poetry collection

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. 

A few years ago, I wrote a Storied Charlotte blog post about Chris Arvidson’s anthology titled The Love of Baseball:  Essays by Lifelong Fans.  At the time that I wrote about her baseball anthology, I would have described Chris as a writer of creative nonfiction.  I knew that she covered poetry in the creative writing classes that she regularly teaches at UNC Charlotte, but I wasn’t then aware that she had taken an interest in writing poetry.   Over the years, however, I have learned that some writers are hard to pin down, and Chris is such a writer.  I first became aware of Chris’s interest in writing poetry when I noticed that she was one of the Charlotte poets featured in the Of Earth and Sky:  Poetry Anthology 2021.  Her career as a poet has taken a big step forward this month with the publication of The House Inside My Head, her first poetry collection.  For more information about this collection, please click the following link:  https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/the-house-inside-my-head-by-chris-arvidson/

I contacted Chris and asked her about how she came to write The House Inside My Head.  Here is what she sent to me:

Poetry has come to me late in my writing life. My MFA and subsequent nonfiction work has been about people, places, baseball…. But when my husband Henry and I moved back to Charlotte, after being gone to such far-flung places as Traverse City, MI, and Pittsburgh, it just started pouring out of me. I blame it on the Charlotte Mecklenburg library uptown, and Charlotte Lit’s Pen to Paper writing sessions.

The first week we were back, I started going to the Thursday morning Write Like You Mean It sessions at the library. And then I added in Pen to Paper at Charlotte Lit once a week. Soon the library started a bi-weekly Poetry in Pajamas, and I thought, well, hell, why not? All the prompts all seemed to “prompt” me to poetry.

Then the pandemic hit and that just egged me on even more. We started Zooming and still there was poetry. Before I knew it, I had a pretty big collection of stuff people seemed to like, so on the advice of poetry friends I sent it in to Finishing Line Press’ annual chapbook contest. I didn’t win, but they asked to publish the chapbook.

In my Introduction to Creative Writing class at UNC Charlotte, the final exam is to submit what you think is your best work for publication. Students decide which pieces of their work over the semester is their best, revise and polish, then research the right place for submission. I could hardly do less.

By the way, every semester, at least one student gets their work published. I like to think about how that final exam could prompt a lifelong habit. One of my students, Luther “Cole” Kissam V, just published a full-length poetry collection titled Have I Told You about My Superpowers.  Some of the poems in the collection he wrote in my class. He will be reading from his new book at Park Road Books on Sunday, June 12, 2022, at 3 pm.Is that great or what?

I agree—it is great.  I think it’s great that both Chris and Cole have poetry books that have come out this month.  I think it’s great Storied Charlotte is a place where writers such as Chris and Cole can find the support they need to grow as writers. 

When I heard the sad news that Dr. Anthony S. “Tony” Abbott died on October 3, 2020, I flashed back to the first time I heard Tony read his poems aloud.  His first poetry collection, The Girl in the Yellow Raincoat, had just been published, and he read a number of the poems from this collection at an event sponsored by Poplar Street Books, a charming used bookstore that was located in a historic home in the heart of Charlotte’s Fourth Ward.  Rosemary Latimore, the owner of the store, was a great lover of poetry, and she often held poetry readings at her bookstore.  I went to Tony’s reading, and I remember being moved by the deep emotions that run through his poetry.  For example, in his poem about the girl in the yellow raincoat, Tony helped those of us in attendance better understand the continuing sense of loss that a parent experiences following the death of a child.  I also remember the sound of his voice as he read aloud.  There was a warmth to his voice that helped him establish a rapport with those of us in the audience.  Although that poetry reading took place more than thirty years ago, I remember it very well.  I can still see Tony reading his poems, surrounded by stacks of old books.  I recall that at the end of his reading, he repeatedly thanked Rosemary for organizing the event, and he thanked those of us in the audience for coming out to hear him.  As I see it, Tony didn’t just share his poems with us that afternoon.  He shared part of his essence.  His passion for poetry, his desire to connect with readers, his graciousness, and his commitment to the larger literary community all came through during his reading.

I am just one of many people whose lives are richer because they knew Tony or read his work.  During his thirty-seven years as an English professor at Davidson College, he taught countless students about literature and drama.  Even after he retired in 2001, he continued to teach occasional courses.  As one of the founders of the Davidson Community Players, he helped bring the joy of theater to the lives of many residents of Davidson and beyond.  Through his many books, he reached readers, most of whom never met him in person.  Over the course of his long career, he wrote seven books of poetry, two novels, and several works of literary criticism.  He participated in various writers’ groups and organizations in the Charlotte area, and he could always be counted on to lead writing workshops.  

For the purposes of this blog post, I contacted three people who knew Tony well and asked them to provide me with more information about Tony’s many and varied contributions to Charlotte’s community of readers and writers.  One of these people is Ann Wicker, who was one of Tony’s students at Davidson College in the 1970s and who went on to become one of his friends.  Another is Amy Rogers, who was the publisher of Tony’s first novel, Leaving Maggie Hope.  The third is Leslie Rindoks, who Tony sought out as his designer many times, over several decades.

