Poetry Reading September 2, Sylva, NC

Runyon will be giving a poetry reading at the 4M Festival (Mountain Makers Mushroom & Music) over Labor Day weekend in Sylva, NC:

Louise Morgan Runyon Poetry Reading

Mountain Makers Mushroom & Music Festival

Saturday, September 2, 11:30 a.m.

Paper Mill Lounge Courtyard

(outdoors, set back from street, seating available)

553 West Main St., Sylva, NC 28779

~ Parking at Sylva 1st United Methodist Church ~

The festival features many bands, craft demonstrations, speakers and food.  Runyon will read poems related to fall in the mountains, and to the traditional art of handweaving (scroll down for sample poem).  Poetry books will be available (cash or check only).  Speaking before Runyon is Peter Koch of Mountain Heritage Center; after Louise is local historian Tim Hall.  Come and spend the day!  For more info: jacksonartsmarket.com/4m.

Please check out Louise's latest book:

Ordering Information

Where Is Our Prague Spring?:  $20 + $4 shipping

To order, go to http://louiserunyonperformance.com/ and click on "Order Books" on the menu at the left.  You must click directly on the words "order books."

Says poet Catherine Carter of Western Carolina University, “…Runyon interrogates the place and her family’s long history there to illuminate a complicated tradition of Appalachian progressivism dating both back to and forward from the Trail of Tears.  These thoughtful poems evoke an Appalachia that few outsiders know: simultaneously progressive and conservative, woven into the wider world in unexpected ways, and rooted deeply in the labor and vision of women.”  

Kami Ahrens of Foxfire Museum notes, “Runyon's manner of writing engages the reader in conversations about contemporary themes that reflect stories of the past while providing lessons for the future.  A must-read for any lover of Appalachian literature.”

Sample Poem

men weaving

traditionally it was the women who wove

in the mountain hollers

and the men who built the looms

out of rough-hewn wood

 

then the railroads that had been built for the mines

to haul off the feldspar, kaolin and mica

also brought in dry goods for clothing

so the looms were put away

 

and stayed away, until Lucy Morgan

went to Berea College in 1924 to learn to weave

and came back to Penland to teach the women there –

 

where only Aunt Susan Phillips, age 95

still even knew how to weave, but didn’t –

but had a big old rough-timbered loom

way up high in the loft of her cabin

 ****

when Penland School was born in 1929

my great-aunt Lucy invited Edward F. Worst –

an expert on handweaving from Chicago –

to the new Penland School to teach

and he came, and came back

summer after summer

on his own dime

 

and then it was Mr. Rupert Peters

who came from the Kansas City Public Schools

to take the helm of the Lily Loom House in the 1930s

 

he was still there when I was a child in the 50s

though elderly, and no longer taught

but came to The Pines for all his meals

always chucking me under the chin, saying

“you’ve got a little soft spot there, haven’t you?”

 

Mr. Peters – tall, bespectacled, white-haired –

his picture high on the wall above the mantle in the weaving room

where we wove late at night, while keeping an eye out for bats

     swooping down from the rafters

 

and later it was Colonel John Fishback, round and bald –

a cranky old army colonel who had been wounded in the war

and didn’t want to do anything until someone said

bring him to Penland, he can learn to weave

and he did

 

and it was he who taught my cousin and me

when I was twelve and she was thirteen

 

all those men weaving, but fifty years later

it was under the tutelage of women once again

that my own tall son learned to weave

bright star of the weaving studio that season

with his youth, his bright red hair