V E R S E and I M A G E

The boy doesn’t know what to do. He’s only twelve. And he’s never seen adults weep, not like this at least, so distraught, disconsolate. He can see his grandmother from the kitchen, through her bedroom doorway. Prisoner of her dementia, the old woman lies fully clothed atop the chenille bedspread, her floral house dress faded, her shoes scuffed and worn, light from one window cutting her in two. Her good dishes have disappeared, the piano is still in the old farmhouse, the cows need to be milked, her young sons are still in France at war. The boy sits at the breakfast table, adrift in a sunlit swirl of dust motes. He understands none of this is true, but how is he to help? What can anyone say? To live is to leave, the boy thinks; we make our way, but lose something always and wherever we go. Our shoe soles wear down, our hair thins, our bodies diminish and so we travel always through galaxies of our own shed lint and skin, the leavings of once known things. Finally, at a loss, he just lies down next to her, his sneakers alongside her purpled ankles. He knows nothing ever is going to be all right, but he says it anyway.

from Knowing, winner of the 2025 Brockman-Campbell Book Award of the North Carolina Poetry Society

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Mark Cox is chair of the Department of Creative Writing at University of North Carolina, Wilmington. He also teaches in the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA Program. His six previous books include Sorrow Bread: Poems 1984-2015 (2017) and Readiness (2018). Read more about Knowing and purchase your copy at Press 53 HERE.

Claudine Moreau is second place finalist for the 2025 Brockman-Campbell Award, for her book Demise of Pangaea. Visit this site on October 3 for more about her book and a sample poem.

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Each September at its fall meeting the North Carolina Poetry Society features readings by the winners of the following contests:

Brockman-Campbell Book Award (NCPS): best book of poetry published by a North Carolina author in the preceding year

Lena Shull Manuscript Award (NCPS): for a manuscript by a North Carolina author; the winning book is published by NCPS

Susan Laughter Meyers Fellowship (NCPS): a one week residential fellowship at Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities for one North or South Carolina poet

Randall Jarrell Poetry Prize (sponsored by North Carolina Writers’ Network): for an individual poem by a North Carolina author

Jaki Shelton Green Performance Poetry Award (co-sponsored by North Carolina Literary Review at East Carolina University and NCPS): for an individual poem recited / performed

For information about North Carolina Poetry Society contests VISIT HERE:

In 2023 the September NCPS meeting was held at the NC Museum of Art in Raleigh, in 2024 at the NC Arboretum in Asheville, and this year’s meeting on September 13 celebrated the Cary Arts Center, formerly the Cary High School (1939), listed on the national registry of historic places. Today’s and next Friday’s posts feature some of the poetry shared at the meeting by the 2025 contest winners; return to this site on October 3 for more offerings!

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++++ I woke in a tall-grass field at first light,

and listened to the birds, and hummed with a dream

++++ ++++ I made up from wisps

++++ that ran through my body

++++ ++++ shivering marrow, making me notice

++++ the dew that dampened

my face and the spider webs

++++ starting to shimmer the trees.

Everything was breathing; the long night echoed

++++ in the dawn-light: stars

++++ ++++ and vast migrations

++++ as the breeze stuttered a moment, then stilled.

++++ Across the field, my companion was singing

++++ ++++ her own perfect song, which was silence. Still

++++ ++++ ++++ I could hear her somehow, so I got up and set off

++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ to thank her for sharing this beautiful place

++++ ++++ ++++ she’d known all her life, this place where she’d always

++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ felt happy, the place she yearned to stay

++++ ++++ as long as she breathed. And then, she’d told me,

++++ she’d turn into something more perfect: the vast

sky, so blue it hurt the eyes,

++++ or a meadow like this one, that stretched to the horizon.

from Waking Up Alone, winner of the 2025 Lena Shull Manuscript Award of the North Carolina Poetry Society, to be published later this year by Redhawk Publications.

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After years in New York, Colorado, Florida, and Vermont, Michael Hettich now lives in Black Mountain, North Carolina. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Miami and taught for many years at Miami Dade College where he was awarded an Endowed Teaching Chair. Over five decades he has published more than two dozen books of poetry and received numerous honors, including several Individual Artist Fellowships from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, The Tampa Review Prize in Poetry, the David Martinson/Meadowhawk Prize, and a Florida Book Award.

Additional Finalists for this year’s Lena Shull Award are Becky Nicole James and Charles Wheeler.

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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-

from her debut poetry collection Wolfcraft (Broken Tribe, © 2025), available from Bookshop.org

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Narya Rose Deckard teaches writing at Lenoir-Rhyne University, where she earned her MFA in poetry at the Thomas Wolfe Center for Narrative. Originally from the mountains of Maryland, she currently lives in Valdese, NC with her husband, dog, five cats, and a few chickens, but she also spent ten years in Asheville studying literature and philosophy at UNCA. As winner of the 2025 Susan Laugher Meyers Fellowship, she receives an honorarium and one week writing residency in Southern Pines at Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities.

Susan Laughter Meyers was a widely published Carolina poet who mentored many rising poets and promoted literature across the South for decades. She served at different times as president of both the South Carolina and North Carolina Poetry Societies. Her family, friends, students, and other admirers of her life’s work have endowed this Fellowship in her name for the North Carolina Poetry Society. Many thanks to Weymouth Center, as well, for donating space and support for the poet residency.

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I got up

off the ground

near some graves—I share

the last name with.

I begin,

with what I was handed,

a mama, a daddy I saw a few times,

because he hid

in the hues he knew.

My little brother full of love

like the corner store in heaven. I knew

his lying like I knew our daddy’s lying,

same song, but a higher key.

My mama taught me to

ask my dead plenty of questions—

to let the moon touch me on the mouth,

to ring my black bell.

from a little bump in the earth, Copper Canyon Press, © 2025

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Tyree Daye led the writing workshop for the afternoon session of this NCPS meeting, He focused on breath: within and around a poem; what it might reveal and what it might hide. The writer can strive to become more conscious of their own breath as they splice syllables and thump out the poem’s rhythm. The reader can strive to slow down and feel their own breath as they silently speak the words. Breath can hold the meaning and feeling that the poem wants to birth into the world. Hold it, and let it out.

Tyree Daye grew up in Youngsville, North Carolina. He is the author of three poetry collections, including River Hymns (winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize), Cardinal, and most recently a little bump in the earth. He has been a 2017 Ruth Lilly Finalist and Cave Canem fellow. He serves as Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Tyree Daye teaches. Not just reading and writing, not just poetry – he teaches what it means to be human, a human with a past and with a future. One reaction to his new book: Poem by poem, Daye is honoring the people of Youngsville and “bringing back the dead.”

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Tune in next week, folks . . . in our October 3 post we will continue to celebrate the riches of this September 13 meeting in Cary with poetry by Claudine Moreau, Becky Nicole James, Charles Wheeler, and more.

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