Three Poems to Honor Her Father on Father's Day by Nancy Simpson

There are things I could say about my father, all good. I was one of the blessed children of earth when it comes to parents. In the few times I feel my father near, now that he has passed into eterenity, I find myself being brief in my thank yous to him. "Thanks for the dancing lessons. Thanks for the homemade peach ice cream. Thanks for the wicker chair." I've also caught myself saying to no one, "You like my new house?" I owe my father 100% gratitude.

#1) My father loved me. He showed his love. He made me feel as if I was his only child when he had three other children in the house.


#2) No man every worked harder to provide for his family, and it was not all easy with war and the depression years. He provided well. I never felt that I needed more.



Depression Years - Good life at Knuckolls Dairy, Atlanta, Georgia - "All the milk a new born could need."



#3) Although he held other jobs, he was a planter. He lived for the short period of time when he could get his hands in the dirt. He'd plant corn and pole beans if he could get the ground.




Clyde Taylor Simpson in front of home 1940's, Miami, Florida. Back of photo says, "This is my house. How do you like it?"




One summer, when I was a teen, he had an ulcer. We thought it was cancer. I thought he was dying. He could not work. He left us in Miami and went to Atlanta where all of his folks lived. Mother said they would get him well. We waited to hear good or the bad news. When school was out for the summer, my mother sent me to Atlanta to see about him. Ha. He was more well than I had ever seen him. He looked tan and healthy. He had rented 10 acres of land and was growing corn like I'd never seen before. Later in his life, he gave up vegetables for flowers, but more than once I found a pineapple growing under his mango tree and found tomato bushes growing in his flower beds. Later, he became a landscaper for the Florida Racing Commission. On Sundays after church he would drive the family to Hialeah Race Track to see his gardens.

The best of life in Miami, Florida.









The last thing my father planted and grew was a cornfield in the front yard of his Hayesville, NC retirment house. No one could see the house from the road. Mother was embarrassed. Growing things is what made my father happy.





#4) The night my father died, I was traveling home from classes at UNC Asheville. My mother told me he called my name, along with the names of my sisters and brother and that he asked God to watch over us.




Bridge on the River Kwai

All those times, all those bridges,
Georgia to Florida, sand
in his shoes, red clay in his pocket.
I wonder what passed through my father's mind.

He never said much about hurricanes
or corn, except you pull it not pick it.
One summer in Georgia I primised to pull
all the corn in ten acres he planted.

Indolent girl, red clay in my pocket,
I remember a movie in East Atlanta.
Prisoners built a bridge across water,
building, building, the whole movie.

I was too young to know why
they blew it all to pieces in the end.
This morning a half drowned woman wakes me.
I open the window. She has come many miles

across water. Her memories are mine.
She gives me one starfish, one mango
and reminds me how I climbed the tree
when the flood came, after the hurricane.

I give her anemone for starfish.
I give her a mountain. The safest place to be.


by Nancy Simpson. Previously published
in Across Water and Night Student.






TRAVELING

I think first of my father,
how one day he did not remember
passing through town. Everything
looked different. He guessed
his mind was somewhere else.

I want to thank him
for telling me, so cassual he spoke.
I want to thank him,
it means I am not crazy,
for he was not crazy.
The night he died he knew what he was doing.

***

He Knew how to die.
We say that of my father
and tell the story,
how he sat on the sofa
hardly breathing,
three nights without sleeping.

I was traveling home
from night school in Asheville,
ice on the road in the high elevations.

***

What I know I learned from my mother,
so good she was to tell me
how he sat on the sofa, praying,
calling the names of his children.

God is going to let me sleep,
he said, and died within minutes,

at the same time I was dreaming
white cloudlands, white seals,
my car plowing homeward
through Winding Stair Gap.

by Nancy Simpson. Previously published
in Across Water and Night Student.









APRIL RAIN

In memory of my father
who loved to sit on a covered porch
and watch rain, I sit sheltered
and sip coffee on my covered deck
high on Cherry Mountain.
Near treetops I sing louder than
the downpour that falls inches from me.
"You like my new house?" I trill
above the sound of raindrops.


Mr.Whiskers asleep on my feet
under the wicker love seat, wakes.
He thinks my song is for him.
I look deep into gray mist, eye to eye
with thin green leaves of a thousand trees
and sing welcome to white blossoms
on dogwood trees no one planted.
I am singing. I am singing to my father
who loved to sit close to rain.


by Nancy Simpson

Previously published in LIGHTS IN THE MOUNTAINS,
Stories, Essays and Poems by Writers
Living in and Inspired by the
Southern Appalachian Mountains.

