Hickory – 2022 was a busy and rewarding year for Hickory poet, Scott Owens. His 17th and 18th books of poetry, “Worlds Enough” and “Prepositional” were published, both by Redhawk Publications, and he received two awards for his work and was nominated for numerous others.
“Pansies,” a poem about the unassuming, often taken-for-granted but cold-weather-hearty flower named in the title and metaphorically about people and ideas of the same sort, was recently selected for a NC public poetry program called Poetry in Plain Sight.
Scott Owens
This 10-year-old program sponsored by North Carolina Poetry Society, North Carolina Writer’s Network, Winston-Salem Writers, and Press 53 prints selected poems on posters and places them in shop windows around Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Burnsville, Wilmington, Durham, Greenville, and Raleigh.
Another of Owens’ poems, “What Poems Are About,” was chosen as a winner in the NC Poetry Society’s Alice Osborn Award for Poems for Children. The poem was written as a companion piece for his book of poems for children, “Worlds Enough,” illustrated by Newton artist, Missy Cleveland.
Owens’ most recent book, “Prepositional: Selected and New Poems,” was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, his second such nomination. And four of the poems from that collection were nominated for Pushcart Prizes.
2023 promises to be another busy year for Owens as he has 2 new collections scheduled for release. “All In,” a collaboration with poet Pris Campbell and sequel to their earlier volume, “Shadows Trail Them Home” (Clemson University Press), will be released by Redhawk in early June. And “Round Here: Images From and Near Catawba County,” a collaboration with photographer Clayton Joe Young, is scheduled for publication in November.
Owens will teach a workshop called “Inspiration Surrounds Us” at the Catawba County Library in Newton on April 19. He will give readings at the Bethlehem Branch of the Alexander County Library on April 25, Poetry Hickory at Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse in Hickory on June 13, and at the Moss Memorial Library in Hayesville, NC, on June 16. He will also teach a workshop at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC, on June 15.
In addition to writing and teaching at Lenoir Rhyne University, Owens owns and operates Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse in downtown Hickory with his wife, Julie.
