Black Socks Poetry

Website

2005-09-23T19:05:00.000-04:00

I've created a website that I invite you to visit and critique--just click on the comment button when you get there. It was easy and inexpensive and, at least for me, oddly satisfying. If the Socks are interested, I can be easily persuaded (flattery and fawning both work) to set up a site for the group.

Socks and Paleo-sock at Carrboro International Poetry Fest

2005-05-16T22:22:00.000-04:00

This weekend, Saturday May 21 and Sunday May 22, at the Carrboro International Poetry Festival, Tanya Olson and Joanna Catherine Scott will be joining (and meeting for the first time) paleo-sock Paul Jones in the 40 poet whitmanathon.

An snip from the Festival Schedule:

Sunday
2:05 Tanya Olson
Sunday
12:30 Joanna Catherine Scott
12:45 Paul Jones

How 'bout them socks?!

2005-04-21T22:39:00.000-04:00

Or that sock, rather. Check out this amaaaaazing review of Joanna's recent award-winning collection, "Breakfast at the Shangri-La":

A rave indeed, and richly deserved. Way to go, Joanna!

onward and outward

2005-03-16T11:22:00.000-05:00

Bolstered by our first, and successful, group appearance at the Regulator a couple of weeks ago, the Socks are looking about with freshly kindled interest for ways to hook on to the new poetry energy roiling about. It's not just that there's a lot of poetry going on, but that it's going on in all kind of new ways.

So let me invite you all to check this out: By happy chance, my son Ian (surfer philosopher-poet computer genius and father-to-be) and his buddy Pat (aka Paddy boy) have just inaugurated a website for poets to post audio readings of their own or others' poetry. A work in progress (as aren't we all), but it could be fun: http://www.pocast.com

Stuff's happening out there. Seeds, dare I say, are in the wind!

Celebrate Poets' Day

2005-02-21T17:11:00.000-05:00

March 1st is Poets’ Day and you are cordially invited to join Joanna Catherine Scott and the Black Socks (a Triangle poetry group celebrating its 20th year) for an evening of poetry at the Regulator Bookshop in Durham. Joanna is a member of Black Socks and will be celebrating the release of her latest book of poetry, Breakfast at the Shangri-La, while the rest of the Black Socks will be marking the release of the group’s chapbook. The evening will begin with a 5 minute reading from 7 of the Black Socks members and a 20 minute reading from Joanna Scott. The reading begins at 7pm at the Regulator, 720 9th Street. There’s no cover. Call 286-2700 for directions or consult http://blacksoxpoetry.blogspot.com/ for more information.

BLACK SOCKS POETS
Ann Garbett lives in Danville, Virginia where she teaches Shakespeare, Chaucer, and creative writing at Averett University. She writes poems on her own time, mostly.

J. S. Absher has been an offset printer, missionary, bank teller, janitor, and consultant, sold mutual funds, surveyed scrub timberland, and taught freshman English. He currently works in corporate ethics and compliance.

Florence Nash, lately a medical editor at Duke Medical Center, is now a free-lance writer/editor and sometime poetry workshop leader in Durham. A musician in a former life, she is an active supporter and member of Triangle music groups.

Coyla Barry has worked as a marine biologist and as a research librarian for a large pharmaceutical company. Since retirement, she writes poetry in Chapel Hill and in Montana where her husband has a cattle ranch on Swimming Woman Creek.

Debra Kaufman is the author of three poetry books: Family of Strangers, Still Life Burning, and A Certain Light. She works at Duke University Press.

Maura High is a long-time resident of Carrboro, who edits and teaches for a living. In her spare time she helps out The Nature Conservancy's prescribed fire program, organizing volunteers and setting fire to the woods.

Tanya Olson lives in Durham and teaches at Vance-Granville Community College. She coordinates the durham3 reading series and serves on the board of the Carolina Wren Press.

And
JOANNA CATHERINE SCOTT
Breakfast at the Shangri-La

(The California Institute of Arts and Letters, 2004)

Winner of the Black Zinnias Poetry Book Award

The personal journey of a Western woman who adopts three Korean children.

