North Carolina Poetry Society

Award Winning Poems and Pinesong — Anthology Discounts

Share the joy of poetry with your friends and loved ones by giving them past copies of the NCPS contest-winning collections.

— Issues of Award Winning Poems from the years prior to 2001 will be available FOR FREE at the January 19 meeting.

— Ribboned bundles of Award Winning Poems and Pinesong issues from 2001 to 2006 will be available for $5.00 per set.

The most current collection, Pinesong 2007, will also be available for sale. Pick up an assortment and SPREAD THE JOY!!!

Books Aplenty Book Give Away — Good Housekeeping Alert

In an effort to keep the floors of Weymouth from sagging under the weight of the SIZABLE collection of members' books that have been left behind over the years in the NCPS Book Room, the NCPS Good Housekeeping Committee (which will disband immediately following the January meeting) is announcing that ALL MEMBER BOOKS currently in its possession will be given away by the armload FOR FREE in the Journal Swap Room (the front hall of Weymouth) beginning at 9:15am on January 19, 2008 (prior to start of the NCPS winter meeting).

If you are the author of a book that might have been left behind in the book room and you do NOT wish for your book(s) to be given away to the masses, please arrange for yourself or a representative of yourself to make an appearance in the Journal Swap Room between 8:30am and 9:15am to collect your books prior to the Books Aplenty Book Give Away.

Carolina African American Writers' Collective (CAAWC)

"We like to ensure that people who attend our workshops/meetings are able to take constructive criticism on their literary works and are capable of providing in-depth constructive criticism on the literary works of others members." — Lenard D. Moore, Founder & Executive Director, CAAWC

Guests are generally welcome to attend CAAWC meetings, but occasionally meetings are for members only. For more information, email L. Teresa Church — ltchurch@mindspring.com — Membership Chairperson.

Friday Noon Poets — Chapel Hill, NC

Friday Noon Poets meets at Amity United Methodist Church, 825 N. Estes Drive, Chapel Hill, NC. All poets are welcome. For more information, call David Manning at (919) 462-3695.

Friday Noon Poets is a poetry appreciation group that has been meeting weekly in Chapel Hill for nearly 40 years. Following a half-hour of conversation over bag lunches, group members take turns reading poems aloud in round-robin fashion for about an hour. Attendees may choose to read their own poems or poems by other poets that they admire.

Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet Series — Update

GILBERT-CHAPPELL DISTINGUISHED POET SERIES CONTINUES TO EXPAND
by Debi Hobbs (11/01/2006)

The NCPS-sponsored Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet Series pairs young, aspiring writers with professional poets who act as mentors. What a wonderful way to ensure that North Carolina’s long legacy as a leader in poetry continues!

A young person (middle school through college age) who is interested in applying to work with a Distinguished Poet should check the NCPS website at www.ncpoetrysociety.org for an application and for a list of counties to determine into which of the three state regions he/she falls.

Adult writers who have an interest in becoming a Distinguished Poet/mentor should contact one of the three regional chairs to learn about the criteria, the responsibilities, the honorarium, and other details. The post is for one year, but renewable for a second year.

In the WESTERN Region, the contact person is Libby Campbell who can be reached at libcame@roadrunner.com. On the staff at Queens University in Charlotte is Distinguished Poet Cathy Smith Bowers. In the next few years, the Western region will expand to include readings at Appalachian State in Boone.

The chair of the EASTERN committee is Rebecca Godwin at rlgodwin@barton.edu. Distinguished Poet Jim Clark is Barton College writer-in-residence.

In the CENTRAL area, the person to contact is Alexis Gines at agines@earthlink.net. Director of Creative Writing at North Carolina A and T University is Distinguished Poet Anjail Rashida Ahmad. In the coming years, the Central area will be working more closely with St. Andrews Presbyterian College in Laurinburg.

The GCDP Series offers a very special opportunity for both beginning writers and for mature poets. If you are aware someone who might be interested, please encourage him/her to apply.

North Carolina Haiku Society

The North Carolina Haiku Society was founded in 1979 to promote the writing and appreciation of haiku in English. Members support these goals by writing haiku and hosting an annual Haiku Holiday.

"If you come to our meetings, we assume that you want to write—or at least better understand—poems that would be generally recognized as haiku by readers who are familiar with the form. If you share these goals with us, we will spend some time learning how literary haiku work in English—or as the poet John Ciardi would say—how they mean." — Dave Russo

Please see the NC Haiku Society web site — nc-haiku.org — for meeting times.

