A poetry reading, with recipes

Let's start with a stanza:

Aunt Wilma's fabled spoon bread sits

Beside Aunt Martha's perennial grits;

Here Sissie's chicken a la king

Companions Darla's Jell-O ring,

While Cousin Willoughby has brought in

A gay attempt at haute cuisine,

And next -- the terror of the soul:

Aunt Lavinia's casserole.

-- from "Pot Luck Supper: Aunt Lavinia Strikes," by Fred Chappell

Yes, you get poetry in "The Sound of Poets Cooking," (Jacar Press, $15.95), a new anthology edited by Richard Krawiec. The collection includes about five dozen poets. Among them are some of North Carolina's best, including Chappell, Joseph Bathanti, and Kathryn Stripling Byer. Every poem is about food, of some sort or another.

But this anthology offers more.

You also get recipes, written, in some cases, only as poets would write them. (For a French bread recipe, Susan Ludvigson directs us to toss the yeast, sugar and sea salt "as if you were scattering seeds for wildflowers.")

And if that's not enough, consider that the book functions as what Krawiec calls an "arts-stimulus program." He's using proceeds from sales to pay stipends to writers to conduct free community writing workshops.

Joseph-Beth Booksellers at SouthPark hosts a poetry reading at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 31. Among the poets attending: Charlotte's Julie Suk, Diana Pinckney, Allison Elrod and Gail Peck. Krawiec tells me there will be food, of course.