Scott Owens

Though Scott Owens wasn't born and raised in Catawba County, you would never know it by his poetry-so intimately connected with our county that you see and feel the images all around you as you read. He loves our country roads, small-town shops, crazy Hickory streets, open vistas, and iconic landmarks. His poetry, complemented beautifully by Clayton Joe Young's photography, takes the reader on a trip through our Foothills home-and what a pleasure that journey is - Austin Allran, Author of The Legend of the Isle of Cats, Catawba County Commissioner and Former State Senator 'Round Here is a testament to the beauty and significance of Catawba Valley. Through the harmonious blend of poetry and photography, Scott Owens and Joe Young invite readers to immerse themselves in the essence of this place - our home - to appreciate its history and the embedded connections forged between its people and the land. It is a celebration of the enduring spirit of a community and a tribute to the power of "place."- Louise Humphrey, Retired Director of the Hickory Public LibraryNot the dry history of when and where, these poems and images do something miraculous; they connect us to the past in a sensory way. William Faulkner once wrote about the past not being dead, in many ways not even past, and Scott's pen and Joe's eye demonstrate how such is possible. Their stellar work has made local history accessible in a new and vital way.- Richard Eller, Author and Catawba County HistorianAs a lifelong resident of Catawba County, this book of poems and pictures has magically transported me to the time of my youth. I read Scott's words and look at Joe's photos, and I'm a small child again. I reminisce on my loving Ridgeview Community. I remember my family working at the Howard Johnson's on Highway 64-70. My soul is further stirred remembering how I met my wife here, raised my family here, and embarked on a career in Law Enforcement here. Overpowering in its beauty, this collection of poetry and striking images captures the soul of who we are and where we come from.- Steve Hunt, Retired City of Hickory Law Enforcement officerScott Owens is the author of 20 collections of poetry and recipient of awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Pushcart Prize Anthology, the Next Generation/Indie Lit Awards, the NC Writers Network, the NC Poetry Society, and the Poetry Society of SC. His poems have been featured on The Writer's Almanac eight times, and his articles about writing poetry have been used in Poet's Market four times. He has twice been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and to be NC Poet Laureate. Owens holds degrees from Ohio University, UNC Charlotte, and UNC Greensboro. He is Professor of Poetry at Lenoir-Rhyne University, and former editor of Wild Goose Poetry Review and Southern Poetry Review. He owns and operates Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse and Gallery and coordinates Poetry Hickory in Hickory, NC. Clayton "Joe" Young is the author of 11 books and is an award-winning photographer with a background in photojournalism. Young's work has been exhibited throughout the United States in solo and juried exhibitions. In 2014, Young earned the Certified Professional Photographers (CPP) designation from Professional Photographers of AmericaIn May of 2015, Young earned a MFA in Photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design. He is the Director and Senior Professor for the Photographic Technology Program at Catawba Valley Community College in Hickory, NC. www.joeyoungphoto.com

Lizzy and her friends find that they can do anything if they try hard enough.

