Four local poets and poetry enthusiasts – the Rev. David E. Buck, Allison Elrod, L.B. Green and Tootsie O’Hara – will recite their original work on Sunday, July 26, at 7 p.m., at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 301 Caldwell Lane.

The Rev. Buck is Rector of St. Alban’s and a 1971 Davidson College graduate. He says his interest in poetry began in a freshman English class taught by poet and author Anthony S. Abbott, English professor emeritus at the college.

Ms. Elrod is a poet, essayist and freelance editor whose work draws deeply on her love of plain language and ordinary life. Her essays have appeared in The Living Church and on Charlotte public radio station, WFAE. Her poems have been recognized by the Randall Jarrell Poetry Competition and the Poet Laureate Awards of the North Carolina Poetry Society. Her recent work is included in Kakalak, an Anthology of Carolina Poets

Ms. Green is writer, teacher, and painter. She worked, under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Humanities and for the White House Millennium Council, teaching students to discover their place in history and to write about it. She was awarded the Robert Ruark Foundation Prize for Poetry. She is the author of Judas Trees North of the House, winner of the Randall Jarrell Award for a poetry chapbook. Her prose and poems appear in newspapers, anthologies, and literary journals including Southern Review, Penwood Review, Cold Mountain Review, and Rhino. Night Garden, a full-length poetry collection, was published in April 2009. She is the recipient of fellowships in literature for poetry from the North Carolina Arts Council, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the MacDowell Colony.

Love of language, especially poetry, has led Ione (Tootsie) O’Hara into many writing and teaching experiences. In 2004, she received an Arts & Science Council Artist’s Grant. The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts awarded her a residency to complete her chapbook, A Passing Certainty. She has taught at UNC Charlotte, CPCC, and Queens University’s Life Long Learning Center.

The event is free. St. Alban’s is off Concord Road east of downtown Davidson.