Poet Jeffery Beam
About Jeffery
Jeffery Beam's lyrical, metaphysical work fuses the
physical and spiritual worlds, creating a
conversation between the natural world, the body,
and the spirit. He is the author of a spoken word
audio collection What We Have Lost: New &
Selected Poems 1977–2001 (Green Finch Press,
2002), The
Beautiful Tendons: Uncollected Queer Poems
1969–1997 (White Crane Wisdom Series, 2007), A Hornet's Nest— Quotes
from Jonathan Williams (Editor) (The Jargon
Society and Green Finch Press, 2008), An
Invocation (Country
Valley Press, 2008), On Hounded
Ground—an autobiographical essay with poems
(Bookgirl Press, 2008), an online book Gospel Earth (2006) and accompanying print
booklets with poem selections Gospel
Earth One (2006) and Gospel Earth
Two (2007) (Longhouse), an online "anthology"
Poems Small and Not So Small
(The Jargon Society, 2006), Old Sunflower, You Bowed to No One—a
critical essay on the work of Lorine Niedecker
(special supplement to Oyster Boy Review, 2003),
Honey & Cooked Grapes (Backwoods Broadsides,
2003), Jeffery Beam's Allnatural Heatsensitive
Ganeshaapproved Zuppapoetica
AlphabeatSpiritbodySoup (Alpha Beat Press, 2003),
Lullaby of the Farm (UNC-CH Friends of the Library,
2002), Life of the Bee (Rock Valley
Music with composer Lee Hoiby,
2001), An Elizabethan Bestiary:
Retold (Horse & Buggy Press,
1999), Light & Shadow
(Aperture with photographer Claire
Yaffa, 1998), little (Green Finch Press, 1997),
Submergences (Off the Cuff Books,
1997), Visions of Dame Kind
(The Jargon Society, 1995), The
Fountain (North Carolina Wesleyan College Press,
1992), Midwinter Fires (French Broad, 1990), The
Golden Legend (Floating Island Publications, 1981),
and Two Preludes for the Beautiful (Universal,
1981). He also appears on New Growth:
Shauna Holiman and Friends—New Songs and
Spoken Poems (Albany Records, includes a studio
recitation and performance of The Life of the Bee
song cycle as performed at Carnegie's Weill Recital
Hall, 2002). His poems have recently been
translated into Italian by Ann McGarrell.
Beam's work was surveyed in Greenwood Press's
Contemporary Gay American Poets and
Playwrights: An A–Z Guide, Encyclopedia
of Contemporary LGBTQ Literature of the United
States, and Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgendered
Queer America Today Encyclopedia. In 2005 his poems
were included in the Polish anthology, Parada równosci: antologia
wspólczesnej amerykanskiej poezji gejowskiej
i lesbijskiej (Rainbow Parade: Anthology of
Contemporary American Gay and Lesbian Poetry). An
essay, What Queer Spirit Sees, was included in the
2007 Lambda Award and Stonewall Award nominated
Charmed Lives: Gay Spirit in
Storytelling. He was photographed for inclusion
in Robert Giard's Particular Voices
documentary collection of gay & lesbian Writers
in the United States.
Beam is currently at work on a number of projects
including an opera libretto based on the Demeter /
Persephone myth; an expanded Life of the Bee
sequence; They Say: A Commonplace Book on Poetry
and the Spirit; and a series of illustrated
children's book projects, including a series of
illustrated lullaby books with audio CDs and song
sheets. The Broken Flower: Poems is looking for a
publisher. MountSeaEden is due in 2010 from Chester Creek Press. An
expanded Gospel Earth has been
accepted for publication by the English small
press, Skysill (due 2010). October 2006 marked his
first photographic exhibition at Through This Lens
Gallery in Durham, North Carolina – Daedalus Slept Here: Poetic Views –
Earthly Travels - photographs, texts, and poems.
Beam appeared in 2002 at Carnegie Hall to read his
Life of the Bee poems for the premiere performance
of noted composer Lee Hoiby's Life of the Bee
song-cycle. The cycle continues to be performed on
the national and international stage.
