Next Tour: FOUND at Alexander County Library

Art of Poetry Catawba Valley melds art and writing in the form of ekphrastic poetry throughout the Unifour. Our next tour will be at Alexander County Library in Taylorsville, NC exploring collective artworks and photography for FOUND – Art of Community. The exhibit will display through the months of June and July 2019.

Works will be available to peruse Friday, June 7 after 5 pm. The public is invited for an Art After Hours reception for the exhibit on Friday, June 21 from 6-7:30 pm. For other hours at the library, visit alexanderlibrary.org.

To submit, simply go to Alexander County Library and write poems about the works on exhibit. The submission deadline is midnight, July 7, 2019.  Readings will be July 13, 2019 beginning at 2 pm in the library.

Selected poetry will be posted beside the artworks for this tour at Alexander County Library.

Submissions should:
-include name of the artist and the title of the inspiring work
-be typed in the body of an email (please send attachments if line breaks do not translate)
-be sent to Melissa Hager at artofpoetrycv@gmail.com
-Art of Poetry CV will use no more than 3 poems per individual poet
-Art of Poetry CV reserves the right to decline work that may not be appropriate in content. Poems that are overtly political or religious in nature, or poems that are not appropriate for all ages, will not be considered for this program.

Approximately 20 poems will be selected to be read by the author (or substitute reader) at the reading. After the reading, with permission of the poet and artist, poems will be posted on the Art of Poetry Catawba Valley website at http://www.artofpoetrycv.blogspot.com

The reading is free and open to the public.

Brenda Smith's "Dear Carl" after Roger Lee Ivens

Brenda Smith photographed in Hickory Museum of Art on October 13, 2018.

DEAR CARL—When I can’t get my head above the earth 

By Brenda Smith

after Sun and Hands by Roger Lee Ivens

At least I can raise my arms.

My hands with the all-seeing eyes

yearn to look at the too-brilliant sun

grasp for the laden sky

full of simultaneous sun and stars.

Is this what happens when you use your hands to see?

A fresh scope and slant on the universe

heavens green, then briefly blue

fading into shades of autumn

as the light penetrates the earth.

Is this the origin of the seasons then,

the angle of the eyes of our hands

as we stretch toward the light?

We look backwards to look forward

and we truly see.

I reach North, eyes averted

and for the first time

see the sun’s third eye.

A thousand times past

squinting at her face

yet only when I shift and choose another angle

do I notice that all-seeing eye.

Sun, you cosmic know-it-all.