The Knoxville Poetry Liberation Front will offer a resistance reading on Sunday, June 22, 4-6 p.m. at the Old City Performing Arts Center (River & Rail Theatre). The $15 cover charge will be donated to The American Civil Liberties Union.

“A hard rain falls on the sea
If terror comes without a warning
There must be something we don’t see
What fire begets this fire? Like torches thrown into
the straw
If no one asks, then no one answers
That’s how every empire falls.”

(Excerpt from “That’s how every empire falls” by R.B. Morris, Knoxville’s first Poet Laureate.)

Knoxville is a place where music is born. And where there is music there is poetry, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that there are poets among us, too; neighbors and friends and colleagues who write about our times.

Linda Parsons might just be the dean of local poets (not that she would claim that title for herself, as she is soft-spoken and modest), and although she’s a Nashville native, she has lived in Knoxville for more than 50 years and has participated in the local community of writers for 40 years.

“I am very grounded in my gardens in North Hills and feel very much at home here. I use a lot of gardens in my work.”

As I said, she is modest. The gardens surrounding her neat bungalow are lush and beautiful. And a quick Google search turns up an impressive list of accomplishments, including this:

“Parsons’ poems have appeared in the Georgia Review, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, The Chattahoochee Review, The Baltimore Review, Shenandoah and others. Her essays and poems have been published in the anthologies Sleeping with One Eye Open: Women Writers and the Art of Survival (1999), Her Words: Diverse Voices in Contemporary Appalachian Women’s Poetry (2002), and Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia (2003).

“Her column The Writing Well appeared in New Millennium Writings from 1995 to 2000. She currently coordinates WordStream, WDVX-FM’s weekly reading series with Stellasue Lee and is the reviews editor at Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel. Parsons is the copyeditor and proofreader for Chapter 16, Tennessee’s literary website, and was also playwright-in-residence for the Hammer Ensemble, the social justice wing of Flying Anvil Theatre in Knoxville.”

Finding herself increasingly concerned by current events, a couple of months ago Parsons started canvassing her colleagues to see if they’d be interested in sharing their concerns in a poetry reading. The response was overwhelming and positive, and the Knoxville Poetry Liberation Front was born.

Participating poets, in addition to Morris and Parsons, are his successor Poets Laureate Marilyn Kallet and Black Atticus as well as Drew Drake, Brian Griffin, Jack Rentfro, Susan Underwood, Denton Loving, Tom Weiss and Erin Elizabeth Smith.

“This is our way as artists to use our voices in a way that only we can,” she said. “My goal is to attract an audience that doesn’t normally attend poetry readings. You think, ‘What good will one voice do, or will 12 voices do?’ We can add to the hundreds, the thousands, the millions who are already out there.”

Bob Deck will add music to the program.

Parsons closed our conversation with a verse by Salman Rushdie:

“A poem cannot stop a bullet

A novel can’t defuse a bomb

But we are not helpless

We can sing the truth

And name the liars.”

–  Salman Rushdie

Betty Bean is semi-retired and writes an occasional opinion column for KnoxTNToday.com.