Praise for Prepositional: In Prepositional Scott Owens highlights the preposition as a metaphor for shared humanity, and with an engaging playfulness, he explores human relationships and the world at large, drawing upon a rich mosaic of life experiences. Owens parses our connections, "As you are a part, I am a part, /and though we can be just one, / we are always also many, / and we can never be completely apart." Brimming with artistry, Prepositional also displays our universality: "Where I come from/ is the same place you come from..." Throughout the book subtle humor abounds, bringing text and subtext into play: "Without prepositions it's hard to imagine/ where we would end up." Prepositional sweeps the reader on a rollicking journey in lyric landscapes of language, where "So much of who we are/resides there - between the lips/of any human mouth."-Ami Kaye, Publisher & Editor, Glass Lyre PressScott Owens writes poetry as if he were a painter, seeing more than other people see, looking beyond the obvious. Owens sees and invites the reader to visualize images, actions, beliefs, purposes, motives, and results of what he has gleaned from his life as a child, a husband, a father, a teacher, a human being who took notice. In "Where I Come From" he explores how we are more alike than different. "On Settelmeyer Bridge," shows us that "only the names change." This is a collection of some of Owens's most loved poems mixed with newer poems such as "Coffee During Covid." Toward the end of the book, he writes about aging, what he treasures and what he has learned. In "Nearing the End of my Sentence," he writes "I long for a semi-colon, a dash, a parenthesis, at least another comma." This is another Scott Owens book I will read again and again.-Glenda Council Beall - poet, authorIn Prepositional Scott Owens trues the lapping sand from "Where I Come From" all the way to the Dollar General where he offers the truth that words work the way they do for the enrichment of us all. We must keep on keeping on seems to be the root message, and enjoying it as we do. His philosophical lyrics prove that "Where there is language there is art."-Shelby Stephenson's recent book is Country. He was poet laureate of North Carolina from 2015-2018Poet Scott Owens has been working steadily, especially in the period since 2006 on poetry that distinguishes itself craft-wise with a seamless quality that links a powerfully disturbing history to a fulfilling, successful adulthood. In Prepositional, he eschews the expectations for the New and Selected format by offering decidedly more of the New, a circumstance that will delight his devoted readers. If you know Scott's work, you'll know that Norman is here, of course, to direct all these flashing memories and precise observations down the forever river, "refusing to be forgotten."-Tim Peeler, author and editor About the Author Scott Owens holds degrees from Ohio University, UNC Charlotte, and UNC Greensboro. He is a Professor of Poetry at Lenoir Rhyne University, former editor of Wild Goose Poetry Review and Southern Poetry Review. He owns and operates Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse and Gallery and coordinates Poetry Hickory. He is the author of 17 collections of poetry and recipient of awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Pushcart Prize Anthology, the Next Generation/Indie Lit Awards, the North Carolina Writers Network, the North Carolina Poetry Society, and the Poetry Society of South Carolina. He has been featured in The Writer's Almanac seven times, and his articles about poetry have been featured frequently in Poet's Market.

In a post-pandemic world, award-winning poet Scott Owens sees a glimmer of light. In this new collection of poetry written during the COVID-19 pandemic that shit down the work, Owens waxes eclectic on life.

Scott Owens describes his new volume of poetry: I grew up in two worlds: my father's parents' world of brick homes, city streets, shopping, and playgrounds; and my mother's parents' world of dirt roads, livestock, growing our own food, and endless woods. That second world was undeniably harder than the first. The work was dirtier, and there was more of it. The homes had fewer luxuries: no cable, no AC, never more than one bathroom. Even death was different. In town, death was a polished event that took place elsewhere: hospitals, nursing homes, slaughter houses, funeral parlors. On the farm, animals were killed every week and most people died at home, and their bodies stayed there until they were buried. Somehow, however, that second world still seemed much more alive, much more real and vital. Despite that vitality, I was aware that most people knew almost nothing about that second world. It was then, and is increasingly now, an undiscovered country where life and death exist side by side with a natural intensity missing from the artificial world of the city. This book, Owens tells us, dedicated to my grandfather (one who knew how to own land), is a record of my undiscovered country and the people who lived there. Critical Acclaim"Landscape and memory are seamlessly merged in this excellent volume. Like all the best writers of place, Scott Owens finds the heart's universal concerns in his vivid rendering of piedmont Carolina." -Ron Rash, Parris Distinguished Professor in Appalachian Cultural Studies at Western Carolina University"There's not a speck of sentimentality in the rural poetic Americana framed by Scott Owens in For One Who Knows How to Own Land. There are dead crows, red dirt earth, barking dogs, burning coal, fox traps, and flooding rivers. These stories matter. The poems all rattle and sing. This is a jolt of strong coffee for a watery time." -John Lane, author of The Woods Stretched for Miles: Contemporary Nature Writing from the South"In For One Who Knows How to Own Land, poet Scott Owens creates, with a mature voice, childhood reminiscences of pastoral summers in the red-dirt rural Piedmont of upstate South Carolina. This, his most affecting collection to date, is a remarkable sensory journey that registers narrative moments along the entire emotional scale from harsh to tender, from the threatening to the anodyne. Through the magical nature of memory, these poems of mystery and loss prove again and again that 'The boy who left this country/ never stopped hearing its names/ echo in his ear.'" -Tim Peeler, author of Checking Out"'Why should this be home' Scott Owens asks us in 'Homeplace, ' his question as much about leaving as going back. We walk his train tracks and ridges as if they were our own, as though home were 'something you held tight before you, / your back bending against its going away.' In this both visceral and meditative rendering of place, decay and rebirth are part of the same landscape. I applaud the skill that directs us down a path of experience and familiarity to 'stone steps/ that dead-end in mid-air.' His poetry is wise in knowing the weight of its own footsteps." -Linda Annas Ferguson, author of Dirt Sandwich