Beam has received numerous awards and grants
including three American Library Association
Notable Book and Gay / Lesbian Non-fiction Award
nominations, an American Library Association Stonewall Award nomination, the long list for the Lambda book award, two
Pushcart nominations, an IPPY Ten Best Books Award, an Audie Award, an AIGA 50 Best
Books Award, a North Carolina Writers Network
Blumenthal Writer and Reader Award, a Durham Arts
Council Emerging Artist Grant, a Duke University
Chronicle Award, a Nazim Hikmet Festival
poetry award, a Writer's Digest Editor Award for
best E-Zine poetry outlet, a 1998 Associated Press
Holiday Gift Giving Ideas, and a grant from the
Mary Duke Biddle Foundation. In 2009 his poem, "Song of the University Worker", was designated the
official staff poem of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His work as an
educator was highlighted in The Compassionate
Classroom: Lessons that Nurture Wisdom and Empathy
by Jane Dalton and Lyn Fairchild. Beam is also the
recipient of a Preservation Award from the 2004
Preservation Society of Chapel Hill, and the first
annual Provost Award for Public Service from the
UNC-Chapel Hill Center for Public Service in 2000.
His highly regarded readings were chosen twice by
The Independent Weekly as Best Bets, and as a Smart
Bet by Asheville's Mountain Xpress newspaper. Beam
has read at two North Carolina Literary Festivals
and the UNC-CH North Carolina Collection's Second
Sunday Reading series, was inducted in the North
Carolina Writers Conference, was an invited guest
to the Durham Public Library's Centennial NC
Writers Gala, a 2002 Parade Marshal for the NC Gay
Pride Festival, and served for ten years as a judge
for the Lambda Book Awards. He serves as poetry
editor for Oyster Boy Review, and
works as the Assistant to the Biology Librarian in
the Biology/Chemistry Library at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Born and raised in Kannapolis, North Carolina, Beam
now lives in Hillsborough, NC with his partner of
28 years, Stanley Finch.
In magazines, anthologies, books, and other
critical works:
Beam has published widely in small magazines,
anthologies, and books among them being The
Asheville Poetry Review 10th Anniversary anthology,
Black Men / White Men, Carolina Spring, Earth and
Soul: A Russian / English Anthology of North
Carolina Poetry, EOAGH Queering
Language Anthology, Fourth International Anthology
on Paradoxism, Gay City, Gay Roots: 20 Years of Gay
Sunshine, Kakalak: An Anthology of Carolina Poets,
Longhouse: A Bibliography from 1971-2006, Madder Love: Queer Men and the Precincts of
Surrealism, the CD collection 9 Poets Alive the
Radio Show: An Archive of Poets from Alpha Beat
Featured Arts Broadsides, the North Carolina Arts
Council Poet Laureate Poet of the
Week features (2005, 2009), the Polish anthology Parada równosci :antologia
wspólczesnej amerykanskiej poezji gejowskiej
i lesbijskiej (Rainbow Parade: Anthology of
Contemporary American Gay and Lesbian Poetry), The
Son of the Male Muse, Sparks of Fire: Blake In A
New Age, Word and Witness: 100 Years Of North
Carolina Poetry, Yellow Silk (first ten year
anthology), Arabesques Review, The Asheville Poetry
Review, Big Bridge, Blink, Brightleaf - A Southern
Review of Books, Cairn, Cardinal, The Carolina
Quarterly, Conjunctions Web Forum, The Dead Mule,
The Double Dealer Redux, Dreamworks, Evergreen
Chronicles, Frame, Gargoyle, The Harvard Gay &
Lesbian Review, Inch, The James White Review,
Knockout, Lilliput Review, modern words, Mouth of
the Dragon, North Carolina Literary Review, Origin,
Oyster Boy Review, Pembroke Magazine, Poetry Now,
Poetry Salzburg Review, The Prose Poem,
qarrtsiluni, The Raleigh News & Observer,
Shrike, South by Southeast: Haiku and Haiku Arts,
The Sun, Versal, The Worcester Review, Yellow Silk,
Kiss Of The Whip by Jim Prezwalski, With Hidden
Noise: Photographs by John Menapace [exhibition
catalog and book editions], Touching Earth:
Reflections On The Restorative Power Of Gardening,
The Quality Of Life, From Grass to Gardens: How to
Reap Bounty from a Small Yard (all three by Janet
Lembke), and Pen & Brush: A Collection of the
Best Illustrations and Their Poems from
Hummingbird’s First Fifteen Years by David
Kopitzke.
