A Hero’s Tale Inspired By An Artistic Collaboration

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What happens when a painter and a poet start working together on the same idea? North Carolina poet Jeffery Beam found out when he started collaborating with Welsh painter Clive Hicks-Jenkins. Both men had collaborated with other artists before — but never as they were creating the work side-by-side.

The fruit of their labor is in the new book "Spectral Pegasus/Dark Movements" (Kin Press/2019). It puts Hicks-Jenkins' paintings next to Beam's poems and tells the story of the hero's journey through death, resurrection, and redemption.

Host Frank Stasio talks to Beam about the collaborative process and story behind this work. Beam is a poet, performer, and editor. He will be at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill on Monday, March 18. On Thursday, Aug. 8 he will be at the Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center in Asheville, and on Wednesday, Aug. 14, he will be at the GreenHill Center for North Carolina Art in Greensboro.

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Amanda Magnus is the executive producer of Embodied, a weekly radio show and podcast about sex, relationships and health. She has also worked on other WUNC shows including Tested and CREEP.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
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