Two Poems by Pat Workman

Many of our writers in the western Carolina mountains know Pat Workman. She is one of my favorite poets. I met her through North Carolina Writers Network West, and for a number of years we both attended the montly poetry critique group. She's a fine poet. Here are two of my favorite poems.


evenin song by Pat Workman

it was that time after supper
drippin dishes on tha drain board
tappin bug wings at tha screen
keepin time

she a-leanin
on tha weathered porch rail
dreamin her next song
keepin time
with a-moon glidin past midnight
...her blues notes chillin
tha fevered air

in tha porch swing
her momma a singin
keepin time
with tha chain’s gentle squeakin
her alto shape notes seekin
harmony with specters of her youth

two kinds of song
two kinds of longin
become one kind of comfort
keepin time
singn this life and tha past





Full Circle by Pat Workman

My thoughts rumble when thunder
vaults the Nantahala mountain coves;
my nostrils fill with the smell of sweat
soaked leather and the blowing rain
becomes a horse’s mane slapping
me back to range those salty trails
with the Mormon Sons of Daniel.

I must have been a Danite
with ten wives to cook and clean,
ten guns to fire in the name of God,
ten horses to guard my boundaries,
and ten hundred heirs
to insure my grip upon the land.

In this Appalachian lifetime,
I am a lone wife living with
a man who needed ten.
Now...I fire words
in the name of peace
and teach my sons
that we can never own
a single grain of sand.


previously published in LIGHTS IN THE MOUNTAINS
Stories, Essays and Poems by Writers Living in
and Inspired by the Southern Appalachian Mountains


ABOUT PAT WORKMAN

Pat says she is a mountain climbing, rock turning, tree hugging native of Macon County, NC. After living in Ky, Fl, SC and GA, she and her husband, Dwain, retired to Hayesville, NC in 1996. She first joined North Carolina Writers' Network in 1998 after taking her first poetry class at the John C Campbell Folk School. Pat considers herself to be a late-blooming, erratically creative, Dyslexic Poet.

Pat was an X-Ray Technologist and doctor's assistant—1963 to1967. Through the years she continued to take college courses on the run while raising three sons and running two businesses. She and her husband owned and operated a retail business for 25 years in Helen, GA, featuring local arts and crafts, beautifully illustrated & and hard to find books, health foods and organic whole grain breads and cookies baked fresh daily.


She was a volunteer with Northeast GA Hospice, GMHI in Atlanta, the GA Dept. of Mental Health in Gainesville, a licensed counselor and Hypnotherapist—1973 to1996 as owner of the Mountain Learning Center in Helen, GA.


Her poems have been published in Main Street Rag, Independence Boulevard, Lights in the Mountains, four volumes of Freeing Jonah and the Marathon News Leader - Marathon, Texas.


DO YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT POET PAT WORKMAN? WANT TO READ MORE OF HER POEMS? SEE HER PAINTINGS?
Pat Workman has one of the most interesting blogs by an Appalachian poet and painter. I follow her blog. Take a look and
see I'm telling you the truth. http://pat-workman.blogspot.com/

Poets and Writers Reading Poems and Stories AT JOHN C. CAMPBELL FOLK SCHOOL

Local Writers to Read at John C. Campbell Folk School



Richard Argo







Brenda Kay Ledford





The North Carolina Writers Network West (Netwest) is happy to bring two local writers on June 25th. to the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown North Carolina. The readings will be held in the Keith House at 7:00 pm.


Brenda Kay Ledford, a native of Clay County, North Carolina, will delight all with her poetry drawn from life in these mountains. Her writing has appeared in Our State, Chicken Soup for the Soul, CAPPERS, JOURNAL OF KENTUCKY STUDIES, and other journals. She received the Paul Green Award from North Carolina Society of Historians for her poetry books, PATCHWORK MEMORIES and SHEW BIRD MOUNTAIN. Finishing Line Press published her third book, SACRED FIRE. Brenda Kay is a member of North Carolina Writers Network, North Carolina Poetry Society, Byron Herbert Reece Society, Georgia Poetry Society and listed with A DIRECTORY OF AMERICAN POETS AND FICTION WRITERS.


Richard Argo of Murphy, North Carolina is a writer of both fiction and nonfiction. His work has appeared in CAROLINA COUNTRY and LIGHTS IN THE MOUNTAINS. It is not uncommon to find bicycling as the subject of Richard's work. He brings interest to everyday things in his musings. Richard is the facilitator of the Netwest Prose Group and is a member of long standing in the North Carolina Writers Network.

article written by Mike Michelle Keller
for N.C. Writers Network West

October Sands - a poem by Clarence Newton

OCTOBER SANDS

Good old boys stand strong and brave.
Like soldiers, they present arms to windblown sand
and fling long lines over breaking waves
from flexing rods in anxious hands.

Bits of mullet on barbed snares
offered to suseen drum and swift blues,
saying down with caution, drop your cares,
our plans for dinner include you.

Mile after mile and day after day they stand
with sand in their eyes and sand in their shoes
on those outter bank strands of stinging sand
as they cast for drum and cast for blues.

by Clarence Newton




On June 10, 2009, Clarence Newton of Young Harris, Georgia wasone of the featured poet at Coffee With the Poets held at Phillips and Lloyd Bookstore in Hayesville, North Carolina.

