the renowned poet Jericho Brown will give a free lecture at CPCC next month.  When I first heard this news, I set out to learn more details.  I ended up exchanging a series of email messages with Liza Zerkle, who is a member of the literary committee organizing this event, and she agreed to provide me with more information.  Here is what she sent to me:

Jericho Brown, author of the poetry collection The Tradition for which he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, gives the Irene Blair Honeycutt Distinguished Lecture at Central Piedmont Community College. Free and open to the public, this event will be held on the Main Campus in the Dale Halton Theatre at 11 am on Thursday, September 14. Brown directs the Creative Writing Program at Emory University.

Brown’s poetry has been published widely, including in such publications as The New York Times, The New Yorker, TIME magazine, and in several volumes of The Best American Poetry. His honors and awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he is the winner of the Whiting Award. He served as editor for the new anthology How We Do it: Black Writers on Craft, Practice, and Skill. In The Tradition, Brown employs a new poetic form of his own invention called a “duplex” that combines a sonnet, a ghazal, and the blues. Author and poet Claudia Rankine says Brown’s poems offer their readers a window into his “devastating genius.” For more information about Brown and his poetry, please click on the following link:  https://www.jerichobrown.com/

The Irene Blair Honeycutt Distinguished Lectureship, initiated in 2006, honors Irene Blair Honeycutt’s role as founder of the Spring Literary Festival at Central Piedmont Community College (which later became the Sensoria Festival). For thirty-seven years, Honeycutt served as a creative writing instructor and impacted the lives of many students. The lectureship recognizes and honors her service to the community by bringing a noted author to give a public lecture.

I thank Lisa for providing the information about this event.  I also thank everyone involved in bringing Jericho Brown to Charlotte. Most of all, I thank Irene Blair Honeycutt for her many and varied contributions to Storied Charlotte—it’s fitting that this special lecture is named in her honor. 

On the Road with Poet Angelina Oberdan Brooks – The poems in Angelina Oberdan Brooks’ new chapbook titled Heavy Bloom have their origins in two cross-country road trips that Angelina took with her three dogs a few years ago.  When I first learned about the story behind her chapbook, I immediately flashed back to reading John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley when I was a teenager. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Steinbeck’s account of traveling across America with his French poodle, and ever since then I have had a fondness for road-trip books, especially ones that involve dogs.  In the case of Angelina’s Heavy Bloom, she focuses on images and telling moments that she recalls from her travels. Intrigued by the Angelina’s approach to writing these poems, I contacted her and asked her for more information about how she came to write Heavy Bloom. Here is what she sent to me:

Since I moved to Charlotte in 2014, I’ve been working to support the literary community, so you may recognize my name or my face. I’ve worked with Charlotte Lit, the Betchler and Gantt Museums, and many amazing individuals. I was co-chair (with Amy Bagwell and then Colin Hickey) of CPCC’s Sensoria Literary Committee for five years—bringing the likes of Tracy K. Smith, Hanif Abdurraqib, Carolyn Forche, Eugene Scott, and Juan Felipe Herrera to Charlotte. Through this, I also helped honor the winners of the Irene Blair Honeycutt Legacy and Lifetime Achievement Awards. I’m a proud East Charlotte homeowner. If you haven’t run into me at Book Buyers or Bart’s Mart, you probably will one day.

Heavy Bloom, my first chapbook and first collection of poetry, was written while living here. I amassed the originating images in these poems during what was a tumultuous time in my personal life. A formerly accurate and speedy typist, my hands largely stopped working in 2017, which led to a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis. Around the same time, my dad’s cancer became terminal, and he slowly died at home in Clemson, SC—over months and then days. Through all of this, the relationship I was in didn’t hold up. In the summer of 2018, unable to continue the life I’d planned, I moved my three dogs into my SUV and solo-camped from the Blue Ridge in NC to the Uintas in UT and back. Then, we did it again the following summer. The first road trip brought clarity, and the second brought healing.

The poems in Heavy Bloom move from watching an 18-wheeler strike a blue heron to being stalked by a mountain lion in West Texas to considering the carelessness with which we humans harm each other and the world around us. Upon the advice of Morri Creech (my mentor and friend from the McNeese MFA Program, a Charlottean now, too), I fully embraced Robert Bly’s Leaping Poetry. In his book, Bly writes, “In many ancient works of art we notice a long floating leap at the center of the work. That leap can be described as a leap from the conscious to the unconscious and back again, a leap from the known part of the mind to the unknown part and back to the known.” So, my poems start as images or bits of language or memory fragments, and then I meditatively follow my brain wherever it goes. You’ll find that in many of the poems in this collection, I’ve abandoned linear trains of thought, allowing my mind to jump to whatever is stirring in my subconscious. I trust that these associative leaps will eventually make sense, and in this way, my writing is surprising to myself—as Robert Frost recommends it should be in “The Figure a Poem Makes.” These wild jumps are where I learn the most from my own writing—about myself, being human, and living in this universe. (Don’t worry; a workshop on this is in the works!)

Publishing this collection is a feat of which I am very proud. I went through my academic career quickly; I started teaching college at twenty-one and finished both my MA and an MFA in three years. While I published a lot of what I wrote in my twenties, I struggled to figure out what I had to add to the vast canon of poetry. I also had to make a lot of mistakes, repeatedly prioritizing the wrong things. While I think I got it right in this collection, many of the poems didn’t find their way until I participated in Tupelo Press’s 30/30 Project in November 2020. The same year, this collection found its cohesiveness during a Tupelo Press Manuscript Conference wherein I learned so much from Jeffrey Levine and Kristina Marie Darling. Notes from some beloved-Charlotte poets certainly helped, too—especially from Amy Bagwell and Lisa Zerkle.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the impact my UNC Charlotte creative writing students had on this chapbook. I began teaching part-time at UNCC in Fall 2021—as an attempt to combat post-pandemic burnout. Always happy to share my journey in ways that will help students navigate their own, I was impressed by the attentiveness my students gave to me and my lectures. Empowered by them and coming off the thrill of hosting Juan Felipe Herrera at CPCC’s Sensoria, I quietly left my associate professorship there to give more of my energy to my poems. At UNC Charlotte, I’ve had the opportunity to teach introductory-level technical and creative writing classes as well as liberal studies courses on travel and environmental writing. Teaching classes that allowed me to discuss the words and writing I find most important made a difference in the publication of my poems—which took off in the last year.

Through writing these poems, I learned what I already knew: America—its landscape and its people—is beautiful and horrifying. Indeed, death is more certain than life, and loss is more common than love. We want to turn towards our screens and away from any discomfort, but we can’t. Richard Wilbur wrote that “[o]ne of the jobs of poetry is to make the unbearable bearable, not by falsehood but clear, precise confrontation”; the poems in Heavy Bloom sit with the uncomfortable, look at loss directly, and make way for future joy.

If you’re in Charlotte this summer, please join me for Heavy Bloom’s Launch Party! I’ll be selling and signing books on July 20^th from 6-8 pm at Bart’s Mart (next door to Book Buyers), and I’ll read a few poems at 7 pm. Copies are also available here: https://bottlecap.press/products/bloom.

In the meantime, here is “Echo,” a finalist for the LitSouth Award and one of the poems from Heavy Bloom:

For more poetry, road trips, ruminations, and dogs, follow me on Instagram: @ab3dogride.

I thank Angelina for telling the story behind Heavy Bloom and for sharing “Echo.” I also thank her for all that she has done over the years to promote the reading and writing of poetry in Storied Charlotte.