In 1989 The Arts Journal featured the first
full-length interview with Beam. In 1998, his short
poems were subject of a special issue of
Hummingbird: The Magazine of the Short Poem. 1999
saw his career featured as the subject of a Durham
Herald-Sun article, and in Duke University's
Rainbow Triangle Oral History Project which
included an article in their newsletter Tobacco
Road. In late 2001 his work was featured, along
with an interview, in Charlotte, North Carolina's
Main Street Rag. Another feature,
including an interview and video clip, appeared in
Nantahala Review in April 2003, and
in 2004 Virginia Libraries published
an interview. Writer Marly Youmans
featured Beam's work three times in 2006 –
2007 on her blog The Palace at 2 AM, poet Joe
Massey featured an audio reading in 2007 on his
blog Mr. Tong Bliss's Journal, and in 2007 artist
Laura Frankstone drew him on her blog Laurelines as he taught students at a local
high school. He has also been interviewed on
WUNC-Radio FM (with numerous appearances on The
State of Things), WCHL-Radio AM, WDNC-Radio AM,
WNCN-TV 17, WLFL-TV Fox 22, and Chapel Hill Cable.
Other smaller interviews have appeared in North
Carolina campus newspapers (including the Raleigh
News & Observer; The Chapel Hill News; The
Independent Weekly – Durham, NC, and North
Carolina Libraries) and internet classroom chats.
His work is noted on a number of gay resource web
sites.
Readings, Lectures, Workshops:
Since 1974 Beam has given over 350 poetry readings,
lectures, and panel discussions throughout North
Carolina, and in Virginia, Canada, and Italy. For
twelve years he directed, produced, and starred in
a highly popular program for the Friends of the
Library at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill entitled Winter Stories for Children of
All Ages. In addition to numerous middle school,
high school, and college classrooms visits, Beam
has conducted two Hot Ink workshops for young
writers for the NC Writers Network -
Fossil Poetry, Seeing the Word, Hearing the World
and The Dog of Art in the Garden of Toads; a
Bestiary workshop Boo at the Zoo at the NC
Zoological Park, a Family Day Bestiary workshop at
the Duke Museum of Art, twice been a visiting
author to the Duke University Young Writers Camp,
and as an UNC-Charlotte undergraduate art student
was a staff member for the summer Brickle Bush
workshops for children at the Mint Museum,
Charlotte. Beam was a founding member of the now
defunct Southern Literature Council of Charleston.
Exhibitions:
Through This Lens Gallery represents
Beam's photographic work. He held his first one
person show there in October 2006. In 2006 Beam's
photographs and publications were included in the
Time Arts BCA / BFA Alumni & Faculty exhibition
at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
2007 saw his first photographic publication in
Origin magazine. From March –
June 2008 a photograph was included in an
exhibition, If You Can Kill a Snake With It, It
Ain't Art", of the poet Jonathan Williams' personal
collections at the Turchin Center, Appalachian
State University. The online magazine, qarrtsiluni, recently featured a photograph.
An Elizabethan Bestiary: Retold was a feature
exhibition at the Duke University Museum of Art
(now Nasher Museum), and at Wofford
College. The book, or parts of the book, has also
been exhibited at the Leipzig International Book
Fair, the Frankfort Book Fair, the AIGA National
Design Center, the National Humanities Center, the
Durham Arts Council, and the University of North
Carolina Davis Library. It has also been exhibited
at many small book fairs and at Poet's House in New
York, along with many of Beam's other works. He
exhibited work in the First International Think
Dinky Invitational at the Meta-Museum in Durham, NC
in 1977. As an undergraduate student at
UNC-Charlotte, Beam exhibited visual work during
student exhibitions for the Bachelor of Creative
Arts program [Beam received his Bachelor of
Creative Arts from UNCC in 1975].
Book reviews, criticism, and commentary:
Beam's book reviews, criticism, and commentary have
appeared in The Advocate, The American Book Review,
Big Bridge, The Chapel Hill News,
The Christian Science Monitor, Contemporary Gay
American Poets And Playwrights, The Durham
Herald-Sun, Encyclopedia of Contemporary LGBTQ
Literature of the United States, Encyclopedia of
North Carolina, The Front Page, Garden Design, The
Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, The Independent
Weekly, Lambda Book Report, Lesbian Gay Bisexual
Transgendered Queer America Today Encyclopedia,
loblolly, North Carolina Libraries, The North
Carolina Literary Review, The North Carolina Arts
Council Poet Laureate Poet of the Week feature, The
Raleigh News & Observer, Rain Taxi (interview
with Jonathan Williams), Small Press Review,
Smithsonian, The Solitary Plover: The Lorine
Niedecker Newsletter, The Sun, Yellow Silk,
The Secret Language of Birds: A Treasury
of Myths, Folklore, and Inspirational True
Stories, WUNC-Radio FM, WCHL-Radio AM, and
Oyster Boy Review. Beam is currently Poetry Editor
of the print and online literary journal Oyster Boy Review, and was a contributing
editor to Arabesques Review. As an undergraduate
student at UNC-Charlotte he served as Business
Manager, then Poetry Editor, then Editor of the
campus literary magazine Sanskrit, and during that
time was a contributing columnist to The Road and
Irregardless magazines in Charlotte.
