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Poetry For The People Is Everyday And Divine

Art depicting animals and fruit.
Kevin Sloan
Alex Grant conjures scenes that match the everyday with the extraordinary.

Fasting from words has changed Alex Grant’s poetry. Touring and selling his craft sickened the award-winning poet, and he left the business seven years ago with no intention of returning. But, last year, Grant was drawn back after writing a poem to a dying friend.

He was reminded of poetry’s ability to condense transcendent meaning into just a few lines. This time, the Scottish-born, Chapel Hill-based poet avoids marketing his work. His current writing is intensely cathartic and personal. Two of his poems were recently published in the international multi-genre “Fish Anthology” (Fish Publishing/2019). In them, Grant conjures images that are simultaneously mundane and bizarre, juxtaposing a thick-sliced bologna sandwich with his tai chi teacher vomiting into a potted plant. Host Frank Stasio talks with Alex Grant about how to make poetry both powerful and everyday.
 

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Grant Holub-Moorman coordinates events and North Carolina outreach for WUNC, including a monthly trivia night. He is a founding member of Embodied and a former producer for The State of Things.
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.