Nexus Poets of New Bern will wrap up its First Tuesday poetry open mics for the season with featured poet Kathy Ackerman, author of Repeat After Me, her sixth poetry collection. Following her reading, the mike will be open to other readers of their original poetry. All are welcome to read or to listen. For more information, including the evening’s Zoom link, or to sign up to read, email nexus [at] nexuspoets.com.

Ackerman, a North Carolina poet, is also the author of Coal River Road; Knockwood, winner of the Main Street Rag chapbook contest in 2015; and A Quarrel of Atoms, awarded the Lena Shull Prize from the North Carolina Poetry Society in 2019. Her work has been published in The Poeming Pigeon, Pinesong, and elsewhere.

“It is with…honesty, clarity, and apparent ease that Ackerman insightfully and often delightfully wades through topics as diverse as forest fires, snakes, mammograms, organ donors, honeysuckle, regret, grief, and of course, love. These are poems to be read repeatedly, and you will recognize yourself in them a little more each time,” says Scott Owens, author of Sky Full of Stars and Dreaming.
Ackerman says of the poems in Repeat After Me, “While the subject matter is still quite serious sometimes, I was taking myself less seriously to provide a chuckle here and there. I think this book will appeal to those who enjoy being reminded that even the most ordinary events can provoke insights that enrich our daily lives.”

Ackerman has been the Dean of Arts and Sciences and Writer-in-Residence at Isothermal Community College for more than fifteen years, and she taught English for two decades before becoming an administrator. She lives on a loblolly farm-in-progress at the true edge of Polk County, North Carolina.

Redhawk Publications is an artistic initiative of the Catawba Valley Community College. Established in 2017, CVCC is the only state community college with a publishing press and has over 65 unique titles. To purchase Repeat After Me, visit https://tinyurl.com/KAckerman

The event is sponsored by Nexus Poets, a collective which has promoted poets and poetry in Eastern North Carolina since 2014.