Clarence Newton is Poet of the Month for June 2009

In this his birth month, Clarence Newton of Young Harris, Georgia will be the featured Poet for the Month for June, 2009. He is a native of Virginia and worked over forty years in an avation career. After retirement, after settling in the North Georgia Mountains with his wife Lorraine, he began to study and write poetry. He took classes with poet Nancy Simpson at John C. Campbell Folk School, Tri County Community College and at Institute of Continuing Learning at Young Harris College. He is a long time member of NC Writers Network West, and he participates in the monthly poetry critique group with Janice Townley Moore as the workshop leader.

Clarence Newton's poems have been published in Freeing Jonah V and two poems are forthcoming in the new Netwest anthology.His essays have been published in Gainsville Times, Atlanta Journal and Constitution. In 2009 he was the judge for the Cherokee County Senior Games, Silver Arts Literary Awards.

THREE POEMS BY POET, CLARENCE NEWTON


DAMSEL DANCING SIDEWAYS

I see her through my window
stepping gingerly upon green grass,
arms in the air like an evangelist,
offering her dainty flags to the wind.

Tonight she will sleep in
sun dried fragarance,
in a silk night gown that
cuddles her soft, sensuous skin.

I will see her in my dreams.

Previously published in Freeing Jonah V
and forthcoming in his poetry collection



RESPITE

they sit on a dock
eating two apples
he drops half
into the water,
turns to her
and sees six
seeds and a stem.
She's an American now
but has not forgotten
that she was
a child under Hitler.


Previous published in Jonah V, forthcoming in
his poetry collection


KISSING MARY

A long time since
I carried your books.
We sat by the roadside,
two eight year olds

talking about nothing.
I stole my first kiss.
You were surprised
but pleased.

I carved our initials
on a giant beech tree --
"C L loves M P".
That tree long gone.

After many decades
I searched and found you.
You didn't remember me --
thought I was someone else.

I said I was he and
wished you good health
on my way out.

Clarence Newton.

Kevin Watson of Press 53 Announces the 2009 Poetry Winners

The winner of the first place award is Janice Townley Moore.








Poetry: Judge: Kathryn Stripling Byer



*First Prize: Janice Townley Moore of Young Harris, GA for “Windows Filled With Gifts,” “I'd Like to Think the Truth About the World,” and “Beginning Homer's Illiad Once Again.”

*Second Prize: Malaika King of Pinehurst, NC for “On Your Birth Day,” “Sweat Test for Cystic Fibrosis,” and “Swift Water.”

*Honorable Mention: Ellaraine Lockie of Sunnyvale, CA for “Saying Good-Bye,” “A Matter of Degree,” and “Seed of a Serial Killer.”

Finalists:
Bobby Sidna Hart of Advance, NC for “Weymouth House Bath,” “How She Was Found,” and “Frozen Wood.”

Carolyn Moore of Tigard, OR for “The Selkie Discovers the Information Age,” “Two Conversations in a White, White Kitchen,”
and “What the Apple Whispered.”

Clinton B Campbell of Beaufort, SC for “I Want to Dance with Rita Dove,” “The Day My Wife Kissed Pat Conroy,” and “Front Row Seat.”

Ellaraine Lockie of Sunnyvale, CA for “Godot Goes to Montana,” “Inheritance,” and “Should Have Been a Boy.”

Kory Wells of Murfreesboro, TN for “At The Old-Time Jamboree,” “Honky, 1971,” and “Tired of the Same Old Answers.”

Lisa Zerkle of Charlotte, NC for “The Strain and Snap,” “Bitter,” and “How to Hold a Grudge.”

Maureen A. Sherbondy of Raleigh, NC for “One Year After Your Death,” “Praying at Coffee Shops in the South,” and “Dust.”

A NEW POEM AND AN OLD POEM by Ruth Faulkner Grubbs

Waiting for Rebirth

Never turns branches loose
this scraggly old tree in the side yard.

Hovering like a Brillo pad
unabashed over the driveway
she has all the arms of her birth
and all the twigs sprung from these.

She has bird nests of seasons past
hidden well in the scrub.

She’s naked now, but promises new growth
and more twigs to her full figure,
blushing green leaves to flush out her beauty.


by Ruth Faulkner Grubbs

Written in class at John C. Campbell Folk School
April 2009, accepted and forthcoming in Poetry Guild Anthology







Her House of Clay by Ruth Faulkner Grubbs

They found the creamy white clay sparkling
a commodity of the earth free for taking
thrifty for useful projects
for mixing with spring water
a thick smooth soup
to cling to stones, tree trunks, and old boards
such as Mommie's house
a board and batten, one hundred years old
never painted.

An idea was born.

