Poetry Month and my poetry here

I have decided to share more of my poetry on my blog. We always feel we must not share a poem online because then the poetry journals won't accept it. But, I have many that have already been published and I am happy for other eyes to see them.

So many of you emailed me about the poem, Stop the Trees from Growing, and how you related to it.

You might like this one, too. I wrote it about six years after Barry died.  Forgive the spacing. I know better but my computer is acting up tonight.

Shot into the Future, Clutching the Past

 Sometimes I forget the years before spiraling

darkness took its toll. Now aging wraps me in

silken threads, squeezes me into a box.


I forget until a whirlwind, half my age,

delves into my life. Her purpose, unclutter

my house, my life, set me free of the past.


I forget until she tells me 2005 was long ago.

It’s yesterday to me. She brands my computer

an antique, like me, I suppose.


Floppy disks? Does anybody still use them?

She tosses them in the trash. What can she know

of such things? I saved precious words on those disks.


I am saddened by the pain she has yet to face.

Her biggest loss so far – a breakup with her boyfriend.

Six years gone now, I kept his voice on the answering machine.

                        By Glenda Council Beall

Published:  - Main Street Rag,  Volume 21, Summer 2016 issue

Stop The Trees From Growing published by Your Daily Poem

Stop the Trees from Growing

by

Glenda Council Beall 

Thomas Wolfe said you can’t go home again,
But I came here today, to where Mother nurtured
my spirit and where Daddy kept the roof over my head;
where the fire warmed my bed at night when winter winds
howled ‘round the corners of the old frame house –
when this flat farm with ponds and pines was home.

The road that once the school bus traveled
taking me to spend the day
with someone who was not my mother,
looks like a highway to a place I’ve never been.

It’s not the buildings all torn down, the homes of friends
that now hold dreams of families I don’t know –
It is the trees.
Nothing stopped the trees from growing, growing ever taller,
till they dwarfed the house, the barn, the backyard –
now a tiny garden towered over by a lilac tree,
an oak, and one longleaf pine.

I traveled from what is and has been home for fifteen years,
to visit that which was but is not my home anymore.
Like you, Thomas Wolfe, I can’t go home again.
I can’t go home because that place I once called home is gone.

Forever gone, except in memories that linger like lazy chimney smoke
spiraling through my mind, thoughts that surge a yearning deep within
to hear the laughing voices, see the kindly eyes – stilled voices, loving eyes,
closed under sod upon a quiet hill.


This poem was published in 2019 by Jayne Jaudon Ferrer who is the owner of Your Daily Poem. 

She has published six of my poems and if you want to read the others, go to her website and look for my name.

You can subscribe and she will send you a poem every day in your Inbox.  Some poems are new and some are old. Her goal is to prove that all poetry is NOT dull or boring. She wants to bring poetry to the folks who don't think they like poetry.
Jayne does a great job, too. 

a Poem by Scott Owens

 On The Days I Am Not My Father

by Scott Owens

I don’t yell. I don’t hold inside
the day’s supply of frustrations.
My hands stay open all day.
I don’t wake tired and sore,
dazed from senseless, panicking
dreams. On the days I am not
my father I hold my son
when he cries, let him touch my face
without flinching, lie down with him
until he falls asleep, realize
that just because he has a sharp tongue,
just because he’s sometimes mean,
just because he’s smarter than me
doesn’t mean he’ll become my father.

On the days I am not my father
holding you is enough until
holding you is no longer enough
for either of us. I listen well.
I let things go unfinished,
in an order I didn’t plan.
My mouth is relaxed. My teeth
don’t hurt. My face stays
a healthy shade of pink all day.
On the days I am not my father
I don’t fill the silence with my own
irrational rants. I don’t resent
the voices of others. I don’t make fun
of you to make myself feel better.

On the days I am not my father
I don’t care who wins
or loses. The news can’t ruin
my day. I water plants.
I cook. I laugh at myself.
I can imagine living without
my beard, with my hair cut,
without the fear of looking
too much like my father. On the days
I am not my father I romp
and play, I don’t compare myself
with everyone else, the night
is always long enough, I like
how much I am like my father.

Great small writers' conference near me

Writers, are you ready to go to a writers' conference face to face with great instructors? Are you ready to be motivated to get out of that pandemic dump and pursue your love of writing?