Performances:
Beam and Lee Hoiby's
Life
of the Bee performed
by mezzo-soprano Shauna Holiman, pianist Brent
McMunn and cellist Barbara Stein Mallow (NY)
[cellist Wendy Law in NC] is included in the New
York University Database of Recorded Music. In
addition to the Holiman premieres at the NC
Literary Festival and at Carnegie's Weill Recital
Hall in 2001, it continues to be performed. Among
the venues have been:
Montserrat Duo: Cellist Beth Ringel, pianist Alex
Maynegre, with soprano Christine Sheets Boulder,
Colorado, November 2007.
Music Faculty Recital: The Other Side of Barbara,
Barbara Hollinshead – mezzo-soprano, Mary
Gottlieb, piano: Katzen Arts Center, Abramson
Family Recital Hall, American University,
Washington, DC, February 1, 2008.
Cloyce K. Huston Musicales: Barbara Hollinshead
– mezzo-soprano, Yvonne Caruthers –
cello, Maribeth Gowen – piano: Diplomatic and
Consular Officers Retired (DACOR), Dacor Bacon
House, Washington, DC, February 2007, February
2008.
Love … Naturally, Grandin Festival of Music:
College-Conservatory of Music, Mary Emery Hall,
University of Cincinnati, Illinois, 2006.
American Songbook II – CUBE's South Loop New
Music Festival: Michelle Areyzaga - soprano,
Martine Benmann - cello, Joshua Mancester –
piano: Sherwood Conservatory Recital Hall, Chicago,
2005.
Vocal Cordes II: Marcia Swanston - mezzo-soprano,
Hilary Brown – cello. Barbara Pritchard
– pianist: Maritime Conservatory of
Performing Arts, Dalhousie University, Halifax,
Nova Scotia, 2005.
Reflections of Eden with The Talisker Players:
Vilma Indra Vitols – mezzo-soprano, Peter
Longworth – piano: Trinity’s St.
Paul’s Centre, Toronto, Canada, 2005.
Musik aus der Neuen Welt: Rosina Maria Zoppi
– mezzo-soprano, Ursula Baumann-Huber -
violoncello, Amri-Anton Alhambra – piano:
Gartensaal Villa Boveri, Baden, Switzerland, 2004,
Katholische Kirche St. Franziskus, Ebmatingen,
Switzerland, 2004, Stadtmühle Willisau,
Müligass, Switzerland, 2004.
5 for 4: Chamber Music, Faculty Concert Series,
Faculty Chamber Ensemble: Amy Reiff -
mezzo-soprano, Nancy Jo Snider - violoncello, Alice
Mikolajewski – piano: George Washington
University Department of Music (Western
Presbyterian Church), Washington D.C, 2003.
Songs and Scenes by Lee Hoiby : Lee Hoiby –
piano, Shauna Holiman – mezzo-soprano, Chris
Glansdorp – cello: Helen K. Persson Recital
Hall, Palm Beach Atlantic University, Palm Beach,
FL, 2003.
Music of Today Concert Series: Dawn Padula -
mezzo-soprano, Barrett Sills - cello, Keith
Chambers - piano, First Cumberland Presbyterian
Church, Houston, TX, 2003.
The Life of the Bee: Rosina Maria Zoppi –
mezzo-soprano, Ursula Baumann-Huber - violoncello,
Amri-Anton Alhambra – piano,Zürich,
Switzerland, 2002; Kapelle Zentrum Klus; Rothrist,
Switzerland, 2002; Praxiskeller; Baden,
Switzerland, 2002, Gartensaal, Villa Voveri, 2002.
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Jeffery Beam Home
Email: jeffbeam@email.unc.edu
URL: http://www.unc.edu/~jeffbeam/about.html
Last updated: Monday, August 17, 2009
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