Kept secret
the far back corner
Mommie would't notice
a bucket for mixing
old paint brushes from the smoke house
a bit of stealth
an idea from Tom Sawyer
they'd read it at school
most of the summer morning
plying, slathering, reaching the low roof line
quite so no one would hear

The mixture dried
beautiful smooth almost white
pride tugged at their seams
Mommie appeared her toothless smile
the whole house she said
the small low built house
a long day's work and the next
they labored to set a jewel glistening upon the hill.

from HOLY GROUND Where Love Goes
by Ruth Faulkner Grubbs


Order this book from
Holy Ground
3601 Wilderness Road
Knoxville, TN 37917
$15.00 plus $3.00 package and posting
total $18.00


"Ruth Grubbs writes poetry and prose that is powerful,earthy, and true. Her writing is, in turn, humorous, enlightening, joyful, and haunting. She charms her readers with an authentic Appalachian voice that hails directly from the heart."

--Cathy Kodra

LIVING ABOVE THE FROST LINE CELEBRATES ITS 100TH POST

LIVING ABOVE THE FROST LINE IS A DWELLING PLACE FOR PRACTICING POETS. IT IS THE HOME OF POET, NANCY SIMPSON. ABOVE THE FROST LINE WE GIVE OURSELVES SOME EXTRA GROWING TIME. YES, WE KNOW THE HARD FREEZE WILL COME, BUT UNTIL IT ARRIVES, WE SHALL GROW AND SHARE OUR POEMS.

You who blog know it can be slow sometimes. At other times you have to double check your own site to see why so many are checking in and where in the world they are all coming from. We're finishing up our first six months with a number of new friends and followers and with three awards. It makes me happy. Thanks to all who have added comments and shared your writing on this site. That is what I enjoy most: (1) Hearing from you. (2) Reading your writing. I will continue.

As I have said before, visit often and leave your calling card, your comments. I appreciate that.

We welcome all. But to be honest, this is a site for writers, mainly poets. The goal is to feature a poet each month, to give
information about the poet that is not generally known and to print (with permission) as many of their poems as possible.
We want to feature Appalachian born poets and southern poets.

Another goal is to spread the news of poetry when poetry is in the news. Poetry in the news? That does not happen often, but it happened in January when Elizabeth Alexander read her inaugural poem and earlier this month when Britain, for the first time in their literary history, named their first woman poet laureate.

At least once a month, there will be a reprint of an already published Nancy Simpson poem.

Each month there will be guidelines for submitting poems, stories and essays listed in the right column.

Each month there will be a list of John C. Campbell Folk School writing classes.

Sometimes there will be a question, such as "Can you name these Iris Poets? There were no answers to that question.


Here is the new question.

Can you name these writers and the titles of their books?





(photo taken eleven years ago at Tri County Community College.
Textbook used in the class was Prairie Schooner Fiction Issue.)

TWO POEMS by SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN POET RUTH FAULKNER GRUBBS

Last month at John C. Campbell Folk School I met Ruth Faulkner Grubbs, a Southern Appalachian poet from Knoxville, Tennessee. She is the author of Holy Ground, (sub titled) Where Love Goes, published (spring 2009) by Tennessee Publishing.

To read Holy Ground is to read an authentic story of growing up in the mountains, in Whitley County, Kentucky, “deep in poverty”, “ in a mountaintop cabin”, “... second daughter of a twenty year old mother and a father who made and sold moonshine.” It’s all in the book. Out of the sorrow and the joy, a woman stands tall before us, a woman whose spirit did not wither but thrived.


Black Oak (a place)

She lived there, my mother’s mother,
Mommie to me,
in a board and batten house
standing 100 years on the hill.
There we watched, past the holler,
into the pasture field where jerseys grazed
and left cow piles rich to feed the red soil
around tomatoes and corn
that grew down the steep bank to the well.

We watched into the field where dandelion greens
and crow’s feet and mouse’s ears and dock grew
to fill the black iron pots with salat to eat
with flat cakes of cornpone at supper time.

We watched past the field and the railroad
to Jellico, the Kentucky side,
hanging on a hill between Pine Mountain
and 25 W winding its way to Williamsburg.
Where shanties and the Texaco station soaked in
dust along side the calaboose holding prisoners
to go tomorrow to the country seat for hearing
their fate for moonshinin or breaking in
to steal a way of feedin their young-uns and gettin by.

Back across the bottom fields rich
with river dirt from the lazy creek that would rage
full grown and fast with heavy summer rains
we watched ponderous jaws of steel chew holes
and grab soil and the grass and grains of life
of new beginnings of all the seasons to come.
Strip minin, they called it, black gold.
To fire engines and stoves in factories
to build more things, they said, a different kind of beauty.

They left, and the holes filled with water
and lured young boys, some to swim
and some to drown.


from Knoxville Writers’ Guild Anthology 2008
Included in Holy Ground, 2009


Mommie

I see her now, the long front porch
ragged rails and raw plank flooring
walking stooped to the willow rocker.

She sits with her bible
preaching duty and sin to her grandchildren.

