UNCW poet joins mentoring program

A banjo picker and square-dance caller will be mentoring poets in eastern North Carolina this fall.

Anna Lena Phillips Bell, a lecturer in the creative writing department at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, has been named a 2019-2021 Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet by the N.C. Poetry Society.

Created by the poetry society in 2003, the Gilbert-Chappell program names three poets across the state to promote poetry in general, and to develop new venues for public readings. Specificially, the Gilbert-Chappell poets will mentor at least one student poet, at the middle school or high school level, and one adult poet.

The program is the brainchild of former N.C. poet laureate Fred Chappell.

Bell will serve as the Gilbert-Chappell poet for the eastern part of the state -- 35 counties including New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender.

Her colleagues will be Dasan Ahanu, resident artist for Durham's Hayti Heritage Center, for central North Carolina, and Ricardo Nazario y Colón, co-founder of the Affralachian Poets, for western North Carolina.

Bell will have to balance an already busy schedule. As well as teaching at UNCW, she is editor of the creative writing department's literary magazine, Ecotone, and editor of its publishing imprint, Lookout Books.

In a prepared statement, creative writing chairman David Gessner praised Bell's "sharp, dogged intelligence.”

“In both her writing and teaching she is not afraid to have fun," he wrote, "but she never forgets that making art is also a serious business, especially in times like these.”

Before coming to UNCW, Bell was a senior editor at American Scientist, the publication of Sigma Xi, the research society; she remains a contributing editor.

Her book "Ornament," published in 2017, won the Vassar Miller Prize for poetry. Her work has appeared in Southern Review, Colorado Review, 32 Poems, Reality System, Canary, The Southern Poetry Anthology and other publications. She is also the author of "A Pocket Book of Forms," a travel-sized guide to poetic forms, originally published in 2013 by The Penland School.

She was a 2016 N.C. Arts Council Fellow in literature.

In addition, Bell plays banjo and is an authority of Appalachian square dance calling.

As a Gilbert-Chappell poety, she may be giving readings at the Weymouth Center in Southern Pines.

Students who would like to be mentored by a Gilbert-Chappell poet have until Nov. 15 to apply. For more details, vist the N.C. Poetry Society website at ncpoetrysociety.org,

Ben Steelman can be reached at 910-343-2208.