At Berea’s 2015 Appalachian Symposium, bell hooks led the keynote by talking about belonging to Appalachian culture and how it has shaped her life. The panel also includes Gwyn Rubio, Pam Duncan, Amy Greene, and Crystal Wilkinson.
More videos from the event can be found on Berea College’s YouTube page.
Audio recordings of the events are available here.
My friend Peter and I were six.
We wore cowboy hats, sheriff ’s badges,
and holsters with cap pistols in them.
We pretended we were at the top of a cliff
in the Badlands
(because they’re full of bad guys, Peter said)
waiting to ambush some train robbers.
We must be a thousand feet high, said Peter,
from here those people down there look like ants.
There were three possible responses to this:
—They sure do.
—Those are ants.
—(I said): None of my aunts looks like that.
Sensing a change in me, Peter made new friends.
-Andrew Merton,
Lost and Found
(Accents Publishing)
Andrew Merton is a journalist, essayist, and poet. Publications in which his nonfiction has appeared includeEsquire, Ms. Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Boston Magazine, and The Boston Globe.His bookEnemies of Choice: The Right-To-Life Movement and Its Threat to Abortion, was published by Beacon Press in 1980. His poetry has appeared inBellevue Literary Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Rialto (U.K.), Comstock Review, Louisville Review, Vine Leaves, the American Journal of Nursing,and elsewhere. His book of poetry, Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs?, with a foreword by Charles Simic (Accents Publishing, 2012) was named Outstanding Book of Poetry for 2013–2014 by the New Hampshire Writers’ Project. He is a professor emeritus of English at the University of New Hampshire. His website is available here.
Wash the dust from my eyes, out of my ears,
from all pores where the wind has lodged it.
Wash it away—whatever is left from dusty roads
of childhood Rockport, dust of dead parents.
Let me go to Mess Hall clean,
to feed as well as my horse
for tomorrow’s ride.
Break this monotony with abundant splashing
from fountains in Renaissance Rome.
Break this dead dusty road. I am going somewhere
lined with apple trees and red rose bushes.
NL
–Nana Lampton
Wash the Dust from My Eyes
(Accents Publishing)
Nana Lampton is a lifelong resident of Louisville, Kentucky and leads the company her grandfather Lampton founded in 1906. She graduated from Wellesley College and worked under May Sarton. She earned an M.A. from the University of Virginia where she studied with George Garrett. In 2004, she received an MFA in writing from Spalding University. An Honorary Consul to the Kingdom of Morocco, she is an active business woman whose interests include community development, historic preservation, land conservation, and the arts. She serves on the Boards of Yaddo and Fons Vitae, and on the Advisory Board of Sarabande Books. Her books of poetry include The Moon with the Sun in Her Eye, published by Fleur-de-Lis Press, Snowy Owl Gathers in Her Trove, published by Chapman Friedman Gallery, and Bloom on a Split Board, published by Accents Publishing.
Roberta Beary‘s Deflection (Accents Publishing) recently won an honorable mention by the Haiku Foundation for their Touchstone Award, and Beary also won the distinction of being the only woman among the winners and runners up.
Of Deflection, the panelists said:
“Roberta Beary has guts. Within the first few pages of Deflection, the reader is presented with haibun and haiku sequences about loss of attraction, adultery, the deterioration of the author’s mother, and the author’s son coming out as gay. That’s a lot to take in, but Roberta Beary is a skilled poet, and she pulls it off.”
(source)
The winners were Dan Schwerin’s ORS (Red Moon Press, 2015) and John Stevenson’s Nest Feathers (The Heron’s Nest Press, 2015).
Roberta Beary also recently read at AWP for Rattle along with Troy Jollimore, Joan Murray, and Chris Anderson. She also read from Deflection at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland with Ann Bracken.
Beary will be at the North Carolina Haiku Society’s Haiku Holiday Conference this Satuday, April 30 at Bolin Brook Farm in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The Charlotte Observer recently ran a piece on the event, featuring Beary and mentioning her haiku studies in Japan. If you’re in the area, be sure to check her out, along with Robert Moyer and Lenard D. Moore.
For more information about Roberta Beary, check out her website.