I see hands thin and wrinkled
that work like instruments of precision
small finger bent to neat hook
a gift from her ancestors
stringing and breaking beans
peeling potatoes, peeling apples
to dry in the hot summer sun.

Shift dress from four sacks
bun of hair held in place
a hairpin color of red-eye gravy.

My little Babe, she called me
maybe her favorite girl child
(she loved the boy more
the only one among girls)
and said , she’ll be a nurse.
I didn’t want it but it happened that way.


from Holy Ground, 2009




Order this book from
Holy Ground
3601 Wilderness Road
Knoxville, TN 37917
$15.00 plus $3.00 package and posting
total $18.00


"Ruth Grubbs writes poetry and prose that is powerful,earthy, and true. Her writing is, in turn, humorous, enlightening, joyful, and haunting. She charms her readers with an authentic Appalachian voice that hails directly from the heart."

--Cathy Kodra

WHITE LIE a poem by Nancy Simpson

WHITE LIE by Nancy Simpson

End of May and we have nothing
better to do than walk on the mountain,
our cardigans closed against the cold.
You cannot take back one lie,
no even white ones, subtle

as berry blossoms beside this path.
I kick a stone and tell you I believe
we will pull free from the brambles.
Old timers call this Blackberry Winter,
a temporary cold spell, quick to pass.


Previously published in Davidson Miscellany
Included in Night Student

..."held in abeyance by a great leaf wall" lines by Nancy Simpson

My window on the valley closed. The curtain has been drawn, so I no longer see the ridge line.

But do not feel sorry for me. My woods are filled today with multiple shades of the wild flame azalea.







I am "held in abeyance by a great leaf wall every shade of green we can imagine." (lines from "Walking Up With a Friend."

CAROL ANN DUFFY FIRST WOMAN POET NAMED POET LAUREATE IN 341 YEARS OF BRITISH LITERARY HISTORY

Poet and writer Carol Ann Duffy was appointed Britain’s Poet laureate May 1, 2009, becoming the first woman poet laureate in 341 years of British Literary history.

According to the New York Times “Ms Duffy is known for using a deceptively simple style to produce accessible, mischievous poems , dealing with the darkest turmoil and lightest minutia of every day life.”

Her most popular poetry collection is The World’s Wife (1999) which has the subject women overlooked by history and mythology, such as Mrs. Rip Van Winkle who found relief when Rip fell asleep, giving her some time to herself. In
“Mrs Darwin, ” she wrote:

7 April 1852
Went to the zoo
I said to him--Something about the chimpanzee over there
reminds me of you.

Carol Ann Duffy told the B B C Women’s World that she thought hard about accepting the position of Poet Laureate, then decided to take it as recognition of the great women poets we have writing. She said she hoped to “contribute to people’s understanding of what poetry can do, and where it can be found.”

Carol An Duffy, 53, is the oldest of five children, growing up in a working class neighborhood in Glasgow, Scotland. She began writing in school, inspired by several teacher. In 1983 she won the National Poetry Competition in Britain.

The Cultural Secretary, Andy Burnham called Ms. Duffy, “a towering figure of English literature today and a super poet.”

Judith Palmer Director of Poetry Society said Duffy has “paved the way for whole generations of women poets who came after her,”

As Poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy is to receive a yearly stipend which she said she plans to donate to the Poetry Society, to finance a Poetry Prize.

TEACHING THE ROBINS by Janice Townley Moore

Our feature of Janice Townley Moore as Poet of the Month (April 2009) ends today, but what will not end is a celebration of her poetry. I know of no other poet among us who writes greater poems of humanity, poems that are easily accessible with phrses and images that we remember long after reading the poem. --Naancy Simpson

TEACHING THE ROBINS by Janice Townley Moore

If it's true what the Chinese say,
souls can filter into birds like those
two robins outside my window,
swooping down. Their feet land
on March's early green
at the same moment I am teaching
Emily Dickison's grief,
my throat more taut from last year's losses
than the students slumped,
sleeping under lowered brims
of their baseball caps.
The robins stare in at me. They listen
to my voice hobbling over "tombs,"
"the feet, mechanical." They watch me
pacing forth and back befhind the panes.
The students sleep on in their numbness
where poetry does not exist
in the lighted arena of their dreams.
I think of all the dead,
how they do not have to worry
about being dead. This morning
life is on the other side of the window
where one robin remains
like an eye coprehending me,
long after the other dies.


Previously published in Prairie Schooner
and included as the title poem of
TEACHING THE ROBINS, 2005










WHAT OTHERS SAY ABOUT Janice Townley Moore's
POETRY COLLECTION TEACHIG THE ROBINS

Like all fine poets, Janice Towley Moore is a conjurer. Spectres are everywhere in these poems- from a flashlight on the cellar stairs to an out of body experience, from moonstruck deer to teachable robins, all renderd with the magic words exquisitely chosen. Her poems are deftly crafted, moving, and powerful - fortunately, they are easy to summon and savor now that we have this exceptional new collection.

