November 29, 2011 Set in modern-day Appalachia, Charlotte Pence’s new chapbook—Weaves a Clear Night, winner of the 2011 Flying Trout Press Chapbook Prize—recasts the myths surrounding Penelope’s fidelity to Odysseus. Lyrical, meditative, and deeply sensual, the poems follow the emotional isolation of a woman poised between two men, neither of whom can be a part of her daily life. Despite the absence of the lover and the husband, their presence surrounds her.
November 4, 2011 Melissa Range’s first book of poems, Horse and Rider, was a finalist for the 2011 Kate Tufts Discovery Prize and won the 2010 Walt McDonald Prize in Poetry. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The Hudson Review, New England Review, and others. She is a recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and a “Discovery” / The Nation prize, and she has held residencies at Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. A graduate of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, she is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in English and creative writing at the University of Missouri. “New Heavens, New Earth” originally appeared in Poetry London in 2006. Range will give a reading at the Hodges Library on the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville on November 7 at 7 p.m. She will also appear (with Darius Antwan Stewart and Clay Matthews) at Rogers-Stout Hall on the campus of East Tennessee State University on November 8 at 7 p.m.
October 6, 2011 Bill Brown has written four poetry collections, three chapbooks, and a textbook. The recipient of many awards and fellowships, Brown lives in the hills of Robertson County with his wife, Suzanne, and a tribe of cats. He wrote “The Faraway Nearby” for an exhibition called Fragments: Poets and Artists of the South and Southwest at the Harrington Brown Gallery in Memphis. Brown’s poem is a response to a photograph of the work of Carolyn Hinske, a fiber artist based in Taos, New Mexico. Read more about Fragments here.
September 8, 2011 Near the end of his writing life George Scarbrough (1915-2008) used an alter ego, writing in the voice of the legendary eighth-century Chinese poet, Han-shan, whose poems were simple, direct, and frank, never failing to call attention to the flaws in society as he saw them. Writing in the voice of Han-shan gave Scarbrough the means to speak directly about the social abuses he saw around him but could not address so clearly in his own first-person voice. “At the Last Festival” appears in Under the Lemon Tree, a new, posthumously published collection of Scarbrough’s Han-shan poems. Robert Cumming, the book’s editor, will discuss George Scarbrough and his work at the 2011 Southern Festival of Books, held October 14-16 in Nashville.
September 7, 2011 George Scarbrough (1915-2008) was born the third of seven children in in a clapboard cabin in Patty, a small community in Polk County, Tennessee. Strongly influenced by his literate mother, he was an avid reader from his earliest years and studied at Lincoln Memorial University, the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and the University of the South in Sewanee. As farmer, librarian, and teacher he lived his entire life in East Tennessee, for many years in Oak Ridge. His poetry was published widely in magazines and journals, and he is the author of five books of poems and one novel, all of which established his position as a major figure in American literature. Under the Lemon Tree, a new collection of previously unpublished poems by George Scarbrough, will appear this fall from Iris Press, and Robert Cumming, the book’s editor, will discuss George Scarbrough and his work at the 2011 Southern Festival of Books, held October 14-16 in Nashville.
September 6, 2011 Amanda Auchter is the founding editor of Pebble Lake Review and the author of The Glass Crib (winner of the Zone 3 Press First Book Award for Poetry, judged by Rigoberto González). Her writing has appeared in American Poetry Review, Best New Poets, Indiana Review, The Iowa Review, Pleiades, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. She holds an M.F.A from Bennington College and teaches creative writing and literature at Lone Star College. Auchter will read from The Glass Crib at an awards ceremony on September 15 in Gentry Auditorium on the Austin Peay State University campus in Clarksville. The reading begins at 4 p.m.
