Böcker av 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

All In: A Novel of Love in Poetry is a brilliant and seamless look at the way two lives become one. Written like a novel in two voices the book eventually blends until the voices are one voice telling a story about time, survival and love. In a very real way we see how these people reconnect and overcome trauma that had kept them apart. This is a real look at the small but oh so important moments that make a relationship last and a love grow deeper over time. As a sailor who deployed in 2020 to Manhattan to work in a make-shift hospital, I found the Covid experience shared here rang true and the details important and very real. Also as a man married for 27 years, I believe I know real love when I see it. I rooted for Sarah and Norman from the start and I felt each small beautiful thing that happened to both of them!!--Matthew Borczon, retired Navy Hospital Corpsman, author of 19 books of poetry, including Post Deployment.All In, written by Pris Campbell and Scott Owens, is a sequel to their book Shadows Trail Them Home, featuring Sara and Norman who reunite so many years later. Like other readers enraptured by the original story, I have waited for another collaboration. These well-crafted poems exemplify all the honed skills you'd expect from these talented poets, with a call-and-response feel between the two main characters' poems and a compelling narrative that had me turning pages to see what happened next. Even the Afterwords is brilliant and offers a glimpse of their writing process, their alter egos, and their long-lasting friendship. This was the book I didn't know I needed to read. Norman says in one of the poems, "he has fallen in love with happy endings," to which I must respond, "Me, too, Norman. Me, too."--Malaika King Albrecht, Heart of Pamlico Poet LaureateI've long been a fan of Pris Campbell's work and am delighted to have discovered her collaborating with the wonderfully talented Scott Owens in this book. These two make quite a pair. Their poetic acumen is matched in this book by their depth of empathy for their characters, Norman and Sara, a neat trick indeed. The poems combine into a seamless narrative as remarkable as the story they tell. This is a book of great power with its deep dive into the territories of love, lust, sickness, loss and redemption. The reader becomes a voyeur to the stripped bare needs - both the beautiful and the mundane -- of these all-too-human characters. Prepare yourself for an intimate journey that will leave you sometimes breathless, sometimes broken, always engaged, always wanting more.--Jeff Weddle, author of Driving the Lost Highway.

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.

Shadows Trail Them Home is an excellent and compelling novel in poetry, an important contribution to the cultural canon of American life, presented in an engaging but disturbing context. It needs to be read by a wide audience, not only those who have faced abuses as children, as the two main characters have and, consequently, suffer severe (but not disabling) life-long responses, but also by a reading public that treasures poetry that fuses superior writing with major social issues. This penetrating book is compassionated narrated, as it articulates the extent to which the past can never really be overcome, even though one may be bent on altering it.--Ronald Moran, author of The Jane Poems and Waiting