--John Stone, author Music From Apartment 8

Teaching the Robins can be ordered from Finishing Line Press, www.finishinglinepress.com or www.amazon.com

Note: Teaching the Robins is a "Limited Collector's Edition".

NEAR THE END OF NATIONAL POETRY MONTH, WE ARE STILL CELEBRATING THE POETRY OF JANICE TOWNLEY MOORE

No, I am not sad that National Poetry Month will end for Americans tomorow. Poetry will not end for me. I continue in my relentless study, practice and teaching, always learning more about life and how to live it, how to endure life when the going get tough. One poet I have learned the most from is a poet who lives in the valley, just miles from my house --Janice Townley Moore.

Janice Townley Moore and I followed different paths in life, yet often when it came to poetry, we matched step for step in our development and in our accomplishments. That happened because we were in constant contact from the late 70s to this day, on the phone, always inquiring, "Have you heard from the editors?" Confessing, "I think I'm getting a new poem," or asking, "Can I read this one to you?" We've met monthly in the same NC Writers Network Poetry Critique Group which she leads for the past fifteen years or more.

I remember earlier, during the years when we worked a full day then went off by the van-load to Atlanta to hear nationally known and international poets read at Emory University. I remember when invited ourselves to read at Callanwolde, Turner Cassidy said, "Thank you for coming and thank you for bringing the audience," because there were so many of us from the mountains in that Young Harris College van.

When I read Janice Townley Moore's poem, "On Unicoi Mountain," I giggle. That was a car load of us coming home at 1:00 a.m. expecting to teach the next day. Seeing deer crossing the road, someone said, "That's a good omen," meaning maybe we will get a poem accepted. And both of us did.

Here is the poem:


ON UNICOI MOUNTAIN
by Janice Townley Moore

Like words almost spoken
then held back,
deer quiver near this road.

Beyond midnight
they move out bravely
in the edges
of our headlights,

stunned by these low moons
speeding toward them:

doe and fawn, a single doe,
the lone buck at the curve,
so many we lose count
as we drive up the mountain.

In the honest hours
of early morning
we confess that we believe
in omens.



Previously published in Appalachian Heritage
and published in TEACHING THE ROBINS,
Finishing Line Press, 2005

How Do You Celebrate National Poetry Month?

Question: In the United States of America, April is National Poetry Month. As a practicing poet, do you celebrate National Poetry Month?

Nancy Simpson: Yes, I do celebrate from the first of April through the 30th of April. National Poetry Month is a special time of year for me and others like me. Our governmet thought well enough to set aside a month for all citizens to focus on and to celebrate poetry.

Question: How are you celebrating this month?


Nancy Simpson: On my website, I announced that Janice Townley Moore, in this her birth month, had been chosen as Poet of the Month for April 2009. As the days go by, more and more readers read her poems and comment. When a poet is featured on my site, it is not a one time thing, but rather short articles and an example of his or her poems throughout that month.

If you do not know of Janice Townley Moore, you should. She is a nationally known poet with her poems appearing in the best literary magazines. When Maya Angelou read her Inaugural Poem, all those years ago, The Associated Press knew who Janice Townley Moore was and called her to get a reaction to the Inaugural poem.

How else did you celebrate National Poetry Month?

Nancy Simpson: Each year different programs are planned. I hunt for them and attend them. Sometimes it seems nothing is planned, and that National Poetry Month is not even announced at a poetry reading, as if poets themselves do not even know, but my heart beats with joy and I celebrate all the more. On April 8th, N.C. Writers Network West's COFFEE WITH THE POETS featured 87 year old poet Dorothea Spiegel of Hiawassee, Georgia. She received a classical education and has been a practicing poet since in her teens. She read from a solid repertoire of the poems from her life, some traditional verse and some free verse. Her poetry is both hard hitting or humorous, and everyone there that day was amazed and thrilled.




FEATURED at COFFEE WITH THE POETS POET DOROTHEA SPIEGEL


Anything else exciting happen during National Poetry Month?


Nancy Simpson: Yes. One important thing happened to emerse me in a celebration of poetry. As Resident Writer at John C. Campbell Folk Scgool part of my job is to schedule the writing classes. With a secret plan of my own, and a smile in my heart, I scheduled myself to teach my once a year poetry class this year in April. I had to put my name down for two different months, one for What's In Your Writing Folder, a mixed genre writing class of poetry, essay, and short fiction. The other I consider my advanced poetry class for practicing poets. It was like giving myself a week long poetry celebration. The poets who traveled to the folk school were all advanced in their poetry writing. I will never forget the week of April 12-17, 2009. We read the work of major American poets,with a focus on Theorore Roethke and his famous poem, "Journey Into the Interior". The class was YOUR POETRY: JOURNEY INTO THE INTERIOR. What a way to celebrate national Poetry Month.


