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Straight ahead on Tennessee Writes we're meeting Tennessee author Denton Loving.

Although he was born in Baltimore, Maryland, he grew up on an 80-acre farm near the Cumberland Gap, where he still lives today.

His family actually traveled with the famous Daniel Boone to carve out the Cumberland Trail.

He is even related to Daniel Boone's wife.

Denton went to college at Lincoln Memorial University, where he worked until 2015.

He also earned his master's in Creative Writing at Bennington College in Vermont, but it is here in Tennessee where he has written three books of poetry and won the first-ever Tennessee Book Award for poetry.

His poems deal with nature and family, including his relationship with his father.

We'll dive into the world of poetry, Tennessee style, and find out about the real Daniel Boone, so pour yourself a big cup of coffee and settle into your favorite comfy chair because Tennessee Writes starts right now.

Books about Tennessee.

Books that come from Tennessee authors.

Books and stories with a Tennessee twist.

West Tennessee PBS presents Tennessee Writes.

Thank you for joining us for this edition of Tennessee Writes, the show that goes beyond the book to let you get to know the author in a personal and revealing way.

My name is Peter Noll.

We're about to get up close and personal with another Tennessee writer, finding out about their childhood, how they began writing, where their stories come from, and what advice they have for you if you want to write your own book.

Plus, we put the authors on a stopwatch as they try and answer questions in the lightning round.

Today, Tennessee Writes welcomes author Denton Loving.

He was born in Baltimore, Maryland, but grew up on an 80-acre farm in the Cumberland Gap in East Tennessee, where he still lives today.

He went to college at Lincoln Memorial University, where he worked in communications.

He has a master's degree in creative writing and is the author of three collections of poetry.

Tennessee Writes welcomes Denton Loving.

Hello.

Thank you for coming on the show.

Have a seat.

Thank you for ha.. Daniel Boone.

Daniel Boone, yes, he's a-- The real.

He's really a part of your family's.. He is, yes.

He's a really big presence in the Cumberland Gap area where I live, and so I grew up always knowing about Daniel Boone, going to seeing the reenactments and knowing that history.

Just a few years ago, discovered how closely connected my own family was to his family when I was doing some research.

He became even more real to me after that.

For those viewers that are watching, the Cumberland Gap, they may have heard of it, but it's where Kentucky, Virginia, they all come together, correct?

That's right.

We're exactly wh.. about 60 miles north of Knoxville, but we're very interconnected with the Virginia and Kentucky states.

People where I lived or where I used to work at Lincoln Memorial University may live in Kentucky or Virginia, but work in Tennessee.

We mostly, if we live in Tennessee, do our grocery shopping in Kentucky.

That's the largest city, Middlesboro, Kentucky.

Yes, it's very interconnected.

It's all considered Appalachia?

That's right, yes.

Tell us about how that has influenced you.

My mom's family is from Pennsylvania, but my dad's family has been in Tennessee and Kentucky since before either Tennessee or Kentucky were states.

Even my mom's family in Pennsylvania is from the Appalachian section of central Pennsylvania.

There's no one clear way to define what Appalachia is.

There's coal mines in Appalachia, there's farms in Appalachia, there's all these various experiences, but one of the common denominators is the mountains.

Landscape and place is always really important to me and into my writing.

I think that is just because I'm surrounded by this beautiful landscape of mountains that are the Appalachians.

Your dad was a coal miner.

My dad was not, but his dad, my grandfather.

His grand-- Okay, so he was the son of the coal miner.

That's right.

Yes.

Talk to us about this family farm that you live in.

It's 80 acres.

It's in the Cumberland Gap, or it's near it?

It's very near.

It's in Speedwell, Tennessee?

It's in a little unincorporated area called Speedwell.

There's a small town called Cumberland Gap, but many of us refer to the larger region around the town as the Cumberland Gap area.

The-- You're n.. I'm not a farmer.

I grew up on a farm, and I grew up learning how to be a farmer.

We raised-- It was a cattl.. It was, yes, and it still is.

We raised cattle.

My dad and I raised cattle there when I was growing up.

Now I let somebody else do that.

The farm is leased.

It still is a lot to run a farm or just the property.

We have an old aging orchard there.

There's a lot of upkeep, just trying to keep the fences up and everything mowed.

It's a lot of work, but it's a beautiful place to live.

I really enjoy having the cattle there and being able to see them, but it's also nice to not be responsible for them.

Now, you went to Lincoln Memorial University.

It's a private school named after President Lincoln, correct?

It sits on the Cumberland Gap Historical Reserve Park, correct?

Right.

It sits right on the boundary of the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park.

It's been there since 1897.

It's got a very old, really interesting history.

I went to school there partly because my mother worked in the library for a lot of years.

Then after I graduated with my bachelor's degree, I ended up coming back to work at the university.

I worked in a couple of different capacities there as the public relations director for a while and then as a fundraiser with the Alumni and Advancement Offices.

I did that most recently.

That was a job that I really loved.

It was great to be able to talk about the university, to tell people about it, to talk to other alumni, and to work with alumni on projects that were meaningful to help the university grow.

Were you going to school and working there while your mom was still working in the library there?

I worked there as a student.

Then later when I came back, yes, we overlapped for just a little while.

Mom came with him to Jackson- She did come with me.

-for the taping of this show.

Yes, she did.

That was very funny.

She had never been to Jackson.

That's right.

You had never be.. I've never been to Jackson.

Welcome to Jackson.

Thank you.

Thanks.

We're glad to have you here.

Thanks.

I'm glad to .. [laughs] Let's talk about how you-- When you were in college, did you know, I'm going to become a writer, I'm going to become a poet?

Because in your book, there was a story by the introduction, the guy, you like, you were basically a poet and didn't k.. The old phrase, and that's how I- Yes, that's-- It's like, "Oh, yes, you.. You're like, "Oh, no, I can't.

