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Join us for a poetry reading and musical performance from Donovan McAbee and Thomm Jutz at City Lights on Wednesday, March 11th at 6:00pm. Donovan will read from his new collection, HOLY THE BODY. Holy the Body wrestles with ghosts and shadows, discovers Mother Teresa in a cinnamon bun in Nashville, Tennessee and Jesus’s tears in a trick of light. At once dark and humorous, these poems confront the religiosity of the US and explore the experience of faithful doubt, as God himself “goes under the knife.” The poems in this manuscript take the reader through the brutalities of the author losing his mother to melanoma and of resuscitating his own father, with “the cracking of sternum beneath my hands.” The collection chisels out a hard-earned language for the sacred, one which proclaims that the beauty we find in the midst of uncertainties is itself a solace that, as one of the final poems in the manuscript affirms, “is more than enough.”
Donovan McAbee is a poet, songwriter, and essayist. His work has appeared in The New York Times, TIME magazine, The Hudson Review, The Sun Magazine (US), Garden & Gun, Poetry London, and a variety of other places. Donovan grew up in a small town in South Carolina, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. He holds a Master of Divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary and a PhD in Creative Writing and Contemporary Poetry from the University of St Andrews in Scotland. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife and their two children. His poetry collection Holy the Body is set to be released by Texas Review Press in 2026.
Thomm Jutz is a Grammy-nominated songwriter, guitar player and producer living and working in Nashville, TN. His songs have been recorded by John Prine, Del McCoury, Billy Strings, The SteelDrivers, and many others. He is an instructor of songwriting at Belmont University.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
3 East Jackson Street, Sylva, NC, United States, North Carolina 28779
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