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Witness – Appalachia to Hatteras

Posted in Imagery, tagged Bill Griffin, GCDPS, Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet Series, Jude McDonald, Lauren Mills, nature photography, NC Poets, poetry, Southern writing on November 28, 2025| 1 Comment »

Two poems by Gilbert-Chappell students

Fantasy

I said can you feel that sun and she said no and I beckoned her out of the shadows and tilted my face skyward and my skin lit up gold crown to sole and I said can you feel that sun and she said no and I took her hand and pulled her close and pressed my nose to her temple and breathed in her warmth and I said can you feel that sun and she said no but her voice held the nostalgia of a thousand dusks and I cracked one eye open in suspicion and she was radiant and grinning

Jude McDonald

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Affirmations for My Twenty-First Year

I am tensile and easily missed. I am choral, and archaic, and autumnal in fashion.

When the temperature drops, I wear a sensible pair of stockings that attract

a sensible amount of attention. I am wild-footed. I am uneven in an interesting

way. When there is singing, I listen. I believe in jackalopes and the miracle of modern

medicine. I am trustworthy. I am the end of a bloodline. When there is not

singing, I will ask for there to be singing.

+++++ A lover (lover! Lover, lover) once siad I was a flashlight cutting through

the dark pier of “something, like, life, maybe?” She was not a good poet. This year,

I am no one’s flashlight. I will tell lovers (lovers!) forget your wavering, cut the shit,

you should not need me to know where to step. And anyway, you know how to swim

+++++ don’t you?

I am tall. I am tawny and approachable. Where there is love to be found, I am

a good hunter. When the moon rises, I offer traditional greetings. I am funny.

I am funny, funny, funny. I am not a flashlight, I am something hotter. Fire,

why not! I burn your eyes. I burn your tongue. I burn your mother’s hands

when she takes me out of the oven. I am a blackberry cobbler baked fresh.

+++++ I am an East Coast native. I am kind. I am the hand of gnarled oak clawing

at a telephone wire. I am kind. I climb bare-bodied birches in winter and watch

my breath. I am light and breezy. When lovers say I am anything, I will say, “No,

I am not.” I am kind. I am a friend to cats and children. I have a certain allure. I leap

off cliffs and build houses where I land. I am kind. I will be kinder.

Lauren Mills

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When there is not / singing, I will ask for there to be singing. Both of these poems are full-throated affirmations, songs of self uplifted, revealed, celebrated. Every time I read Fantasy my smile grows broader and broader line by line. To become radiant and grinning, oh how I wish it to be so. Why shouldn’t every day be an opportunity to discover joy? Exactly the same with Affirmations. Enter the universe of miracles and music and hot blackberry cobbler. My hope in our world is restored when even one person chooses to be kind. And kinder. Let’s all join in.

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Witness: Appalachia to Hatteras (2025) is the annual anthology of the Gilbert-Chappel Distinguished Poet Series of the North Carolina Poetry Society. Poet Mentors in the eastern, central, and western regions of the state spend six months guiding student poets, culminating in public readings and this published collection. The 2025 Distinguished Poet Mentors are Gideon Young, Maria Rouphail, and Mildred Kiconco Barya.

Jude McDonald (Raleigh, NC) is a Black, queer poet, multimedia artist, and writer. He focuses on complex themes like love, identity, and reflection, and asks his listeners/viewers to stop in close and embrace vulnerability. Lauren Mills (Sherrills Ford, NC) currently attends Dartmouth College as an English and Creative Writing major. She is interested in Shakespearean theatre, the weather, getting funnier, and dogs that have the size and temperament of cats.

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Song and Variations – Fred Chappell

Posted in Imagery, tagged Bill Griffin, birds, Fred Chappell, GCDPS, NC Poetry Society, NC Poets, NCPS, North Carolina Poet Laureate, poetry, Sam Ragan, Sam Ragan Poetry Festival, Weymouth on April 21, 2015| 6 Comments »

. . . Think of the wren
and how little flesh is needed to make a song.

from Why Regret?, Galway Kinnell

Sitta pusilla

The Grandson and I are playing with Legos on the back porch. Above the constant chitter of the goldfinch kaffeeklatsch shines a sudden clear bright whistle. “Listen, Saul. That’s a Carolina Wren.”