I’m as poisonous as an apple
the snake told eve
everything in this world is halved
believe me
I’ve long been sneaking
among the fig leaves
and I always survive
I’m attracted to heat
to the smoke ring behind your ebony lashes
to adam’s neck
to the monkeys on the tree
I lie still
the falling dusk
lulls me to sleep
ever so steadily
I slip away
I can undress
as if I’m about to bathe
in something familiar
but I never remain naked
who is to tempt the snake
I sink
into the apple
–Даниела Михалева
(Daniela Mihaleva),
The Season of Delicate Hunger:
Anthology of Contemporary Bulgarian Poetry
(Accents Publishing)
We will be selling & Grace: Selections from Lexington Poetry Month 2015 at the Carnegie Center in Lexington, Kentucky on Tuesday, May 10, 2016 at 6pm.
If you are one of the featured reader (please click here to see the complete list), then you are welcome to come and read your poem.
This book could not have happened without the commitment and dedication from the Lexington Poetry Month poets and the amazing community that has been supporting the Lexington Poetry Month Writing Challenge for so long. Once again, thank you so much.
Click the Facebook Event page for more details.
| When: | Tuesday, May 10, 2016 @ 6PM |
| Where: | The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning |
| 251 W. Second Street | |
| Lexington, KY 40507 | |
| (859) 254-4175 |
The clock in the plaza
showed the wrong time,
which was just right for somewhere else.
And why were you so surprised
that at that hour
we simply did not exist?
It wasn’t our turn yet.
The clock had three other faces—
each for a different hour of need.
–Andrei Guruianu,
Bigger Than They Appear:
Anthology of Very Short Poems
(Accents Publishing)
She must be new. I’ve never seen her
here before—a vision in white, all
business except when she smiles
her crooked/coy grin, says I have pretty
veins. Her hazel eyes hold steady
my gaze as the cold needle plunges
into raised blue lines traversing
the bend of my right arm. Now
just hold this tight.
–Jay McCoy,
The Occupation
(Accents Publishing)
Jay McCoy is a Lexington-based poet and visual artist with deep roots in Eastern Kentucky. Currently, he fills his days working as general manager for the Morris Book Shop and a writing instructor. Jay holds degrees from Transylvania University, the University of Akron, and earned his MFA in creative writing from the Bluegrass Writers Studio at Eastern Kentucky University. He co-founded the Teen Howl Poetry Series as a venue for young poets to discover their own voice. Jay’s poetry has appeared in several anthologies and journals including Blue Fifth Review, Kentucky Monthly, Kudzu, Naugatuck River Review, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, and Still: The Journal.
Your father told you, you trust too much.
You believe the generals. French and Milner
for the British, Joffre for the French,
Von Kluck of Germany, speak of themselves
as well-schooled nobility, a notch under all-knowing,
bred of kings with better boot legs, finer noses,
better posture in the saddle.
Look at the results! They make their private decisions, so jealous
they won’t consult. One army passes another allied army
in the night, by mistake, squandering troops’ energy,
too late to reach the battle, to hold the line.
Soldiers march twice the needed distance.
Infantry—the lowly troop—lacks water, rest, and food,
expected to fight next morning. (This happens, I read,
more than once.) Exhausted soldiers die, wounded are left
behind—the victims of generals’ bull-fighting.
Joffre fires 58 generals.
For glory of the battle, the lances and the pennants fly,
horses leap the shell holes, until they, too, are
hanging their heads for lack of food and water.
Fodder follows a week late, across the sea, then by rail.
Look, John Mason, we have to stop this insanity!
Listen! You’re not any better bred than the fellows who
can’t speak the language, than recruits who
might be born a different color.
Pay attention! Find the meaning of your life.
You are training first generation boys.
Teach them to go forward as Americans,
with respect and common sense. One of them
could be President one day. Try not to lose him.
NL
–Nana Lampton
Wash the Dust from My Eyes
(Accents Publishing)
Nana Lampton is a lifelong resident of Louisville, Kentucky and leads the company her grandfather Lampton founded in 1906. She graduated from Wellesley College and worked under May Sarton. She earned an M.A. from the University of Virginia where she studied with George Garrett. In 2004, she received an MFA in writing from Spalding University. An Honorary Consul to the Kingdom of Morocco, she is an active business woman whose interests include community development, historic preservation, land conservation, and the arts. She serves on the Boards of Yaddo and Fons Vitae, and on the Advisory Board of Sarabande Books. Her books of poetry include The Moon with the Sun in Her Eye, published by Fleur-de-Lis Press, Snowy Owl Gathers in Her Trove, published by Chapman Friedman Gallery, and Bloom on a Split Board, published by Accents Publishing.
Fifty years
since it stepped
from the brush
the moose
on the wall
smiles
–Thom Ward,
Bigger Than They Appear:
Anthology of Very Short Poems
(Accents Publishing)