Chapter 16 - Part 3

Singing What You Mean

Poet Robert Wrigley talks with Chapter 16 about the necessity of stories and music

By Charlotte Pence | October 24, 2012

October 24, 2012 Robert Wrigley, the author of five collections, writes poems that speak to daily concerns about family, aging, and the land we inhabit. Wrigley recently answered questions via email about his life in Idaho and his goals for poetry. As he explains, “poetry exists for three central reasons: to delight, to instruct, and to wound.” Robert Wrigley will give a free public reading on October 25 at 7 p.m. in Buttrick Hall room 101 at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Click here for event details.

“You Are Where You Come From”

Poet, translator, and editor Don Share talks with Chapter 16 about his new book, the centennial year of Poetry magazine, and his Memphis roots

By Charlotte Pence | June 26, 2012

June 26, 2012 Memphis native Don Share, poet and senior editor of Poetry magazine, has recently released his third poetry collection. In Wishbone, Share energizes his well-crafted lines with wit and hard-wrestled emotional truths. Many of the poems in Wishbone reflect on the transient nature of life and our attempts to muddle our way through loss. As Share explains in an interview with Chapter 16, “We’re always using whatever strength we have to grasp things, to hold on, and sometimes to wave goodbye.”

“The Branches, the Axe, the Missing”

By Charlotte Pence | May 18, 2012

May 18, 2012 Charlotte Pence is a poet and critic who recently received her Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Tennessee. A regular Chapter 16 contributor, she is also the author of two award-winning chapbooks and the editor of The Poetics of American Song Lyrics (University Press of Mississippi, 2012). Her work has earned numerous Pushcart nominations, the Discovered Voices award, and a fellowship from the Tennessee Arts Commission. It has appeared in Kenyon Review Online, North American Review, Denver Quarterly, Rattle, Tar River Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, and many other journals. Pence and her husband, Adam Prince, will read from their new books on May 19 at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville. The event begins at 2 p.m.

Hit City

In a new memoir, Loretta Lynn recalls her own life through the lyrics of her songs

By Charlotte Pence | May 9, 2012

May 9, 2012 Loretta Lynn’s rise to fame epitomizes the quintessential American dream, but with a uniquely Appalachian slant. A coal miner’s daughter who was, as her number-one hit explains, “born in a cabin on a hill in Butcher Hollow,” Lynn married at thirteen and had four children by eighteen. Despite this far-from-glamorous beginning, she has recorded sixteen number-one hits and sent seventy songs up the country charts. And at age seventy-seven, she continues to write and record crafted, heartfelt songs. It’s only fitting that Loretta Lynn’s newest memoir tells the story of her life through the medium that made her famous: her songs. In Honky Tonk Girl: My Life in Lyrics, Lynn collects 300 of her lyrics, glossing many of them with anecdotes that explain their genesis. Loretta Lynn will appear at the Ryman Auditorium on May 10 at as part of Opry Country Classics.

“Weaves a Clear Night”

An award-winning poem in seventeen sections by Chapter 16‘s Charlotte Pence

By Charlotte Pence | November 29, 2011

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.

A License to Lie

Internationally acclaimed South African poet Antjie Krog talks with Chapter 16 about the essential instability of the first-person voice

By Charlotte Pence | November 11, 2011

November 11, 2011 Internationally acclaimed journalist, poet, and playwright Antjie Krog was born into a family of Afrikaner writers and grew up on a farm within a conservative Afrikaans-speaking community. She published her first book at age seventeen and since then has continued to write groundbreaking work about South African injustices. On November 15 and 16, she will give a lecture and a poetry reading in Memphis at Rhodes College. Both events are free and open to the public.