The power and vitality of North Carolina's rich literary and musical traditions will be showcased at the N.C. Museum of History Aug. 13 at 10 a.m. N.C. Poet Laureate Shelby Stephenson and author Georgann Eubanks will be tour guides for an insightful look at the words, songs and lives of the people and places east of Raleigh. The Road Scholars program and the State Library of North Carolina bring these keepers of tradition to Raleigh to share those tales.
Stories of hardship and work, hierarchies from long stratified societies, and survival amidst frequent storms engender powerful images and strong individuals. Poet and singer Shelby Stephenson grew up on a farm near Benson, in the Coastal Plain.
"Most of my poems come out of that background," he says, "where memory and imagination play on one another. I have written many poems about the mules we worked until I was in the seventh grade and, after that - the tractor. My early teachers were the 35 fox hounds my father hunted. The trees and streams, fields, the world of my childhood - all that folklore - those are my subjects."
Georgann Eubanks in 2004 was invited by the N.C. Arts Council to figure out how to create a book that would lift up the enormous wealth of literary talent, past and present, in the state. At the same time, the state arts council wanted to encourage readers to tour the many sites that have inspired our writers - the places found in their stories, poems, plays, memoirs and novels.
Thousands of miles and 10 years later, there are three books in the "Literary Trails of North Carolina" series, published by the University of North Carolina Press. Eubanks researched and traveled the backroads of all 100 counties to discover many surprising connections among the state's literary lights. Hundreds of resulting excerpts will enliven any road trip or prompt a library visit to find a new read. Her presentation will focus on eastern North Carolina with one of the region's most musical writers providing readings and songs.
If interested in attending or for additional information, please call (888) 388-2460 or visit online http://statelibrary.ncdcr.gov/lbph/eventsprograms.html. The program will be in the Long Leaf Pine room of the N.C. Museum of History, Five E. Edenton Street, Raleigh.
This Road Scholars program is presented by the N.C. Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped and the N.C. Government and Heritage Library. The project is made possible by a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council, a statewide nonprofit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The State Library of North Carolina and the N.C. Museum of History are within the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources.