What does a poet want? For the most part, I think it’s quite simple. A poet wants to write.

We can belabor the point to say that a poet wants things to write about, wants time to write, wants to be appreciated, understood, wants to make a difference, wants to be known, wants to get paid, etc., but most poets I know will write no matter what their circumstances or level of success.

Many, but not all, poets also want to be read. Sure, they can share their work with friends and family, but most want to be read by a somewhat larger audience. And for that to happen, they have to publish.

Many people conceive the word publish in only the most traditional way as consisting of printed letters on the page in a consumable form. The word, however, actually means to make public, an action that can take any number of forms. Just as we now have public art in the form of sculptures and murals throughout the city, there are also opportunities to make poetry public.

The most common of these opportunities are readings such as Poetry Hickory, now in its 19th year of monthly events involving a featured writer and up to 15 open mic readers who share 1-3 poems each, which works out to close to 400 poems made public in Hickory every year. Readings are wonderful because they give an audience the opportunity to hear a poem in the writer’s actual voice and sometimes to get a little backstory as well. They are, however, also necessarily temporal, brief and requiring attendance in a particular place at a particular time, although with the magic of the internet, they are sometimes available on a more liberal schedule these days.

Another venue for public poetry, is printing. Yes, printed on a page in a newspaper or magazine or book is common enough, but there are also poems printed on posters and hung in shop windows, in the Poetry in Plain Sight program for example. Here in Hickory those poems are hung each in the windows of The Hickory Wine Shop, The Hickory Community Theater, Patrick Beaver Memorial Library, and Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse, a shop that also has several poems stenciled on its interior walls and has drinks named after poets Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allen Poe, Wallace Stevens, and Pablo Neruda.

Relatively new to the scene of public poetry in Hickory is the east wall (facing 2nd St. SW), aka the Poetry Wall, of Fanjoy Labrenz Visual Art Studio & Gallery at 215 1st Ave. SE. Earlier this year renowned Hickory artists Sally Fanjoy and James Labrenz decided they wanted to use the exterior wall of their studio in a way that would blend landscape and the unaltered beauty of the original brick wall in a manner that would somehow say something. At a Poetry Hickory reading, they decided they would achieve that by printing and displaying poems on sheer fabric that allowed the brick to show through while also reflecting the natural world of downtown Hickory. Fanjoy states, “The piece is influenced by Tibetan prayer flags traditionally used to share peace, compassion, strength and wisdom as they are blown by the wind to spread non-violence and balance.”

After receiving an Innovative Artists Grant from Arts Culture Catawba to partially fund the project, Fanjoy and Labrenz reached out to U.S. Poet Laureate, Ada Limon, NC Poet Laureate, Jaki Shelton Green, Hickory Poet Laureate, Scott Owens, and Hickory poet, Narya Rose Deckard to ask if they would each share a poem for the project. All 4 said, Yes. The first poem they used was Limon’s “Instructions on Not Giving Up.” Recently they installed my poem, the second poem in the series, “Used,” a poem which succinctly expresses my basic philosophy towards life. I’ve printed here, but I hope you’ll drive by Fanjoy Labrenz Studio sometime soon and see it full-sized, and when you do, I hope the wind is blowing.

Used

I want to be used up by life,

all resources expended,

all reserves exhausted,

thistle picked clean,

river run dry.

I want to work to the last

minute at making and giving,

and take nothing with me.

After my last breath,

if there is anything left

unused, I’ll feel I’ve failed,

and will only be saved by those

who need what I have

coming to take it away.