Storyteller of the Week

 Terri Kirby Erickson

 

 

 

Terri Kirby Erickson was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to former ballet dancer and model, Loretta White Kirby, and technical illustrator and avid golfer, Tom Kirby, who both passed away in 2019. Her brother, Tommy, 1959 – 1980, was her only sibling. Her seventh collection of poetry, Night Talks: New & Selected Poems (Press 53, 2023), which was a finalist for an International Book Award and Best Book Award (for general poetry), is dedicated to her lost nuclear family.

Terri graduated from R. J. Reynolds High School, where she was a majorette and member of the National Honor Society among other clubs and organizations. Her maternal grandmother, Ila White, also graduated from Reynolds and rode a trolley to school and back every day.

She attended Appalachian State University and was in the Honors English program until health challenges forced her to drop out in her sophomore year. She finished her education at Winston-Salem State University with a Bachelor of Arts Magna Cum Laude degree in English literature and Mass Communications. She earned this degree as a divorced single mother while working a variety of jobs to help support her and her daughter, all while dealing with the effects of Crohn’s disease, which has thankfully been in remission for some years.

In her life, Terri has been a waitress in a Polynesian restaurant in Roanoke Virginia, a retail salesperson in Alexandria, Louisiana, a radio advertising copywriter in both Louisiana and North Carolina, legal and administrative assistant to attorneys and doctors, a technical medical editor and proofreader, an obituary writer, researcher, and news desk worker at the Winston-Salem Journal, and a published author and poet. She started writing poetry in hopes of publication in her mid-forties (after her daughter grew up and left home), realizing this was something she always wanted to do.

She has been married to Leonard Erickson for thirty-three years, and they raised her much-loved daughter together. They have traveled all over the United States and Europe, including Paris, Strasbourg, Stockholm and other cities in Sweden, Copenhagen, Monte Carlo, multiple cities in the UK, and Florence. They recently returned from a trip to New York City to see David Gilmour’s final concert on his Luck and Strange tour.

Terri is the author of seven full-length collections, six of which were published by Press 53. Each of her book covers features a different painting by her uncle, well-known NC artist, Stephen White. Her awards include the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, Nautilus Silver Book Award, Next Generation Indie Book Award Gold Medal Winner in Poetry, Nazim Hikmet Award, Atlanta Review Publication Award, Poetry for Their Freedom Award, Grand Prize Winner in the Carolina Woman Writing Contest, International Book Award for Poetry, Tennessee Williams Poetry Prize, Board of Regents Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize, and many others. 

Terri’s poems have appeared in scores of literary journals, magazines, newspapers, and anthologies. including A Boxful of Poetry: Three Contemporary Anthologies edited by James Crews, “American Life in Poetry,” Asheville Poetry Review, JAMA, Latin American Literary Review, NASA News & Notes, ONE ART, Poetry Foundation, Poet’s Market, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Rattle, The Christian Century, The SUN, The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and many others.

She has lived in a small township in North Carolina with her husband, Leonard, and his extensive collection of Loudmouth golf pants, for over seven years. They enjoy this semi-rural area for its birdsong, owls calling to one another in the night, skunks, foxes, the occasional deer sighting, and the wide-open sky. Despite dealing with multiple personal losses and serious health challenges over the years, she continues to embrace and “praise the world,” a quote from her friend and fellow poet, Donna Hilbert. Find out more about Terri and her poetry at www.terrikirbyerickson.com or https://www.press53.com/terri-kirby-erickson

Comments by Editor Sharon Waller Knutson

I have been starstruck by Terri Kirby Erickson for decades and finally got up the nerve to ask her if she would be a storyteller. She’s one of those poets whose poems I read once and practically memorize in my head. I am in awe of her observation skills and insight into humanity. It amazes me how she can observe someone she sees from afar and describes them to us as if she were their best friend. Examples are: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/146042/fund-drive  and  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57776/hospital-parking-lot.

 
She is the quintessential storyteller whether she is writing about food, family, friends, strangers or assorted other subjects. She makes her experiences, our experiences. She has written so many poems that I told her to send me five poems that show her signature style and reveal who she is as a person. I knew any of her poems would fill me with pleasure. And they did and I hope they will delight you also.
 