Then you must register and attend a one-day conference in Blue Ridge, Georgia. This is one of the best small conferences you will find and it is in the mountains of north Georgia. Check it out.

https://www.blueridgewritersconference.com/

Karen Paul Holmes will be there as an instructor. 

https://netwestwriters.blogspot.com/2022/02/writers-conference-blue-ridge-ga-april.html

Poetry Month - April

April is National Poetry Month, and what better way to celebrate than by joining us at the North Carolina Writers' Network 2022 Spring Conference on Saturday, April 23, where poetic programs abound?

If you've already registered, thank you! If not, registration is open at https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncwriters.org%2F&data=04%7C01%7C%7C83297dd6d3ae421963c908da0b85ac60%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637834965998917244%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=FIoBCTyoeewUA2yKALjNo6pfXOr4BEZw3EHcgS2H9i4%3D&reserved=0.

Poets can choose from the following course options:

Public, Private, and Poetic Place with CHARMAINE CADEAU
Filmmaker Peter Greenaway stated, “I’ve always been fascinated by maps and cartography. A map tells you where you’ve been, where you are, and where you’re going—in a sense, it’s three tenses in one.” This generative writing workshop focuses on exploring our literal and conceptual worlds. How might a poem map a geographical place? A memory? A body? Using exercises that play with the idea of mapping, participants will draft new work that explores real and imagined places.

Born in Toronto, Charmaine Cadeau now lives in Lewisville. She is an English professor at High Point University, where she teaches creative writing and literature and serves as the advisor for Apogee Magazine. She has published two full-length collections of poetry, What You Used to Wear (Goose Lane Editions) and Placeholder (Brick Books), the most recent of which won the Brockman Campbell Book Award and the ReLit Award. Her newest book, Skytale, was handmade with the support of JackPine Press.

Talking the Talk (poetry) with STUART DISCHELL
This class, open to poets at all levels of skill and experience, will focus on the use of dialogue as a strategic device in poetry.

Stuart Dischell is the author of Good Hope Road (Viking), a National Poetry Series Selection, Evenings & Avenues (Penguin), Dig Safe (Penguin), Backwards Days (Penguin), Standing on Z (Unicorn), Children with Enemies (Chicago), and the forthcoming The Lookout Man (Chicago). A recipient of awards from the NEA, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Ledig-Rowohlt Foundation. and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, he is the Class of 1952 Excellence Professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.

Finally, LAURA MULLEN will lead the Master Class in Poetry, "River of Time and Art." 

We feel ourselves to float now, precariously, uncertainly, in a river of time that seems rapid, forceful, and unruly—it’s all too easy to fear we’ll be thrown out of the boat and submerged. “Poetry,” writes Joy Harjo in her memoir Poet Warrior, “is a tool to navigate transformation.” What better way to move through these straits than with(in) art? This workshop will be generative, there will be exercises and prompts, productive of new poetry, and then (looking at previous work) will also offer strategies for revision, grounded in a recognition of your singular and special powers, with a focus on self-awareness and self-acceptance, as we learn to go with the creative flow and move fearlessly toward the wide open.

Potential Master Class attendees must apply to be admitted; a few spots remain. Each registrant should be ready to handle the intensive instruction and atmosphere of the Master Class.

Laura Mullen is the author of eight books; recognitions for her poetry include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Rona Jaffe Award. Recent poems have appeared in Fence, Together in a Sudden Strangeness, and Bettering American Poetry. Her translation of Veronique Pittolo's Hero was published by Black Square Editions, and her translation of work by Stephanie Chaillou has just appeared in Interim. A collection of poems is forthcoming from Solid Objects Press in 2023. She teaches at Wake Forest University.

Spring Conference is a full day of courses and programming on the craft and business of writing, offering both on-site (in-person) and online sessions. North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame inductee Carole Boston Weatherford will give the Keynote Address. Other sessions include faculty readings, open mics, and the popular Slush Pile Live, where a panel of editors gives feedback on anonymous submissions in front of a live audience!

The online track offers several options for writers in all genres. Online registrants also will be able to watch livestreams of the Keynote Address, Faculty Readings, and Slush Pile Live!, and participate in an online-only Open Mic.

