My poem, “Baptism by Fire,” about the 2014 Elk River, WV Chemical Spill/Water Crisis is in the Open Histories Poetry Sampler in the new issue of Still. The poem is included in my debut poetry collection, Give the Bard a Tetanus Shot, which you can pre-order directly from my publisher,
The Travelin’ Appalachians Revue will perform at Taylor Books in Charleston, WV next Monday, June 24th as part of Festivall. I’m beyond excited that my poem, “The Old Toot-N-Tellem,” will be in included in TAR’s 2019 zine, which will be available at the Taylor Books Festivall event and all TAR’s other summer tour dates:
The poem is about the loss of a beloved community landmark in the 2016 WV floods, so I’m very glad it will be in a local publication. The poem will also be in my forthcoming book, Give the Bard a Tetanus Shot, which will be released in September. More details on that later.
My ekphrastic poem, “For Want of an Ark,” is the first collaborative work published in the new “Call & Response” series by the Looking at Appalachia photography project, which has been featured in The New York Times and National Geographic.
My poem was inspired by my own experience in the “1,000-year flood” of Elk River in June, 2016 and by the image it is paired with for this project–Sam Owens’ photo of a flood survivor sorting flood-damaged photographs on her roof. The photo originally appeared in The Charleston Gazette shortly after the flood.
Photo by Sam Owens
Poem by V.C. McCabe
The Spring/Summer 2017 issue (#43.3-4) of Appalachian Journal featuring my poem “Cover Us With Mountains,” is now available for purchase from Appalachian State University. Issues of the journal are also archived and publicly available at the Kanawha County Public Library and the WV Library Commission at the WV Culture Center.
Appalachian Journal is Appalachian State University’s interdisciplinary, peer reviewed, academic, cultural, literary and “regional studies” journal. The journal has also featured work by Ron Rash and Roxane Gay.
My poem, “Cover Us With Mountains,” was inspired by events surrounding the 2014 Elk River, WV chemical spill and subsequent water crisis.
