Poetry Reading with Paul Jones and David Rigsbee

Paul Jones’ first collection of poems from Redhawk Publications, Something Wonderful, appeared in 2021. His work has also been published in several anthologies including Best American Erotic Poems (1800-Present).A manuscript of his poems crashed into the moon’s surface in 2019. Another moon shot in February 2024 landed successfully. In 2021, Jones was inducted into the NC State Computer Science Hall of Fame. He is Professor Emeritus of Library and Information Science at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. In 2024, Jones’ poem “Geode” was plagiarized multiple times by the notorious serial offender John Kucera. You may also find Paul Jones on most social media sites as @smalljones.

David Rigsbee is the author of 23 books and chapbooks, including twelve previous full-length collections of poems. In addition, he has also published critical works on Carolyn Kizer and Joseph Brodsky, whom he also translated. He has co-edited two anthologies, including Invited Guest: An Anthology of Twentieth Century Southern Poetry, a “notable book” selection of the American Library Association and the American Association of University Professors. His work has appeared in AGNI, The American Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, The New Yorker, The Iowa Review, The Ohio Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, The Sewanee Review, The Southern Review, and many others. He has been recipient of two creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as a NEH summer fellowship to the American Academy in Rome. His other awards include The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown fellowship, The Virginia Commission on the Arts literary fellowship, The Djerassi Foundation and Jentel Foundation residencies, and an Award from the Academy of American Poets. Winner of a Pushcart Prize, the Vachel Lindsay Poetry Award and the Pound Prize, he was also 2010 winner of the Sam Ragan Award for contribution to the arts in North Carolina. His most recent books are MAGA Sonnets of Donald Trump (2021) and a translation of Dante’s Paradiso (2023).