Here is what Ann Wicker sent to me:

Through his service in so many organizations and in his personal life, Dr. Tony Abbott was a bridge builder and one of his many gifts was bringing writers and readers together. His readings were entertaining and his classes inspirational. Further, he had a gift for bringing individuals together—if you were a friend of Tony, you had a vast network of friends you just hadn’t met yet.

While Tony was active in literary endeavors across the state and beyond, he spent a lot of time both before and after his 2001 retirement from Davidson College teaching classes for the Charlotte community. His classes through Queens University were always full, and he taught many classes and workshops for various groups in Charlotte and the region.

For many years he was active in the Charlotte Writers Club, serving as the organization’s president as well as several terms on their board. The Charlotte Center for Literary Arts wrote in their newsletter that Tony was “a supporter, faculty member, and friend of Charlotte Lit from our inception” in 2015. 

Beyond Charlotte, Tony served as president of the North Carolina Writers’ network from 1990-1992. He received the North Carolina Award for Literature in 2015 and in 2020 entered the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. He served multiple terms on the boards of the North Carolina Writers’ Network and the North Carolina Poetry Society.

In 2008, Tony received the Irene Blair Honeycutt Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Literary Arts from Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte. He was twice honored by the NC Poetry Society in the Brockman-Campbell Competition: in 2012 as co-winner for If Words Could Save Us and in 2014, an honorable mention for The Angel Dialogues.

Here is what Amy Rogers sent to me:

One of the best things about being a publisher is saying yes to writers who most often hear the word no when they submit their work. Saying yes to Tony Abbott’s novel was easy.

So when I heard the sad news that Tony had died, I did what book-lovers do: I went seeking solace from my bookshelf and pulled down my copy of Leaving Maggie Hope. It’s an elegant, coming-of-age story of a boy who struggles to develop self-reliance in a world that often defies understanding.

I remembered back to when I first sat down with Tony’s manuscript; before then, I’d only been familiar with Tony’s work as a masterful poet.

As part of the publishing team at Novello Press, I evaluated hundreds of submissions each year. We’d all seen the sad truth: Even skilled wordsmiths often lack the ability to sustain a long-form narrative over the hundreds of pages that comprise a novel.

But this, this: Expansive and somehow tight, lyrical and yet muscular, Leaving Maggie Hope was a treasure. We not only added it to our roster of published books, we named it a Novello Literary Award winner.

That was back in 2003 and so much has changed since then. I didn’t get to know Tony as a beloved professor who shaped the creative minds of so many students. I can’t imagine the loss to his beloved Davidson community. But I have a keepsake of his legacy on my shelf, along with the memory of the joy of saying yes.

Here is what Leslie Rindoks sent to me:

Thirty years ago, Tony Abbott was directing Davidson Community Players’ production of Inherit the Wind and needed a set designer. New to North Carolina, I was a freelance designer with a theatre degree and little else. That play was the first of our collaborations, some theatre-based, but many more book-related, all of which enriched my life—as his neighbor, a designer, an editor, and ultimately as a writer myself.

I designed the cover of his first book, The Girl in the Yellow Raincoat (St. Andrews Press, 1989). Later, I designed the first edition of his autobiographical novel, Leaving Maggie Hope (Novello Festival Press, 2003), and as the book became a perennial favorite, I published, with Lorimer Press, the subsequent second edition and many reprints thereafter. Lorimer went on to publish collections of Tony’s poetry: New and Selected, If Words Could Save Us, and Angel Dialogues, all to great acclaim.

Tony delighted in collaboration, especially when sharing poetry with new audiences. He read poems accompanied by Baroque cello; he stepped into the recording studio so a cd could accompany If Words Could Save Us; he enlisted an artist to depict Gracie, the bridge-playing, Girl Scout cookie-selling, chandelier-swinging angel in Angel Dialogues; then, while promoting the book, he paired with various readers across the state to give Gracie a voice.

In “Blood Talk” he wrote, “I got nothing but goddam words working for me,” but goddam, what he did with them! As N.C. poet laureate Joseph Bathanti said, Tony refused “to flinch or shy away from his spiritual preoccupation intrigues” and he mined with “profundity and lyric intensity that sacred vein—with an imaginative finesse and sense of humor that is at once mystical and accessible.”

Tony’s belief in the power of words—if words could save us (and they can, my darling)—was in full force when he served as volume editor for What Writers Do, a retrospective of Lenoir-Rhyne’s Visiting Writers Series (Lorimer Press, 2011). When he reached out to writers such as Seamus Heaney, Billy Collins, and Ron Rash, they delivered: poems, essays, stories, all which, as Tony said, “celebrate life and language and hope … making us want to be the human beings we were intended to be.” The very definition of Tony’s lifelong mission.

How fitting Tony should leave us now. The leaves on his favorite trees, those sugar maples, demand our attention before they loosen their hold and drift away.

            Blood red of late October in the South,

            and from the cemetery to the college campus

            on the hill, the leaves bathe my eyes. I

            turn each corner into dazzling surprise.

As Ann, Amy, and Leslie make clear in their statements, Tony was more than a gifted writer.  He always valued friendship and community, and he took seriously his role as a teacher and mentor to the many writers he nurtured and supported over the course of his long and productive life.  He will be missed, but through his books, he will continue to play a role in Storied Charlotte for years to come.