Poems by Joseph Bathanti – “Ars Poetica” and “First Light”

Joseph Bathanti is the former North Carolina Poet Laureate (2012-14) and recipient of the North Carolina Award in Literature, the state’s highest civilian honor. The author of over twenty books, Bathanti is McFarlane Family Distinguished Professor of Interdisciplinary Education at Appalachian State University. He will be inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in October of 2024. In 1992, he became close friends with BMC writer Fielding Dawson and, for the remaining years of Dawson’s life, Bathanti and Dawson offered creative writing workshops every spring to prisoners confined by the NC Department of Correction.