Please contact Dave Russo, NCHS webmaster, before you come: web@nc-haiku.org

North Carolina Poetry Society — Journal Exchange

You are invited to exchange journals at each NCPS meeting at the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities in Southern Pines, NC. Meetings are usually held on the third Saturdays of January, May, June, and September. See the NCPS Poetry Events Calendar for the specific dates.

Please observe the following guidelines for these Journal Exchanges:

LEAVE only those journals you don't mind parting with.

TAKE all you can read (but read all you take).

RETURN the journals you borrowed at the next meeting.

NC Poetry Society — Poetry Contest Overview

The NCPS sponsors "blind" contests, meaning that the judges, all but one of whom live outside North Carolina, receive no identifying information about the authors: the judges see only the poem-entries. Each annual contest is held in the fall/winter, with an early January deadline for receipt of entries.

Well in advance of each contest, 15 highly qualified poets are selected as judges. Bios of the judges are typically posted on this web site at the end of each contest, which is marked each May by Awards Day, at which winners are invited to read their poems, all of which are published in Pinesong, the annual contest anthology.

The 9 adult and the 5 student contests all have different judges. The Poet Laureate Award has two such judges: a Preliminary Judge, who selects 10 poems as finalists; and a Final Judge (usually the North Carolina Poet Laureate) who selects one of the ten as the winner.

Guidelines for the adult and student contests are posted on this web site. Select "Adult Contests" and/or "Student Contests" from the Home Page menu.

NC Poetry Society — Program Endowment Fund

As part of the North Carolina Poetry Society's long-range plans, the NCPS welcomes contributions to its Program Endowment fund.

A fully funded endowment will enable us to increase the quality and outreach of our programs in pursuit of our mission, as we continue to promote poetry throughout the state--and beyond.

Donations are tax-deductible. Please check to see if your place of employment matches donations. Contributions of all sizes are much appreciated.

When making a donation, you may designate any particular area that you want to support or you may contribute to the general fund.

Mail your checks (payable to "NCPS") to:
Kay Cheshire 5410 Chatfield Sq., Greensboro, NC 27410

NC Reads NC: Our Poets Speak — Poetry in the Library

If bringing a humanities scholar or poet to your community for a six-session poetry series interests you, here's a wonderful opportunity — the North Carolina Center for the Book has developed a reading, viewing, and discussion series for your public library. Programs are led by humanities scholars/poets and are free to the public.

The NC Center for the Book loans the books and videos for use during the series: The North Carolina Poetry Society anthology Word and Witness: 100 Years of North Carolina Poetry, edited by Sally Buckner; and The Language They Speak is Things to Eat, edited by Michael McFee.

Videos are from the two six-part Poetry Live! series produced by UNC-TV and hosted by Dannye Romine Powell and Charles Kuralt. The programs feature interviews with 24 North Carolina poets reading and discussing their work.

Here's how it works:
1) Your local group contacts Frannie Ashburn (contact info below), to set up the program and reserve the books and videos.
2) Frannie Ashburn will recommend a poet or humanities scholar if you don’t already have someone in mind, and she will contact them for you.
3) Your group and the poet/scholar arrange suitable dates and times for the series.
4) Your local group rounds up the attendees.

Mini-grants are available from the North Carolina Humanities Council to provide an honorarium and travel reimbursement for the scholar/poet.

INTERESTED IN A PROGRAM IN YOUR AREA? — CONTACT:
— Frannie Ashburn, Director, North Carolina Center for the Book,
at 919-807-7416 fashburn@library.dcr.state.nc.us
OR
— Pat Riviere-Seel, NCPS President, at patriviereseel@yahoo.comt

NC Reads NC is sponsored by the North Carolina Center for the Book, with additional support from the North Carolina Humanities Council.

Writers' Ink Guild — Fayetteville, NC

The Writers’ Ink Guild of Fayetteville meets the first Friday of each month at 7 p.m. at Barnes & Noble in Fayetteville (off Morganton St. across from Cross Creek Mall). An open mike follows the meeting and lasts until 10 p.m.

The Writers' Ink Guild sponsors Fields of Earth, an annual poetry competition which has been held for more than twenty years. This contest is open to all regional poets.

For more information, contact Joseph Haymore at JBHaymoreII@aol.com or call (919) 499-6600.

Writer's Stage — Hickory, NC

The Writer's Stage meets bimonthly at Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse, 29 2nd St. NW, in downtown Hickory.

Events usually open with a featured writer followed by open mic and cover a wide literary genre including fiction writers, poets, essayists, creative non-fiction writers, and songwriters.

For more information, email tfbcoffeehouse@charter.net or call 828-325-0108.

[Editor's Note: The Writer's Stage information included above was correct as of 11/29/04.]