Virginia poet Robyn Reynolds


Poet, RUTH GRUBBS, from Tennessee "Under the Poet Tree"


Poet Barbara Groce from Morganton, Georgia


Poet Carole Richard Thompson of Blairsville, Georgia



Poet Karen Holmes from Atlanta, Georgia and Hiawassee, Georgia in the new writing studio at John C. Campbell Folk School.



A SPECIAL HIGHLIGHT OF MY WEEK APRIL 12-17 AT JOHN C. CAMPBELL FOLK SCHOOL Was having two local poet presenters visit my class. They were Appalachian poets Brenda Kay Ledford of Hayesville, NC and Glenda Barrett of Hiawassee, Georgia . They read their poems and talked about their private poetry lives.


Poet Glenda Barrett


WHAT'S THIS?


Nancy Simpson: It's April 17, 2009, S H O W A N D T E L L , The Friday exhibit at John C. Campbell Folk School. What always amazes me is when I ask students say from the Blacksmith class who made rooters how long they had been making roosters and every single one said, "I've never been in a blacksmith shop before." Another nice surprise was when the poets hung up their poems on display people came in droves to read them.






















JOHN C. CAMPBELL FOLK SCHOOL in Brasstown, NC




National Poetry Month is almost over. Is it over?


Nancy Simpson: No it is not. All the while when I was writing or teaching or celebrating National Poetry Month, I have been living the secret life of an editor. I have been reading submissions from writers throughout the lower Southern Appalachian Mountains who live within the NC Writers Network West area - reading their essays, short stories and their poems. My head is full of the big story of the wide mountains, the valley towns, farms, rivers, lakes, the deep woods, the creatures and the humans who live here. The letters of acceptance will go out the end of April or the first of May. If I had one wish it would be that I could tell all of these fine writers to hang on a few more days, word is coming.

And do let me end by saying that if you have not celebrated National Poetry Month as yet, check your local calendar. In Hayeville, North Carolina we will be celebrating a program I cofounded eighteen years ago with Reba Beck for the Clay County Arts Council. It is a poetry contest for students in the middle school, high school and adults who are citizens of Clay County. Each year I have been asked to choose the contest judge.



Glenda Barrett, Appalachian born and raised poet, author of WHEN THE SAP RISES will judge the April 2009 Potry Contests.

On April 30, 2009, National Poetry Month will be celebrated at 6:00 p.m., a one hour program in the Hayeville High School lecture Hall. With all the mothers, fathers, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, you'll need to arrive early to get a seat. If you have not celebrated poetry this month, do come celebrate the poetry of our young poets and the poetry judge, Glenda Barrett, author of When the Sap Rises.

Or check your town's event calendar. Chances there is still a way for you to celebrate National Poetry Month.

UNDER THE EARTH by JANICE TOWNLEY MOORE, POET OF THE MONTH OF APRIL 2009

UNDER THE EARTH

Where the road slices
through Needle Gorge
animals of stone
root out of the cliff.

Their snouts, heads, shoulders
bulge from red clay
as if to catch the scent of
ancient water.

Eons piled upon eons
this is the only place
where the mountain lion
will lie with the lamb.

Stacked together,
the buffalo, wild boar,
oxen, the goat
with its grassy beard--

Did they all stop
before they reached
the saving water of the river,
caught in their final breath?

--Janice Townley Moore

Previously published in Southern Humanities Review
and included in TEACHING THE ROBINS



Note from Nancy Simpson:

I sometimes feel I know Janice T. Moore's poetry as well as I know my own. We have kept in contact about our writing down through the years. We touch base on the phone. She would sometimes ask, "Have you heard from the editors yet?" I'd say, "I got a rejection from X." She ask, "Anything in the human hand?" We consider it encouragement if an editor writes any kind word on the skimpy Post It size rejection, such as "send again" or even the word, "Sorry."


On the phone one time, I asked Janice where she keeps the poems when she is working on them. That was a long time ago and the place may have changed, but her answer was, "In the kitchen in my cookbook. I always have and still do keep my new and in process poems on a clip board and the clip board goes everywhere with me.

"What are you working on." I asked one day. She said, "Do you know the old road between Hayesville and the Folk School?
I'm working on a poem titled "What Lies Under the Earth." I have some images of huge animals. They're coming out of the bank, heading toward Brasstown Creek. "

"Yes, I've seen them."

She finished the poem, submitted it to Southern Humanities Review and it was quickly selected for publication. Later
UNDER THE EARTH was reprinted an LIGHTS IN THE MOUNTAINS Stories, Essays and Poems by Writers Living in or Inspired by the Southern Appalachian Mountains (2003) and in Teaching the Robins, Finishing line Press 2005.)

POET OF THE MONTH FOR APRIL 2009 - JANICE TOWNLEY MOORE

Poet, Janice Townley Moore

April 2009 POET OF THE MONTH





WHERE CAN I FIND POEMS by Janice Townley Moore?

