Beth Cagle Burt

Co-editor of Kakalak: Anthology of Carolina Poets, Beth Cagle Burt, is a North Carolina native who grew up in the small, central piedmont community of Alexis. Currently residing in Charlotte, NC, this poet and photographer also serves as co-editor of the short prose journal moonShine review. She works as a writing consultant and editor, and she has taught creative writing and English courses at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College in Concord and Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington. She has also excelled as a newspaper reporter with the Lincoln Times-News in Lincolnton. She holds a Master of Arts degree in the English Writing Track and a Bachelor of Arts in English and Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Beth's chapbook, The Fearless Tattoo, won Shadow Poetry’s Summer 2003 Chapbook Competition. Also, her poem "Shadow Stalks" was chosen as a Plainsongs award poem by Michael Catherwood for their May 2005 issue. Her poem "Father’s Waning," won first place in a Main Street Rag annual poetry contest. She received an honorable mention for her poem "Bottled Moons and Speckled Eggs" from a National Poetry Contest by the Asheville, NC, Writers’ Workshop.

This artist has had numerous poems and photographs accepted for publication in literary journals in the US, the UK, and Australia. Her poems have appeared in Slipstream, Tulane Review, Blue Collar Review, New York Quarterly, The Main Street Rag, Iodine Poetry Journal, and many other journals. She has also given a number of poetry readings.

Beth was featured photographer in moonShine review's fall 2006 issue prior to being named co-editor. In fall 2003, she was also honored as featured artist for her photography in the GSU Review. Her black and white and color slide photographs have also appeared in Palo Alto Review, Maelstrom, Main Street Rag, Monas Hieroglyphica, Thrift Poetic Arts Journal, and other publications. She has been featured in photography exhibitions at a Hart Witzen Gallery studio, Barnes & Noble-Arboretum, and Smelly Cat Coffeehouse in Charlotte, NC.

The artist says, "Poetry and photography are my passions. Not only do I love to create artful poems and photographs, but also I enjoys experiencing an array of eclectic literary and photographic artistry, which makes editorships a definitive pleasure." Her favorite Carolina poets include Randall Jarrell, Fred Chappell, Gerald Barrax, Kathryn Stripling Byer, A Van Jordan, D. Christopher Davis, David Bottoms, Susan Ludvigson, Cathy Smith Bowers, Richard Garcia, Steve Lautermilch, Susan Myers, and Reynolds Price. Her all-time favorite poets include, but are not limited to, Emily Dickinson, Larry Levis, Jane Meade, Shaorn Olds, Sylvia Plath, Pablo Neruda, Timothy Liu, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, William Carlos Williams, Anne Sexton, T. S. Eliot, and Yannis Ritsos.

Books recommended by Beth include:

POETRY: CONTEMPORARY WAXING & WANING
• Keep and Give Away: Poems by Susan Meyers
• The Dollmaker's Ghost by Larry Levis
• Wildwood Flower by Kathryn Stripling Byer
• M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A by A. Van Jordan
• Sweet Confluence by Susan Ludvigson
• Mirror Light by Steve Lautermilch
• The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath
• The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton
• The Tyrant of the Past and the Slave of the Future by D. Christopher Davis
• The Love That Ended Yesterday in Texas by Cathy Smith Bowers
• Something to Read on the Plane by Richard Allen Taylor
• Hard Evidence by Timothy Liu
• Ariel and Daddy and Other Poems:Ariel Revised Edition by Sylvia Plath
• Family Gathering by Fred Chappell.
• The Elegance of the Ungraspable: Selected Poems From Four Decades by Don Magers.

PHOTOGRAPHY: A HEART FULL
• Mapplethorpe by Robert Mapplethorpe
• Ansel Adams: Images of the American West by Richard Wrigley, ed.
• Georgia O'Keeffe: One Hundred Flowers by Nicholas Callaway, ed.
• Ansel Adams: The Spirit of Wild Places by Eric Peter Nash, ed.
• Photographs of a Lifetime: An Aperture Monograph by Dorothea Lange
• Quotations in Nudes by Wilhelm W. Reinke
• Ancient America by David Muench
• Imogen! Imogen Cunningham Photographs 1910-1973

PROSE: PASSION SIDEWAYS
• moonShine review by Anne Hicks and Beth Cagle Burt, eds.
• The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• Rescuing Patty Hearst by Virginia Holman
• James Joyce The Dead:Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism by David R. Schwarz, ed.
• Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
• You Should Get That Looked At by S. Craig Renfroe, Jr.
• Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen

POETRY ANTHOLOGIES FOR THE SOUL

• Kakalak 2008 Anthology of Carolina Poets by Beth Cagle Burt, Richard Allen Taylor, & Lisa Zerkle, eds.
• Kakalak 2007 Anthology of Carolina Poets by Richard Allen Taylor, Beth Cagle Burt, & Lisa Zerkle, eds.
• Kakalak 2006 Anthology of Carolina Poets by Lisa Zerkle, Richard Allen Taylor, & Beth Cagle Burt, eds.
• The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry by J.D. McClatchy, ed.
• Primary Trouble: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry by Leonard Schwartz, Joseph Donahue, & Edward Foster, eds.
• Contemporary American Poetry by A Poulin, Jr. & Michael Waters
• The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997 by Harold Bloom and David Lehman,eds.
• On the Verge: Emerging Poets and Artists by Thomas Sayer Ellis and Joseph Lease, eds.
• ONLY CONNECT: The Charlotte Writers' Club Anthology, Vol. 3, by Lisa Williams Kline, ed.

INSTRUCTIONAL GUIDES FOR EVERY POET
• How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love With Poetry by Edward Hirsch
• Spinning Words into Gold: A Hands-on Guide to the Craft of Writing by Maureen Ryan Griffin
• A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver
• Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Reading and Writing Metrical Verse by Mary Oliver
• The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide by Robert Pinsky
• Proof and Theories: Essays on Poetry by Louise Gluck
• Free Verse: An Essay on Prosody by Charles O. Hartman
• Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms by Philip Dacey & David Jauss, eds.
• Sounds and Form in Modern Poetry by Harvey Gross & Robert McDowell
• The Flexible Lyric by Ellen Bryant Voigt
• The Teachers & Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms by Ron Padgett, ed.

INSTRUCTIONAL GUIDES FOR EVERY WRITER
• Spinning Words into Gold: A Hands-on Guide to the Craft of Writing by Maureen Ryan Griffin
• Turning Life into Fiction by Robin Hemley
• Double Room: A Journal of Prose Poetry and Flash Fiction by Peter Conners and Mark Tursi, eds.(currently offline)
• A Community of Writers: A Workshop Course in Writing by Peter Elbow and Pat Belanoff
• A Glossary of Literature Terms by M.H. Abrams
• Strunk and White: The Elements of style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White
• Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature

To read poetry from this artist, click on Beth's Poetry under Editors in the side bar.