I am delighted to share that I was selected as the recipient of NC Poetry Society’s award winner for the Susan Laughter Meyers’s Poetry Fellowship. I am honored to be recognized in the name of such a beautiful poet’s legacy. Read about her here at Press 53’s site, where her books are also available for purchase.
As part of the prize, I will be able to stay at the Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities for a week….writing!
At the NCPS Awards meeting in Cary, NC I had the opportunity to read some poetry along with other poets who won their own awards. One of the poems I read comes from Wolfcraft, called “Feathers” (FYI, if you’re reading this on a mobile device, the line breaks/spacing look pretty wonky)
When September slips in the window like a forgotten lover,
Reaching for me from my burrow
With its hands of feathers
In the early morning croak of crows, and I can smell
That someone has lit a fire,
An utterance of feathers,
Such that I can’t remember if I’m seven, in a log house my father built,
And he’s kindled the first autumn fire,
Fanned the feathers,
Or I’m twenty-five in the wooded hollow alone
But for the cats, dogs, and calls of coyotes, having lit the fire myself
That spanned feathers,
But no, when you roll over
In a twist of sheets,
In a band of feathers,
And I hear a young tail thump softly on the floor, a brief whine—
When someone else’s woodsmoke slips through the window
Like sanded feathers,
And I am here with you, and we’ve struck our own match—
When you reach across and slip your arm around my waist,
With the sustenance of feathers—