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New Poetry Post

Our final poetry post from this year’s contest comes from Bill Allgood. His Special Mention poem is here.

Bill Allgood lives in Atlanta, GA with his wife, Pat. He is a retired public relations and training specialist for a state agency. He began seriously writing poetry at age 30 after reading Loren Eiseley’s The Invisible Pyramid. His poems have appeared in several publications.

His poem, Ex Pluribus, was chosen from a juried selection by David Bottoms to be the first place winner in the unrhymed poem category in Kennesaw State University’s 2006 Poetry of the Golden Generation competition.

Jeff Davis’ poems have appeared in Lillabulero, Iron, Asheville Poetry Review, the Nantahala Review, and other little magazines. His books include Transits of Venus (2005), and Natures: Selected Poems, 1972 – 2005 (2006); the latter was selected by Katherine Stripling Byer, then Poet Laureate of North Carolina, as a North Carolina Notable Book for 2006, and featured on the Laureate’s Arts Council web site.
Since 2005 he has hosted the radio program Wordplay, which celebrates poets and writers of creative prose; it’s now available each Sunday at 5:00 PM via AshevilleFM.org, and a catalog of the show archive is posted at http://www.naturespoetry.blogspot.com.

He attended UNC-Greensboro’s MFA program in creative writing, and studied with Robert Creeley at the State University of New York at Buffalo. In 2010-11 he worked with NC Poet Laureate Cathy Smith Bowers as her assistant; she co-hosted Wordplay once a month from February 2010 through February 2011.

He teaches in UNCA’s Great Smokies Writing Program. His poem “Looming Nylon Emergency” is here.

Christopher Martin is the author of the poetry chapbook A Conference of Birds (New Native Press 2012). Some of Chris’s poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Ruminate Magazine, Drafthorse, Still: The Journal,Buddhist Poetry Review, Loose Change Magazine, and New Southerner, among other places. Two of his poems were recently selectedto appear in the Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume V: Georgia, due out fall 2012 with Texas Review Press. Chris’s creative and critical work on Byron Hebert Reece has appeared or is forthcoming in Shambhala Sun (“A Hill in the Middle of Paradise: On Byron Herbert Reece’s ‘Mountain Fiddler’”), American Public Media’s On Being blog (“A Declaration of Flowers: Thoughts on Byron Herbert Reece’s ‘Easter’”), and A Conference of Birds (“Lines from the Old Union Cemetery”). Chris edits theonline literary magazine Flycatcher: A Journal of Native Imagination.He is pursuing a Masterof Arts in Professional Writing at Kennesaw State University, and lives with hiswife and their two young children in the northwest Georgia piedmont. You can find his work online at www.christopher-martin.net. Chris writes, “My great-great aunt, Allie Rose Buice, was from Choestoe and knew Byron Herbert Reece and his family personally. Allie Rose passed away this year, in April, and she is one of the reasons I came to love Reece’s poetry as much as I do. Of Reece’s poetry, Allie Rose once told me, ‘He sure wrote some pretty words.’ I know of no better statement on Reece’s work, and I dedicate my honorable mention to her.”

We’re pleased to post the work of Kevin Brown.  Kevin Brown is a Professor at  Lee University and an MFA student at Murray State University.  He has one book of poetry, Exit Lines (Plain View Press, 2009) and two chapbooks: Abecedarium (Finishing Line Press, 2011) and Holy Days: Poems (winner of Split Oak Press Chapbook Contest, 2011).  He also has  published a memoir, Another  Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again (Wipf and Stock, 2012), and a scholarly work, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels.  His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The New York Quarterly, REAL: Regarding Arts and Letters, Folio, Connecticut Review, South Carolina Review, Stickman Review, Atlanta Review, and Palimpsest, among other journals. He has also published essays in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Academe, InsideHigherEd.com, The Teaching Professor, and Eclectica. Mr. Brown’s poem “Let He Who is Without” was selected as the runner up in the 2012 Reece Society Poetry Contest. His work is here.

Winner Announced for Byron Herbert Reece Society Poetry Contest

The Reece Society is pleased to announce Denton Loving‘s poem “Reasoning with Cows” as the winner of the 2012 Byron Herbert Reece Society Poetry Contest. The poem was read at the Society Annual meeting on June 2, 2012 at the Reece Farm and Heritage Center. Mr. Loving could not attend, but his poem was read by Rosemary Royston, poetry contest chair.

Denton Loving lives on a farm near the historic Cumberland Gap, where Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia come together. He works at Lincoln Memorial University, where he co-directs the annual Mountain Heritage Literary Festival and serves as executive editor of drafthorse: the literary journal of work and no work. Other fiction, poetry and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming inAppalachian Heritage, Minnetonka Review, Trajectory, Main Street Rag and in numerous anthologies includingDegrees of Elevation: Stories of Contemporary Appalachia. The poem is here.