Award-winning poet Sam Love is the Featured Poet at the Nexus Poets’ First Tuesday Poetry Open Mic at 7:00 p.m., Tuesday night, April 5th. He will be reading from his new anthology of eco-poetry Earth Resonance: Poems for a Viable Future. The event is now an in-person meeting with plenty of room for social distancing and will also be webcast on Zoom. The free event at New Bern Unitarian Fellowship, 308 Meadows Street in New Bern, is open to the public and there is plenty of free parking.
After the Featured Poet reads, the mic is open for original poems from other poets who sign up. The first Open Mic readers will be those in the audience. If you want to receive Nexus Poets’ emails including the evening’s Zoom link or be listed to read you can email NexusPoets. If there is enough time you can also sign up to read during the event.
Sam’s book title comes from resonance in nature which is a small vibration at the right frequency that creates a larger vibration. He believes the voices of poets can be the wisdom that resonates to save the planet.
The accessible poems in Earth Resonance do not simply bemoan the state of melting glaciers, stranded polar bears, or sizzling temperatures, but the imagery raises awareness about reducing our culture’s footprint on the natural world with humility and dash of humor.
You can hear and see him read on his web site www.SamLove.net by clicking on the Earth Resonance tab.
Denis Hayes, President of the Bullitt Foundation and the national coordinator of the first Earth Day in 1970 said this about Earth Resonance: “I generally find contemporary poetry overly pretentious, and intentionally opaque, but Sam’s poetry is lucid and provocative. Fifty years ago, as one of the first Earth Day regional organizers, Sam played a key role in Earth Day’s mobilizing millions of people. Now Sam writes beautifully of environmental shame and hope.”
Sam has three published books of poetry and his poems have been published in numerous publications including Duke University’s Eno magazine. His nonfiction articles have been published in magazines including Smithsonian, and Washingtonian.
He also authored with illustrator Sam Rae Duke an award-winning illustrated children’s book My Little Plastic Bag designed to share with children what happens to a plastic bag thrown out of a car window.
This is a free public event that meets at the New Bern Unitarian Fellowship and donations are requested to help pay for the space. The event is sponsored by the Nexus Poets, a group of Eastern North Carolina poets promoting poetry in the area.
By Sam Love