Janice Townley Moore's poems can be found in such literary magazines as The Georgia Review, Southern Poetry Review, Shenandoah, Chattahoochee Review, Journal of the American Medical Association, Main Street Rag and Apalachee Review and
others.

TEACHING THE ROBINS, "a special collector's edition" was published at Finishing Line Press, 2005. It can be ordered at
www.finishinglinepress.com and www.amazon.com.



Poems by Janice Townley Moore are included in textbook The Bedford Introduction to Literature.





Her poem "Teaching the Robins" was chosen for the anthology THE POETS GUIDE TO THE BIRDS, (2009 Anhinga Press.)








Janice Townley Moore - A Poet Who Has Helped Many Other Poets

A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Janice Townley Moore has spent most of her life in the small mountain town of Hayesville in western North Carolina and in the small Georgia mountain town of Young Harris where she is a member of the English Department at Young Harris College. 

Active in the North Carolina Writers’ Network West, Janice Townley Moore serves as the facilitator of the monthly poetry critique group held at Tri-County College, Murphy, N.C. where she has helped many beginning poets to fine-tune their poems.

Quietly and steadily over the years of her poetry writing career, Janice Townley Moore has advanced the poetry of other poets. In  1996 she co-edited  Like a Summer Peach:  Sunbright Poems and Old Southern Recipes, published by Papier-Mache Press where she promoted the poems of Peter Davidson, Sarah Gordon, Steven Harvey, Bettie M. Sellers, Memye Curtis Tucker and others.   She also served as poetry editor for Georgia Journal for a dozen years. In that position she published many southern poets, including the first published poems of Former President Jimmy Carter.



LIKE A SUMMER PEACH Sunbright Poems & Old Southern Recipes

Weather Up Date from Above the Frost Line

From the Weather Woman Above the Frost Line:

Hello Readers,

All weekend April 4th and 5th (2009) we were under extreme weather advisories. Snow they said. I said, no, that can't happen. Sunday, April 6th, it turned dark and windy. Advisories said "Prepare for the hard freeze." The stories got darker and colder, making me believe it could happen. I said, okay, snow, but there will not be a hard freeze here.

Tuesday, April 7th was the strangest weather day ever seen on this mountain. When I woke up, the ground was covered with snow. I went straight out and took some photos. I discovered the dead cat I had buried on Monday but saw no dead Hostas.



Before I had my second cup of coffee the snow had melted.

It snowed again, hard, all morning. Fearing we were in for frozen ground, I bundled up again and went out to rebury the cat my dogs had dug up. It snowed and snowed, covered the road. But, when I put the shovel back in the tool shed and turned around the snow had all melted. Three times snow covered my road. Three times it melted in minutes.






All the while, advisories said, there will be a hard freeze tonight. My red tulips were bending low. I said no. That can't happen here. It's Dogwood Winter. That's all. It's just Dogwood Winter.




And sure enough. Even with two nights below freezing, we had no hard freeze here above the frost line. Not one plant was hit with hard freeze.

JANICE TOWNLEY MOORE, POET OF THE MONTH FOR APRIL 2009

Janice Townley Moore is one of the most accomplished of the southern poets, yet certainly undervalued. She is a nationally known poet. Her poetry will be celebrated and featured here at Living Above the Frost Line. During this her birth month and this being National Poetry Month, we recognize Janice Townley Moore as Poet of the Month for April 2009.



A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Janice Townley Moore has spent most of her life in the small mountain town of Hayesville in western North Carolina and in the small Georgia mountain town of Young Harris where she is a member of the English Department at Young Harris College. 

She began writing poetry when she was a student at LaGrange College. Since those days, she continued to write, often inspired by her surroundings in the North Georgia/North Carolina mountains. 

Her chapbook, Teaching the Robins, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2005.  Individual poems have appeared in such journals as The Georgia Review, Southern Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, The Chattahoochee Review, JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association), and Appalachian Journal.  She has poems forthcoming in The Apalachee Review and Main Street Rag. 


ONE OF MY FAVORITE JANICE TOWNLEY MOORE POEMS is

EVENING OUT

Atlanta, 1952

On days too hot for breath to be easy
my father left his desk in the cellar
to drive our Easter ducks, full grown,
to Piedmont Park for a swim.
Crated up in the trunk of our pea-green Plymouth,
they quacked and quacked the long three miles.
Our whole family went along for the show.
Without coat and tie my father sprawled
in the cool by the lake. I remember
how his wallet bulged in his back pocket
as he bent to unlatch the crate.
No pounding joggers then, only walkers slow as July
and a few children ringing the bells on their bikes.
A quite crowd inched forward to see the ducks
gliding over the dark reflections of magnolias,
sometimes flapping their wings
with the sound of sheets in the wind.
After paddling among the fallen petals,
they shored up for recrating,
lured by lettuce, as I watched
the late sun glinting off my father’s black shoes
sinking into the red clay bank.

first published in The Georgia Review
Included in TEACHING THE ROBINS,
FINISHING LINE PRESS (2OO5)