After a few minutes of silent cogitation, a few more minutes of Lego cars brmmm-brmming across the planks, we hear the bird again. Saul remarks, “He’s saying Senner-pede, Senner-pede.”

“You mean centipede, the little crawly thing with a hundred legs?”

“No, Senner-pede.” Brmm, brmm. “I made that up.”

And the moral of the story: Encountering the logic of the philosopher, even if only six years old, it’s probably best to listen.

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The Carolina Wren is one of my favorites, feisty little troglodyte whose voice is 30 decibels too big for his 30 grams of fluff. Listen to enough wren song and you discover the birds can be quite individual. Scolds, chatters, and so many variations on that 2- or 3- or 4-note whistle: just when you think you know them all someone new moves into the neighborhood.

Fred Chappell is one of my other favorites. He’s one of the writers that inspired me about twenty years ago to rediscover the dark forest of Poetry. I carried a typescript copy of his poem Forever Mountain around in my wallet until it wore through and I’d about memorized it. As I sort through the piles on my shelves I think it’s safe to say I’ve bought every one of his books. The epigrams, the complex forms, the backsass, the cat poems . . .

. . . and just when you think you know his song someone new moves into the neighborhood. At this year’s Sam Ragan Poetry Festival Fred revealed to us that he’s now writing fables, poems that tell a story with a moral. His voice just keeps getting bigger and bigger. And you can bet that a Fred Chappell fable is going to stretch your intellect and then bite you on the ass.

Feisty, yes; troglodyte, no.

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Fox and Bust by Fred Chappell; read at Sam Ragan Poetry Festival,
Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities in Southern Pines, NC, on March 21, 2105

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Every year the North Carolina Poetry Society sponsors the Sam Ragan Poetry Festival, named for our state’s third and longest-serving Poet Laureate. Sam was succeeded by Fred Chappell as our fourth Poet Laureate, illuminating that post from 1997-2002. In 2004 Fred collaborated with philanthropist and poet Marie Gilbert, assisted by William Jackson Blackley and a volunteer board, to create the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet Series. Each year since then three notable NC poets have been selected to serve as mentors, each to 3 or 4 students middle school to adult, to create and critique a body of poems, followed by public readings in libraries throughout the state. Fred is still a guiding light for this endeavor, which celebrated its tenth anniversary at this year’s Sam Ragan Poetry Festival in Southern Pines on March 21, 2015.

The photos and poems from this and the five preceding GriffinPoetry posts commemorate that event.

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Weymouth Woods

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Good Students – Lenard and Morgan

Posted in Imagery, tagged Bill Griffin, GCDPS, haiku, Lenard D. Moore, Morgan Whaley Lloyd, NC Poetry Society, NC Poets, NCPS, poetry, Southern writing, Weymouth on April 13, 2015| 5 Comments »

As an undergrad I majored in (geek alert!) Chemistry. So sophomore year that meant signing up for Physical Chemistry, alias P Chem, universally dreaded for its incomprehensible math and completely non-intuitive concepts. But that year the department had hired a new junior professor whose hair was almost as long as ours. Dr. Falletta was ambi – he could stand at the blackboard with his back to us and write equations with both hands. The chalk would be squeaking, he’d be explaining non-stop, our heads would be just about to explode, and then he would stop mid-sentence, spin around to face us, and exclaim, “I love this stuff!” Thanks, Dr. F, I think I started to love it, too.