Register here: https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncwriters.org%2F&data=04%7C01%7C%7C83297dd6d3ae421963c908da0b85ac60%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637834965998917244%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=FIoBCTyoeewUA2yKALjNo6pfXOr4BEZw3EHcgS2H9i4%3D&reserved=0.
Manage Your Subscription:
https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapp.icontact.com%2Ficp%2Fmmail-mprofile.php%3Fr%3D11387037%26l%3D19357%26s%3DX7PH%26m%3D1365466%26c%3D240123&data=04%7C01%7C%7C83297dd6d3ae421963c908da0b85ac60%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637834965998917244%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=%2BDexh7NgYJltnyqvl74kklwqNOikVt%2FK%2F5dt1yERAqI%3D&reserved=0

This message was sent to glendabeall@msn.com from calendar@ncwriters.org

The North Carolina Writers' Network
North Carolina Writers' Network
North Carolina Writers' Network
PO Box 21591
 
Winston-Salem, NC 27120

I'm Back

A reader wrote to ask if I was well since I have not blogged in a while. To explain my absence, I have to say that this has been an awful year for me. I had COVID in January and my brother died in February. Meanwhile, I am dealing with lots of post COVID problems. I hate to write when I have nothing positive or helpful for my readers.

Also during these times, I am trying to learn how to live in two places. I have spent most of the time in Roswell,GA where my sister lives. I am grateful I was with her when I had the virus in January of this year.  Although I had all my vaccine shots and a booster and although I was careful to wear a mask when in public, I caught it at a restaurant where none of the staff wore masks and others did not either. They say that masks are about 85% successful in keeping the virus from escaping into the air. So masks would have helped. 

The fatigue I am having now keeps me from doing many things I want to do. However, my work has helped me with my grief. Keeping busy with something I enjoy has always been a good way for me to get through the worst of mourning. I try not to dwell on my sorrow for long, but I still cry when I think of my brother and realize he will never call me on the phone again. He will never sing his songs or tell his stories. It makes no difference that he was in his nineties or that we all knew it was going to be soon. When we lose someone we love, we miss them and that makes us sad. There is no shame in that and it should be accepted by others who care for us.

I am in Hayesville this week, back to my mountain home that I love. Every day is filled with either a doctor's appointment, a hair appointment, or getting my taxes to the CPA. 

Cloudy day in the mountains 

Time passes so quickly and with the time change that has just occurred, I find my days seem shorter. My body did not recognize a time change. It is still on the one it was used to. 

The cold weather here with snow has shut down the early spring we were enjoying. My forsythia looks damaged and the pear trees that were a beautiful white are now yellow. Japanese magnolias that were blooming so pretty a few weeks ago are done for now.

As I prepare for my writing class I will teach for the Carl Sandburg home historic site, I am amazed at the large number of people who have registered. I hope I feel well and am at my best for this class.

I hope you, my dear friends, are having good weather and enjoying good health as we anticipate the next season in our lives.

Virtual Writing Workshop Tuesday, March 22, 7:00 - 9:00 EST

Glenda Council Beall

Glenda Beall will lead a virtual writing workshop titled, "Inform, Enlighten and Entertain with Your True Life Stories" on Tuesday, March 22, from 7:00-9:00 pm ET.

This workshop is open to writers of all skill levels and is a fun way to find inspiration from a new prompt or revise current work. It is hosted by the Friends of Carl Sandburg at Connemara and will use Zoom for the virtual connection. Click on this link to register for the FREE workship.

A link will be sent to participants by 2:00 pm on the day of the program. Please check your junk/spam emails if you don't receive it.

Each of us has a unique life story. While our children and grandchildren show little interest now in our past, there will come a time when they will be thankful we wrote down and preserved our history. Many times we hear someone, after losing a father or mother, say, "I wish I had asked more questions. I wish I knew more about my parents' lives." We will discuss how to decide what to write and how to write it so it will be read and appreciated.

Glenda Council Beall, a Georgia native, lives in Hayesville, NC, where she is the owner and director of 'Writers Circle Around the Table', a studio that provides education for writers. She also taught writing in the continuing education department at Tri-County Community College in Murphy, NC. and presently teaches online for the Institute of Continuing Learning at Young Harris College, Young Harris, Georgia.

She became interested in Genealogy in the early nineties and compiled a family history book, Profiles and Pedigrees, The Descendants of Thomas Charles Council (1858-1911) which chronicles the lives of her grandfather and his ten children who were born in the late 19th century.

Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including Wild Goose Poetry Review, Appalachian Heritage, Main Street Rag, Journal of Kentucky Studies, Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Red Owl Magazine and in the anthologies, Kakalak – Anthology of Carolina Poets, 2009, 2011 Poetry Hickory, Future Cycle, Lights in the Mountains, Women’s Places Women’s Spaces, On Our Own, Widowhood for Smarties, From Freckles to Wrinkles, and Reach of Song published by the Georgia Poetry Society. Her poetry chapbook Now Might as Well be Then, published by Finishing Line Press, is available at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, NC. In 2018, she co-authored a collection of short stories, poems, articles and photos in Paws, Claws, Hooves, Feathers and Fins; Family Pets and God's Other Creatures available at the following places: City Lights Books in Sylva, NC, Tiger's in Hayesville, NC and on Amazon in the Kindle store.

Her short stories and personal essays have been published in the online journals, Muscadine Lines; A Southern Journal, Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and 234journal, and in the anthologies, Echoes Across the Blue Ridge and Cup of Comfort for Horse Lovers. Several of her poems and essays have appeared in Living with Loss Magazine, Breath and Shadow, and Reunions Magazine.

She is a member of the NC Writers Network, the Georgia Poetry Society, The Byron Herbert Reece Society, and the North Carolina Poetry Society. Read more about Glenda on her two personal blogs, Writing Life Stories with Glenda Beall, Writers Circle Around the Table, http://www.glendacouncilbeall.com/ and on Blue Heaven Press.

Friends, please share this announcement with your contact list. Thank you so much.  Glenda

ill lead a virtual writing workshop titled, "Inform, Enlighten and Entertain wh e Life Stories" on Tuesday, March 22, from 7:00-9:00 pm ET.

Writers continue to meet in Glenda' s Studio in 2022

As we begin a new year, 2022, we will continue to hold classes from my studio and beyond. You know that I love stories. I like to write true stories and I like to write fiction. In years past, I often invited fiction and nonfiction writers to teach at my studio. We had some wonderful poets at Writers Circle around the Table.

This is a photo of a class sitting around the table in my studio a few years ago. Carol Crawford was the instructor.

Life has changed for all of us with COVID spreading everywhere. I will not ask anyone to come together with others at this time because we want to be as safe as possible from becoming exposed to this horrible virus.

But, that doesn't stop us from meeting online and that is what we will do this year. I might not be in Hayesville where my physical studio is located, but with Zoom, I can hold classes from my apartment in Roswell, GA.

You can attend the classes from your home or wherever you have a good Internet connection. 

The first class I will be teaching this year on Zoom is for the Carl Sandburg Home Historic site located in Flat Rock, NC. Guess what? This class is FREE. 

ll  

Tuesday, March 22, 2022
T

Glenda Beall will lead a virtual writing workshop titled, "Inform, Enlighten and Entertain with Your True Life Stories" on Tuesday, March 22, from 7:00-9:00 pm ET.

This workshop is open to writers of all skill levels and is a fun way to find inspiration from a new prompt or revise current work. It is hosted by the Friends of Carl Sandburg at Connemara and will use Zoom for the virtual connection.

Each of us has a unique life story. While our children and grandchildren show little interest now in our past, there will come a time when they will be thankful we wrote down and preserved our history. Many times we hear someone, after losing a father or mother, say, "I wish I had asked more questions. I wish I knew more about my parents' lives." We will discuss how to decide what to write and how to write it so it will be read and appreciated.

For more information and to register for this class, click on this link.

 A link will be sent to participants by 2:00pm on the day of the program. Please check your junk/spam emails if you don't receive the link in your INbox.

*******************************************************

This spring, I will teach again for the Institute of Continuing Learning (ICL). Last year we held several classes online and had great attendance and participation. 

This class will begin on Tuesday, April 5, 2:00 - 4:00 PM and continue once each week until May 10. They will soon be taking registrations for this class. Check the website, https://www.iclyhc.org/

The fees for classes at ICL are more than reasonable.

I hope to offer more classes and more opportunities for writers online this year. If you are interested in teaching a class, holding a writing event, or if you want me to invite someone you want to hear more from, please let me know. I look forward to using the Zoom platform to bring more writers together in the coming months.