Flyleaf Second Sunday Poetry

Please join us on Sunday May 18 at 2:30 pm as we host poets Adrian Rice and Han VanderHart. This month's reading is on the THIRD Sunday, due to Mother's Day and UNC Graduation the previous week.

Adrian Rice is a Belfast poet who came to Hickory in 1999 on the US/Ireland Exchange Residency. His collection The Chances of Harm has recently been published by Press 53. Of his previous collections, Muck Island is housed in The Tate Gallery, and The Mason’s Tongue was nominated for both the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Literary Prize and the Irish Times Prize for Poetry. His poems have been frequently anthologized, and two have been featured as the Guardian’s ‘Poem of the Week.’ Adrian also performs traditional Irish music with The Belfast Boys. He is a Senior Lecturer at Appalachian State University in Boone. Learn more at https://www.press53.com/adrian-rice

Han VanderHart is a writer living in Durham under the pines. Their second poetry collection Larks, winner of the 2024 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, has just been published by Ohio University Press. Han is also the author of What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021) and their essays and poetry have been published in Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, AGNI, and elsewhere. Han hosts the Of Poetry Podcast and with Amorak Huey co-edits the poetry press River River Books. Jennifer Atkinson calls Larks “…a book of frightening beauty” and Diane Seuss says “Larks…demonstrate[s] that survival is a profound act of the imagination.” https://hanvanderhart.com/

Each poet will read for about 20 minutes, followed by a short break to sign books, and then the Open Mic. (Please limit your reading to one poem, one page.)

Come early to socialize and sign up for the Open Mic. Hope to see you there!