Accepting what is to come
Thursday, February 29, 2024
WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW
Saturday, January 27, 2024
CONGRATULATIONS TO JOSEPH BATHANTI
JOSEPH BATHANTI |
Congratulations to Joseph Bathanti, friend and poet from Western North Carolina.
He has been our featured guest on Netwest’s
Zoom programs and our one-day writing conference. Joseph is always so gracious
when we invite him. He will be inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame along with Ron Rash and Kaye Gibbons two authors who have written many excellent books and received many awards. There are several more outstanding writers on this list.
Bathanti was the Poet Laureate of NorthCarolina from 2012 to 2014 and has received both the North Carolina Award for
Literature and the Order of the Long Leaf Pine. He is the author or editor of
more than 20 books of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and criticism.
Since 2001 he has taught at Appalachian State University in Boone.
I hope Joseph will teach a poetry class for our NCWN-West poets in 2024. We would all gain so much from having him with us even if on Zoom.
Monday, January 1, 2024
Writing classes for 2024 Instructor Glenda Beall
Writing Your Memories into Stories for Your Family or for Publication
Tuesdays – 6:00 – 8:00 PM - January 23 and 30 - February 13
Fee: 60.00 for three classes
Online with Zoom
There are reasons why certain memories stay with us. We don’t remember everything that has happened in our lives, but we remember those things that made a difference.
Why are they important to us?
Who are the people in our lives we want to remember and tell their stories so our children and grandchildren will know them as well?
What do you want your family to know about your life and why? Today young people hardly know their grandparents’ history, where they were born, what they did for work, and what tragedies or successes they had. We don’t sit on the porch and talk like our parents once did. Unless you write your unique story, no one will know it.
We all have individual stories, and we can learn to write them to inform and enlighten our readers. You might think your family is not interested in your story, but one day they will be so glad you took the time to write it.
In class, we share our stories and receive feedback from our peers that help us know what is good and what might need some more work. Each student gets individual attention from me with suggestions on how to make his/her story the best it can be.
My classes are for beginning and intermediate writers, published or non-published.
For registration information: gcbmountaingirl@gmail.com
Saturday, December 9, 2023
Retreats for Writers - The One I Refused
This is the time for writers and poets to
enter the NC Writers’ Network contests. Visit the website: www.ncwriters.org to learn about them. If you
are a member of NCWN, you receive the information in your weekly newsletter.
I noticed in the most recent communication from the Network that several
places are offering residencies for writers who can come and stay in a private
house or cabin for a week or two and have time to write! No other
responsibilities.
In 2008 I received a letter from Wild Acres, a beautiful place outside Little Switzerland NC. Wild Acres offered a residency which I applied for, and I was overjoyed when I received the letter saying I was accepted for September.
A cabin at Wild Acres for someone who was chosen for a Residency |
But in July, Barry was diagnosed with lymphoma.
He had a tumor in his leg just above his knee. We had been sent to Emory for a second opinion. The doctors agreed Barry must have chemo and radiation. They seemed to ignore it was stage 4 and he was 73 years old. Barry had the most positive attitude of anyone I had ever seen. But it was obvious he did not want me to go away and leave him for two weeks. I would never think of doing that. I was disappointed that I had to refuse Wild Acres, but I was definitely going to be by my husband’s side during his fight to overcome cancer.
I feared the journey we were facing but had no idea what was going to happen.
He struggled for a year in and out of hospitals, dealing with doctors at home and in Atlanta. Doctors told me when his pain grew worse and his leg looked like it had been badly burned, that they could give him more chemo. We tried one round of the stronger chemo and it was awful for him. For two days he was on IVs as the poison leaked into his body.
“It will damage his heart and he will eventually die from a heart attack," I was told. He did not have more chemo.
Finally, in July 2009, the cancer had become a horrible nightmare. His entire lower body became so swollen that it scared us, and no one was doing anything to help him. I knew he didn’t want to be kept alive to suffer, so when Hospice was suggested, I took it. He had turned over his medical care to me. He suffered extreme pain that could not be stopped. We had always agreed that we did not want to be kept alive when we knew we could not be healed.
The oxygen was removed. No meds were given except to
try to stop the pain. He slept.
Within three days, his heart failed, and he died. I was devastated and grief overwhelmed me for a long time.
Several years later, I applied again for that residency
at Wild Acres but was rejected. It would have been a wonderful time up in the
smoky mountains, the green trees, the long walks in the quiet, but Barry came first,
and I am happy that I spent all the days he had left with him, and I spent each night, too.
Big Sur
I drive along the freeway,cars like inchworms creep.
I visualize a moment
far removed from traffic jams.
High above the scene,
we picnicked on cheese and wine.
The wind swept up the cliff
and kissed my face with droplets
from the great Pacific which crashed
on rocks one hundred feet below.
Wind tossed our words up to the gulls
who shrieked them back at us.
The day was dazzling in its brilliance.
Our love, not young, refreshed, renewed.
We dreamed, made promises.
That perfect day - a perfect place,
away from all the world.
--- Glenda Council Beall
Sunday, December 3, 2023
Writing Classes are coming and So is Christmas
Carol Crawford is teaching a week-long class at the John C. Campbell Folk School in January 2024. Oh, how I would like to be there for that class. Carol is one of my favorite instructors of writing.
Monday, November 6, 2023
Netwest Poet is published in the United Kingdom
One of the best poets I know is MAREN O. MITCHELL who is publishing her poems everywhere. The two below were recently published in the November issue of The Lake a UK publication.
As They Go, So Go We
Being dazzled by June bug iridescence, in June or any other
month, is beyond my recall, and at least six years have passed
since praying mantis youngsters climbed our garden plants
with their gravity-defying sticky feet. Now wasps only
build duplexes, a shadow of their former eave condos
that extended our roof line; hornets used to hang their mansions
in nearby trees, and invade the living room nightly through
a secret entrance. While outside, they would eye me, hover
close, their frequency never mistaken, as I pretended I neither
saw nor heard them, my only care the poem I was writing. Both
threats required diplomacy: move gently, (if at all), don't trust, pray
quietly. It must be ten years since snakes traveled from the forest
to give birth in our shaggy yard, and I barely remember the shadows
of turtles, their audacious road crossings, their compressed view
of life, and the slower snails, now only an occasional dot,
Buddhas on stems. After my ankles, yellow jackets would chase me
down mountains as if they knew I had to stay on the trail to get
home; fall spiders draped our fall house with softness to shelter egg
sacs, their plan for eternity. Yet, gnats still bite me with a dog-like
clamp down, as though they hold a grudge, and mosquito specters
I see too late still inject me with viruses and bacteria. But, most
upsetting, from bumble to sweat bees, (those little darlings who
spelunk into flowers and zap me as I deadhead), drop in less
and less often. It is getting lonely outside. I don’t take it personally,
but eventually, absences will be personal: I like to know
that unseen ants are aerating earth, I like to fall asleep, windows
open to the strum of insect bodies, wake to diamonded webs,
and be illuminated by bee flight pointing out that I am alive.
The Theory of Everything
Every thing is always busy
becoming elemental elements:
red supergiant Betelgeuse of Orion,
is busy living while dying,
with irregular contractions
and expansions that were noted
by Aborigines and ancient Greeks;
my heart is busy with contractions and expansions,
finite beats
that began before I was aware;
unanswered phone calls
are busy being unanswered, synchronize
with activities of the callees;
insect oscillations fan out through air and earth,
and who notes them is a personal matter¾bacteria,
insect neighbors, redwoods, sand;
my fears, thoughts and complaints,
always busy¾
despite my occasional claim, I am not busy¾
beam out, intertwine
with all other busyness, expressions
that slam into paper,
but what the messages and what received?
And, as Jack A. Howard said, You're more
important to yourself
than to anyone else.
Maren O. Mitchell’s poems appear in Poetry East, Tar River Poetry , and The Antigonish Review. Three poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes.
Her chapbook is In my next life I plan... http://www.dancinggirlpress.com/.
She lives with her husband in the mountains of Georgia, US.
Read a review of Maren's nonfiction book, Beat Chronic Pain
https://netwestwriters.blogspot.com/2013/04/book-review-of-beat-chronic-pain-by.html
Friday, October 20, 2023
Place, one of my main characters in poetry, nonfiction and fiction
There is a great good in returning to a landscape that has had extraordinary meaning in one's life. It happens that we return to such places in our minds irresistibly. There are certain villages and towns, mountains and plains that, having seen them walked in them lived in them even for a day, we keep forever in the mind's eye. They become indispensable to our well-being; they define us, and we say, I am who I am because I have been there, or there."
-- N. Scott Momaday, "Revisiting Sacred Ground," in The Man Made of Words
Many of my memories are piqued by places I have been. I write about my family and the farm where I grew up. I write about people and the place where I remember them.
I write about Colorado where I have wonderful memories of Barry and our vacations there. That is also where we camped one night outside Estes Park and our kitchen tent blew away in a blizzard that came up while we slept. On another trip, we had so much fun with the college students who worked as staff for a ranch where we rode horses in the mountains.
My only trip to California with Barry, Gay and Stu, created so many memories that make me smile. We had two days at the Mark Hopkins Hotel on Nob Hill in San Francisco. I will never forget the thrilling ride in a Taxi as the driver raced down the streets slamming on brakes then speeding away again. It was like a carnival ride over the hills and valleys.
In New England we laughed so much and although I only remember one or two things we did, that place will remain in my memory as long as I live. The four of us went into a gift shop and walked around looking at the unique items with a seaside theme. After a few minutes, I noticed the woman who had been behind the counter when we came in seemed to be following us. She didn't say anything but stayed nearby. I told my sister, "That woman is following us. I wonder if she thinks we are going to steal something?" We laughed at that absurd idea and continued to shop.
At the counter, as we paid for the things we wanted, the woman asked where we were from. We told her we were from Georgia. "I knew you were not from here," she said, "when I heard you talk. I listened and tried to decide where you were from."
We laughed later as we realized she was not suspicious of us. She just wanted to hear us talk.
I have written poems placed in hospitals, on airplanes, on ski slopes, in the mountains, on lakes, and in the house where I lived. I ground my writing in places and the place usually becomes an important part of my story.
One of my prompts for my students is to choose a place where they once lived and write down the things they remember about that place. Then note the people they knew or remember from that place. Often many stories come from those notes.
A special place for me, looking off the deck of my mountain home which holds many memories, and stories I will write about |
Saturday, September 23, 2023
Great Classes both online and in person
Dear Writers,
https://www.lessonface.com/apply/Plot-Path-Memoir
Please feel free to write to me with any questions about these classes. I encourage you to check out other writing classes at the Folk School as well. They have some great offerings!
Carol
Website:
carolcrawfordediting.com
Email: carol@carolcrawfordediting.com