 

Night Fishing on Long Beach Pier

Without the loud whoops of children,
their feet pounding the floorboards as
they ran, or the incessant cries of hungry
gulls, what we heard was water sloshing
around the pilings, the hushed voice of
our mother saying, soon, soon, we’ll go
home soon, as we leaned against her soft
shoulders beneath the green glow of old
fluorescent lights and stars that looked
like tiny tears in the night’s dark fabric.
Our father was just a silhouette slouched
against the knife-marked, shrimp-husk-
littered railing, his fishing rod bowed
and gently bobbing as invisible waves
rolled into the shore. A few miles down
the beach, the incoming tide was busy
washing away the sandcastle my brother
and I built in front of the rented cottage
where our grandmother, worn out from
surf fishing since dawn, was sleeping. It
was hours past our bedtime, so our eye-
lids—my brother’s and mine—fluttered
like the wings of Luna moths against our
smooth, sunburned cheeks as the night
air ran its salty fingers through our hair.
Still, our father fished on and on. To reel
in his hooks meant some legendary fish
might clamp its jaws around someone
else’s bait. But perhaps it was the sight
of his young family huddled on that slim
wooden bench—his wife’s face glowing
like a moon-lit slipper shell, his children’s
nodding heads as we struggled to stay
awake—that kept him from packing up
his gear. Maybe he didn’t want it to end,
this feeling he couldn’t name, so fleeting
it was almost gone, already, and nothing
anyone can do or say will bring it back.
 

 

 

Papa’s Chair

I picture my great-grandfather’s strong,
woodworking, beekeeping, ground-tilling,
coffin-making, baptizing, Bible-holding
hands resting on the rounded ends of his
chair’s solid walnut arms, his slender body
light against an upholstered seat that never
sagged beneath his weight. No sharp edges
here, only graceful curves and smooth arches—
narrow at the back, wide at the front—like
a woman whose child will soon be born. Its
legs are sturdy, too, like Papa’s were from
miles of walking—its feet securely planted
behind the pulpit in the little country church
where Papa preached. I imagine him sitting
there, waiting, going over in his mind what
he wanted to say to the congregation, his
sharp eyes bluer than a summer sky, his hair
as black as words on printed pages he never
learned to read. Now, Papa’s chair—which
so often held in its arms, a man whose kind-
ness seeped into the wood like linseed oil—
is so close to me as I write these lines, it is
like his hand is on my shoulder and Papa is
preaching just for me, about everlasting love.

 

 

 

The Starry Night

On the day we walked to MoMA, we saw a woman
sleeping in a desk chair pushed against a wall. She

wore multiple layers of clothing though the weather
was warm, which was probably all she had. Then

a man began pacing back and forth while speaking
in a loud and sonorous voice, a slew of words strung

together at random. And after that, a guy ran down
the sidewalk shouting, Are you following me? but no

one was there. If only more of the world looked like
Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. I have never seen such

brilliant hues and dynamic stars that circle above the
people who must be somewhere beneath the swirly

half-moon and the tall church spire. I picture families
gathered by crackling fires and gaslit lamps in a place

where everyone is welcomed, where no one is sick or
afraid. Imagine doors opening, how it feels to walk in.

 

 

 

Egg Salad 

I make it like my mother did. Boil the eggs.
Let them sit awhile in a pot of cold water.
Then I peel them on a paper plate, wash stray

bits of shell from my fingers. I use a fork to
mash the whites and yolks, add mayonnaise
and yellow mustard—a splash of apple cider

vinegar, salt, and pepper. Then I spread the egg
salad on soft, white bread, cut my sandwiches
into quarters like my mother did when I was

small. I can almost see her hands, seldom still,
peeling and washing, preparing and slicing,
each motion swift and sure. It was my mother’s

hands, when they laid her body out for a final
viewing—as fixed as a pair of songbirds fallen
from the sky—that convinced me she is gone. 

 

 

 

Dance Night, Bloomington

On the corner of Sixth and Walnut, in a room above the Subway
Shop, is a dance studio with windows so wide and well-lit,
they look like movie screens. And if you stop to catch your breath
while walking, or pause to feed more change into a parking meter,
look up. Perhaps you’ll catch a class in progress,
witness for yourself the grace
and style of an old man, sway-backed and slow, salsa dancing
with his partner. Her hair is silver, gathered at the neck by a rhinestone
clip—and she is smiling. They are gliding across a floor
that none of us can see, beneath a ceiling high enough that stars,
dangling from the night sky, might sometimes touch
the roof above it with their sparkly feet. And as different dancers
salsa in and out of view, you can’t stop watching.  
You long, in fact, to find a partner among the strangers hurrying
by you, to join hands and feel whatever it is that makes these couples’
faces radiant, their bodies circle around a room built to let light
in and to shine light out—illuminating the town
and all its people like the sun and moon might do together,
if only they could dance.

All the poems are from Night Talks: New and Selected, except for “Dance Night Bloomington,’ which is from, A Lake of Light and Clouds, and “The Starry Night,” which is new and unpublished.