Tryon’s historical and cultural treasure, the Lanier Library, will celebrate 125 years as an institution next year. It was founded by a group of intellectually-minded ladies and named for poet Sidney Lanier. Membership libraries number only 16 in the United States, and like the Lanier Library, most receive no public funding and depend on membership dues, contributions and endowments to stay viable.
In keeping with its earliest traditions as a purveyor of culture and learning, the Lanier Library is planning a daylong Poetry Festival on Saturday, April 26 that furthers its annual Sidney Lanier Poetry Competition with workshops, readings and signings by poets who are known and established in their field.
This promises to be a stimulating and memorable opportunity to celebrate National Poetry Month with an acclaimed group of poets sharing their own words and inspiring others to explore poetry as well.
The main fundraising portion of the festival will be lunch with Mark Doty, an award-winning poet and best-selling author of a memoir, Dog Years. He has written eight books of poetry and five nonfiction books. In 2008 he was the winner of the National Book Award for Poetry. He is also the only American poet to have won the prestigious T.S. Eliot Prize.
A Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University, Doty lives in New York City. He has also taught at Princeton, Stanford and the Iowa Writers Workshop. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver has said of Doty: “One of the things that has been constant about [his] work, poetry and prose, is his intense search for the exact word or phrase, of whatever issue, which lead him (and us) in to the very furnace of meaning within the human story.”
Tickets are still available for the catered luncheon, which will be held from 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. in the Holy Cross Parish Hall. Doty will speak on poetry today as a cultural force in America and sign his books. Space is limited, and those who wish to attend should register online or call or visit the library.
See www.lanierlib.org to download a registration form for the luncheon and/or the writing workshops held throughout the day. For more information about the festival call the library at 828-859-9535 or stop by during open hours.
– article submitted
by Gina Malone