Thursday, October 17, 2024

Poetry Reading November 22 with Cecilia Woloch

Louise Morgan Runyon and Cecilia Woloch will give readings of their poetry highlighting labor and social justice issues on Friday, November 22, at 6 p.m. at City Lights Books, 3 E. Jackson St., Sylva, NC.  This reading celebrates the release of Woloch’s new chapbook, Labor: The Testimony of Ted Gall.  

Ted Gall was a coal miner and union organizer in Western Pennsylvania in the first half of the 20th century.  Woloch’s new book traces Gall’s experiences in the mines and the union, and the confluence of the labor movement with the ongoing, developing movement for black liberation.  Says poet Joy Priest, “This poem, composed almost entirely in words written by Gall himself, gives a first-hand account of what it was like in the mines, in the unions, and in the spirits of the working poor, ‘lifting their voices like trumpets’…an important contribution to Appalachian ‘docupoetics’ and cross-racial labor solidarity.”

 Cecilia Woloch is the granddaughter of a coal miner and grew up in rural Kentucky.  She is an award-winning poet with fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Fulbright Foundation, and is the author of seven books of poetry.  Former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Tretheway describes Woloch as "...a poet who is passionately alive in this world.”    She has traveled the world extensively as a teacher and writer.  Her book Tsigan: The Gypsy Poem has had multi-lingual, multi-media performances in Los Angeles, Paris, Warsaw, Athens and elsewhere. ceciliawoloch.squarespace.com.

 Louise Morgan Runyon is a poet with deep roots in Western North Carolina.  A former steelworker and labor activist, she is also a dancer, choreographer, and Artistic Director of Louise Runyon Performance Company.  She has published five books of poems and has “a gift for connecting generations… and bridging gaps divided by race, language, and culture,” per writer Kendall Klym.  Runyon facilitates Mountain Word Writers’ Group at City Lights, and all of her books are available there.  louiserunyonperformance.com.

 Woloch will offer a workshop for local writers called Our Lives Which Can Never Run Dry: Workshop for Writers in Short-Form Prose & Poetry.  The workshop will be held on Thursday, November 21 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., St. David's Episcopal Church, Cullowhee.   Contact sylvawriters@gmail.com for more information, or if interested in joining Mountain Word Writers’ Group.


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