Since I went to a liberal arts college even the (geek alert!) Chem Majors had to take English. So sophomore year that meant signing up for American Lit. Dr. Consolo was universally adored. If a student happened to let drop in casual conversation the word epiphany, everyone in the room immediately said, “Oh, you’re taking Consolo’s Lit class.” And even though we had to write a long thesis about a writer of our choice (I selected George Santayana. It was the 70’s; maybe my subconscious imagined I had heard him at Woodstock.), even though it took two all-nighters with Corrasable Bond and carbon paper in the Smith-Corona, I had my epiphany. Thanks, Dr. C, I think that’s when I started to love language.

* * * * *

I don’t remember a lot about Santayana, even less about P Chem, but I remember the good teachers. The ones who make you want to learn the subject. The ones who convince you that you can learn. That’s what strikes me as I read this poem by Lenard D. Moore. That’s what struck me seeing him with his student, Morgan Whaley Lloyd, at the Sam Ragan Poetry Festival last month. Lenard was Morgan’s mentor in the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet program and he invited her to return and read with him at the 10^th anniversary celebration. Lenard makes the lectern thump and hop when he reads; he throws lightning bolts with his poems. You can tell Morgan has been lit up by one of those bolts. You can tell she loves language.

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The Good Students – Lenard D. Moore

I cast metaphors
from front of the classroom,
an urgency of brine on the air.
Necks crane,
eyes target the ceiling,
as if a trope might drop,
sprawl across the tables.

Can they bring up
starfish, jellyfish or blowfish
in such salty spewing
in brilliant autumn sunlight
while hands flounder
across blank journal-pages
hot and desperate for words?

Now that an hour rings
their heads lower,
nets hook some blue crabs
clawing into the hearts of poems
in this moment of classroom lore,
dragging pens between lines,
white edges of shores.

The Good Students originally appeared in Solo Café 8 & 9: Teachers and Students (Solo Press, 2011).

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Joy in The Run – Morgan Whaley Lloyd

Knees crack like an ungreased lever
Short steps, pounding pavement.
The stiffness begins to wear off;
the first mile was the warm up
‘Miles to go before I sleep’
The future is uncertain, find joy in run, for fear is just a test.

Obstacles begin to appear dim and distant,
but before I know it, they catch up to me.
I have to reroute to stay the course.
Short, staggering breaths as I trek the puddled sidewalk
adorned with last night’s spring shower.
The future is uncertain, find joy in run, for fear is just a test.

A wash out causes me to stumble
my ankle has a meeting with death,
but the quickness of cat-like reactions
returns my stance to center
my balancing beam arms retract.
The future is uncertain, find joy in run, for fear is just a test.

This turn reveals turbulence.
My feet tap the concrete, and
I feel like a deer gliding through a wood.
My steps are gentle to lessen the impact.
Eyes, lasered on the clearing.
The future is uncertain, find joy in run, for fear is just a test.

The sun shines; I’m blinded by its glare.
Trusting my senses, I am lead by smells of honeysuckle and pine.
A cool breeze entices the nerves in my legs.
My insecurities are left behind.
Then, a dog barks from a nearby home, and my senses awaken.
The future is uncertain, find joy in run, for fear is just a test.

The sidewalk, sprinkled with challenges,
The crowded highway with distractions
just waiting to pull me away has formed a cross.
I decrease my speed, clueless as which road is the
‘less traveled by’ or which will make ‘all the difference’
The future is uncertain, find joy in run, for fear is just a test.

My skin is weathered by the trip
The scares are passport entries detailing my every move
My steps cannot be undone
My path cannot be retraced
The journey is the trophy
The future is uncertain, find joy in run, for the only fear you should have is the end.

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Geek Alert: I got an A in P Chem . . . and an A in American Lit.

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Morgan Whaley Lloyd is English Department Head at James Kenan High School in Duplin County, NC.

Lenard D. Moore is Executive Chairman of the North Carolina Haiku Society, among many other teaching and writing responsibilities; see additional bio at South Writ Large.

Lenard’s most recent book is A Temple Looming.

Other poems by Lenard at Connotations Press and Cordite Poetry Review

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