Writing poetry does not make you popular. It often involves a good deal of time spent alone, reading, thinking, looking for ideas, or trying to listen to them in your own head, revising, editing, even going through the sometimes tedious mechanics of submitting for publication. Given that somewhat lonely routine, there is little more gratifying than finding a group of like-minded people to “belong to.” For a poet, feeling connected to others with a similar interest is both inspirational and motivational. And for poets in NC, the largest and most vital networking group is the NC Poetry Society.

NCPS was created in 1932, making it the longest-active poetry organization I am aware of in the state.  Since that time, the Society has served as an invaluable networking and development tool for poets in NC, providing opportunities for poets to gather together, work, learn, publish, and be recognized. NCPS hosts monthly virtual open mics, and brings poets together for the annual Sam Ragan Awards Day in May at the Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities in Southern Pines, and two other times each year at locations like the NC Museum of Art or the NC Arboretum in Asheville.  Those meetings are usually the third Saturdays of January, March, May, and September.

This year’s May 16 Awards Day, will feature readings from winners in their 5 youth poetry contests and their 12 adult contests. Winners will also have their work published in the annual awards anthology, Pinesong, which will be available for purchase at the meeting. The meeting will run from 10:00 to 3:00, and although attendance is free, pre-registration at https://www.ncpoetrysociety.org/events/ is encouraged and required if lunch is desired. My poem, “Poems Can Be About Anything,” which I’ll include at the end of the column, was selected as this year’s winner of the Alice Osborn Award for poems for children.

In addition to the 17 individual poem contests recognized at Awards Day, the Society also coordinates 2 annual poetry book competitions: the Brockman-Campbell Book Award for the best book of poetry by a North Carolinian in the previous year; and the Lena Shull Award, which selects for publication the best full-length unpublished poetry manuscript by a poet living in North Carolina. Michael Hettich, whose book, Waking Up Alone was the winner of the 2025 Lena Shull Award, was recently featured at the Hickory Poetry Salon and in one of my previous columns.

The Society also facilitates the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poets Series, which brings together outstanding poetry instructors with promising young writers, culminating in a series of readings across the state, and Poetry In Plain Sight, which selects 4 poems per month to be displayed on large posters in shop windows in 23 NC cities (including Hickory). My poem, “Cicada,” will be one of the poems featured this July. Their newest initiative, a micro grant program entitled All of Us, will provide biannual awards of $500 toward a project that seeks to uplift BIPOC and/or disabled poets and increase their engagement and success in the artform.

In addition to meetings and contests, NCPS also sponsors workshops, readings, and fellowships across the state, and distributes a monthly newsletter that details upcoming NC poetry events.  The Society currently has nearly 600 members.  Those interested in more information can find it at the Society’s website at https://www.ncpoetrysociety.org/.

Poems Can Be About Anything

Your brother, your sister,

Your mother, your friend,

You can write a poem

About any of them.

Your dog, Your cat,

Your fish, a bat,

You can write a poem

About any of that.

All you have to do

Is gather some words

And put them in a way

They want to be heard.

Poems can be about anything.

Things you see, things you hear,

Things that are far,

Things that are near.

Things that are happy,

Things that are sad.

Things that are good,

Things that are bad.

Things that are real

Or things you imagine.

Poems are a place

Where anything can happen.

All you need are paper and pen

And the courage to use imagination.

You can write a haiku

Or scribble out a clerihew.

You can write about me and you

Or the funny things that people do.

One thing that’s true

That I can show you,

Is that poems can be about anything.