Welcome to my column! I’m so glad you could make it. Make yourself at home, and please come back anytime you want to.
My name is Scott Owens. I am the author of 24 collections of poetry and a teacher with more than 40 years’ experience at the college, high school, and middle school levels, as well as frequent workshops in the community. For the past 12 years, I have been, and continue to be, a professor of poetry at Lenoir Rhyne University, and as of December 16, I will be Hickory’s first Poet Laureate, which is nice because along with a few other things I love, I consider poetry to be just about the coolest thing there is.
I am also founder and coordinator of Poetry Hickory, a monthly reading series in its 19th year, and co-owner of Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse in downtown Hickory. And for the foreseeable future I will be writing a column about all things poetic twice a month for “Focus.” I hope you will read it, enjoy it, and share your thoughts, questions, and ideas with me.
If the column doesn’t satisfy your appetite for poetry (and I hope it doesn’t), you can also join me for Poetry Hickory at 6:15 on the second Tuesday of each month at Taste Full Beans and/or, starting January 20 for The Poetry Salon at 6:00 on the third Tuesday of each month at Patrick Beaver Library. And you can keep up with me on my website at scottowenspoetry.com.
In the interest of a fuller introduction, I will add that while I have lived in the Hickory area for the past 31 years, I was born near Greenwood, SC, a long, long time ago. I grew up in mill villages and on my grandfather’s farm, and later, on military bases in NC and then West Germany. I had what might be called a challenging childhood involving 14 (that’s not a typo) marriages between my biological parents, extreme poverty, and child abuse.
I was the first in my family to graduate high school, and the first to go to college. I earned degrees from Ohio University, UNC Charlotte, and UNC Greensboro. I am also a husband, a father, a grandfather, a gardener, a hiker, and a birdwatcher.
My most recent book is called “Elemental,” and features poems about nature. My next one (due out in April) will be called “The Song Is Why We Sing,” and will be poems about writing. Both are published by Redhawk Publications. I have written and published more than 2000 poems and 500 essays, so to anyone who has read my work, my life is pretty much an open book, but if I’ve left anything out that you would like to know, you need only ask.
Future columns will focus on poetic events, notable poets, individual poems, poetic craft and philosophy, the place of poetry in our world today, and just about anything else about poetry that I think might be interesting or relevant to readers in the area, but for now, I’ll just post the poem I wrote when I was told that I had been selected to be Hickory’s first poet laureate. It kind of lays out what a laureate is and what I think it should be.
I will read this poem along with a few others at my installation and reception on December 18 at 6:30 at Patrick Beaver Library. The reception is open to everyone, and I would love it if you can join me there. In the meantime, I look forward to hearing from you and sharing more about the life and times of poetry in the Hickory area.
Laureate
To be honored,
recognized, celebrated, valued,
but also, and more so, to honor,
recognize, celebrate, value
place, community, poetry, life
by paying attention,
taking notice,
speaking what needs to be spoken,
eyes always open to see
and let others see through you
to something more
necessary, visionary, irreplaceable,
something that binds us to this world
with a fire that cannot be extinguished.