‘Subtle, like a brush painting.’ —Lola Haskins, Contest Judge

Jones poem in News and Observer

2005-02-15T00:11:00.000-05:00

The News and Observer published a longish (49 lines) poem, Unapproachable Edens, for Valentine's Day on February 13th in the Sunday Reader section. Although I haven't been to Sox in a long while, I thought you might enjoy seeing it.

Joanna Scott and Other Black Socks reading at the Regulator, March 1

2005-02-08T20:47:00.000-05:00

Who: The Black Socks Poets, eight of us in all, will be reading our poems, on the occasion of the launch of our Blog www.blacksoxpoetry.blogspot.com and our first chapbook.

What: Poems, plain and fancy

When: March 1, 2005, 7:00 p.m, for about one hour

Where: Regulator Bookshop, on Ninth Street, Durham

Why: Meet eight very different local poets, hear a bunch of good poems, support one of the Triangle's few remaining independent bookstores, spend time with your friends, have a chance to buy for a song or one dollar our first chapbook and any other books in the store, celebrate National Poetry Day and St. David's Day (St. David, AKA Dewi Sant, patron saint of Wales).

Chris Abani at NCSU March 27

2005-02-02T14:44:00.000-05:00

My South African friend, Andie Miller, points out that one of her favorite authors, Nigerian Chris Abani, author of "Graceland," and "Foreign Exchanges," will be speaking at NCSU on Human Rights Week. March 27th. Nothing posted at NCSU about his visit yet. Nothing about this year's Human Rights Week. But there is a reference on Abani's website.
You can hear Chris Abani at the Cat Radio Cafe, a great resource for readings by great authors,--just go to the March 22nd 2004 show.

successo

2005-01-27T10:45:00.000-05:00

Ce l'ho fatta. Nailed it. Post in the hole. One of the advantages of this blog is that it is an alternative place for us to meet, a way that members can keep up with what others are doing or thinking or writing. It's better than a listserv because it doesn't clutter up a mailbox: one can come and go. That helps a traveler like me, looking for the site in Venice or Cambridge or wherever.

I know we're still unsure of such things as copyright, protection of our own "intellectual property." I have a suggestion in the meantime: let's post poems (or references to poems), or books or events related to poetry, and raise questions or muse (pun intended) on them awhile. Then others can comment or post their own disquisitions.

I'll start the ball rolling with something that's definitely out of copyright: Dante's Inferno, which my reading group is just starting to read, in Italian. It's rather intimidating, starting off on something so grand, so famous, so long, so owned by other people, in which each word, each obscure phrase has been studied and haggled over by generations of scholars and literati. "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita / mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, / che la diritta via era smarrita." I wish you could hear it! So one starts out, as if on a grand adventure, a little frightened, but thrilled, all the same, to have arrived at the beginning. All'inizio del cammin. I'm not a scholar, and I don't know much Italian, after all, and certainly not early 14th-century Tuscan, tuned and turned to fit the terza rima form. My position is one of the tourist, I suppose (a role I am familiar with), or a child. The questions are the same: why are you doing this, rather than another thing, rather than loaf around or take a walk or do something more constructive? what reasons, what goals? what do you get out of it? how does it (does it?) change how you do things, write, read, think?

hola. another sock turns up

2005-01-26T13:16:00.000-05:00

Well, it looks like a certain amount of settling in remains to be done. E.g., speaking of spelling, I've never been sure whether we're Sox or Socks, and lo, this blog hasn't yet resolved the question.

Nor this question: do we use this site to address each other, or The World? It will take some getting used to, this big breezy forum!

How public—like a frog—
To tell one’s name—the livelong June—
To an admiring Blog!

This blog will be home to the Black Sox

2005-01-19T20:21:00.000-05:00

The Black Sox are a group of poets from the Chapel Hill - Durham area of North Carolina. They have been meeting bi-weekly for over a decade. The current members include:

Maura High
Florence Nash
Coyla Barry
Debra Kaufman
J.S. Absher
Ann Garbett
Tanya Olson
Bruce Tindall (at a distance)
Joanna Scott

I've left off some newer members and likely misspelled a name or two so please correct me in the comments or if you are a team member (or once you have become a team member) edit this post.