ITS NOT YOU: THE LYRIC ‘I’

Join us as Thomas Alan Holmes lays some groundwork with a few authors, some canonized, some perhaps in the workshop itself. In our workshop, we will discuss the complications of autobiographical elements in poetry, the way the facts can get in the way of the truth, and the freedoms we get when we accept the Lyric “I” as a separate entity from the author.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER

Dr. Thomas Alan Holmes

Thomas Alan Holmes lives in Johnson City, Tennessee, where he specializes in Appalachian literature as a member of the Literature and Language Department at East Tennessee State University. His scholarly and creative work has appeared in such journals as Still: The Journal, Appalachian Heritage, The Valparaiso Review, The Connecticut Review, Louisiana Literature, and The Appalachian Journal. With Daniel Westover, he has co-edited The Fire that Breaks: Gerard Manley Hopkins’s Poetic Legacies (Clemson U P, 2020), this including his chapter about Hopkins’s influence on Appalachian poets. Holmes has worked in both the Tennessee and Alabama volumes of The Southern Poetry Anthology series. Iris Press published his debut poetry collection, In the Backhoe’s Shadow, in 2022.

Meeting Information

This program will be presented at our upcoming PST meeting, to be held September 13, 2025, from 2:00-4:00 pm Eastern / 1:00-3:00 pm Central via Zoom. Members will be provided a link a few days prior. If you are interested in learning more about PST, check out our website. If you’d like to attend our meeting as a guest, contact us at poetrytennessee@gmail.com.