Back to My Poetic Birthplace

My actual birthplace is Lancaster, South Carolina, a town I left before the age of one.  I’ve spent more years of my life in Georgia than anywhere else. But North Carolina, specifically western North Carolina, is where the poet Anne was born.  I never talk about how I came to write poetry in my later years without giving credit to the Great Smokies Writing Program.  In my first years of retirement, I tried a couple of writing classes, first at a community college (thank you Blue Ridge Community College!) and then classes offered in a writing instructor’s home (kudos to Peggy Tabor Millin).  Peggy Millin answered my questions about writing poetry by pointing me in the direction of the Great Smokies Writing Program.  What a gift. Cathy Smith Bowers taught my first few classes.  After she became North Carolina Poet Laureate, she quit teaching there and I continued on with other fine instructors and gradually I became part of the warm poetry community of western North Carolina. Not only did I learn some of the craft of poetry, I was introduced to new poems and I made many friends.

I’ve been away from North Carolina and my mountain friends for four years now but recently I had the good fortune to be among them again. Every third Wednesday the NC Writers Network West and the Brandy Bar in Hendersonville team up to offer a reading followed by an open mic.  Kathleen Calby is the tireless coordinator of these events.  I was privileged to read to read on May 14 along with Asheville poet, Nicole Farmer.  I mostly read from The Watchful Eyebut threw in a few from my chapbook Minute Men and Women.  Nicole read from her new collection Open Heart which blends poems related to both physical and metaphorical hearts. Her previous collection, Honest Sonnets is well named.  I recommend both. During the Q&A, Kathleen asked each of us to name a favorite poem of the other.  I immediately responded, “the one about her daughters.”  It is entitled “Ylva” which is Swedish for she-wolf.   Nicole named my poem “That Sunday Morning,” about my mother’s death.