I don't know enough."

That's true.

I did not have any idea when I was an undergraduate student at the university.

I knew that I wanted to be a writer.

When I did actually focus and enter the writing world, I started as a fiction writer.

Even when I was an undergraduate student, I had this idea of wanting to be a writer, but I didn't really know how to go about it.

I often wrote, for one thing, I never knew how to finish a story.

I never knew how to get to the end of it.

That was something I had to learn as a fiction writer.

Then, even after I was writing fiction for a number of years, I wanted to learn more about poetry because I was going to conferences and teaching workshops.

I was meeting all these great poets.

I liked them on this personal level.

Then I would hear their work.

Often, I would like their work, but more so, I often didn't understand what they were doing.

I wanted to try to figure it out.

It finally occurred to me that I'm the kind of learner that I was not going to understand it until I tried it myself.

I really thought it was just going to be an experiment to say like, "Oh, I get what you're doing in this poem."

I ended up loving it so much that now I've written three books of poems.

When did you decide, I'm quitting my day job and going to really focus in on being a writer and my poetry?

There were a number of years where I had always hoped that I would be able to .. In 2015, everything aligned that it was the right time for me to leave my job, which was a job that I liked a lot, but I also wanted to really dedicate my energy to my writing.

In addition to being a writer, some friends and I started a small independent press.

We published books by other people.

What is that called?

It's called EastOver Press.

We have been around since just the end of 2020.

We were an idea that was born out of the pandemic.

Right, during the COVID.

Yes, we-- A lot of books a.. that's where they started.

Absolutely, and that was the case for us.

My friends and I had talked about the possibility of starting a press or doing something like that.

About eight months into the pandemic, we thought, "Wow, if we don't do this now, when we have all this time on our hands, then when are we ever going to do it?"

We started doing it.

Since that time, we've published about 40 books and have more in the pipeline.

It's something that we really love and feel great about, this community that we're building by supporting authors.

You also got a master's in Creative Writing, but that was in Vermont.

Was that online or did you actually live in Vermont?

It's a low-residency program, which is really common for Creative Writing degrees and programs.

I would go to Vermont for about 10 days twice a year for five different residency periods.

It's at Bennington College, which is sort of in the southern part of Vermont.

It's a beautiful place.

It was also, interestingly enough, in the very northern section of the Appalachian Range, but a part of the country in the Appalachians that I was unfamiliar with.

It was great to have that experience.

[music] Denton, let's dive into your latest poetry book, Feller.

It's the third of your poetry books.

What inspired this one?

Now, you said you were writing Tamp, your second book, and I was sort of reading both.

You gave us each a copy.

What I love about poetry books is they're like Reader's Digest.

They're very digestible.

It's not like you need to sit down and read the whole thing and remember.

It's very bite-sizeable.

It's Instagramable.

It's bite-size.

For a kid that grew up on MTV and has a 10-minute attention span, I love poetry.

Right.

Yes.

Every poem, not always, but usually stands on its own, which is what I want all of my poems to be able to do.

My first poetry book came out in 2014.

Then I took a little bit of time to figure out what the next book was going to be about.

The second book, Tamp, was about my dad who passed away in 2016.

I wrote some of the poems while he was not well, and then a lot of the poems after he passed away.

I was writing just all kinds of things during that time period.

I didn't really imagine that I would have a book like Tamp that would be about my dad.

I was just trying to write organically.

Then I finally figured out that I had these poems that would work as a cohesive collection for Tamp.

That left me with a lot of other poems that took me about another year or so to figure out what the story was, but that was the result of Feller.

What I think these poems are about is a sense of longing in every possible way that you can think of.

A lot of people go directly to the sense of romantic longing, which there are poems that definitely do speak to that, but there's also the longing of lost friendships.

One of the things that I also spend a lot of time focusing on in this book is longing for place.

I have a short poem called Returning, which really describes most clearly the kind of feeling that I often have when I travel, which I do a lot, and how I'm often anxious to get away from home and go out and be on the road or go see my friends.

Then, as soon as I'm gone, I can't wait to get back home.

It's that push-pull feeling that I think is really at the heart of what I was trying to capture in this book.

As I read, a lot of the poems deal with nature.

It's that 80-acre family farm, the barn, and things like that.

I envision you strolling around leisurely on your family farm on a beautiful day with a notebook, taking notes.

Does that happen?

Not exactly.

Okay, so that's the Hallmark movie.

Yes, there's not a whole lot of leisurely walking around on the farm.

For me, there's always either something to be done or me seeing a thousand things that need to be done and not having time to do them.

Really, the observations that come from that experience of living and being and just existing on that piece of land come in really surprising moments.

They come in the middle of mowing grass or cutting a tree or clearing a fence row.

Something will happen.

Something will stand out.

Something will grab my attention.

Those little things that I can remember or become obsessed with, once I'm finished with the job and go back home and start thinking even more about, those are usually what turns into a poem.

[music] Denton, now is the time for the Tennessee Writes lightning round.

It's where we ask our authors a series of quick book-related questions and see how many they can answer in two minutes.

If you don't know an answer, can't think of one, just say pass.

There's going to be two minutes on the clock.

It starts ticking down after I ask my first question.

Do you want to play the Tennessee Writes lightning round?

I'm nervous, but I want to play.

Okay.

Two minutes on the clock.

How often do you check your Amazon book reviews and ratings?

More frequently after the book comes out.

Whose autobiography book is your all-time favorite?

Pass.

What food item or drink most helps you w.. Peanut butter and crackers.

How many versions of your latest book did you write before it was completed?

Oh, 20-plus.

Name a fellow author you would like to go on a book tour with.

Charles Dodd White, who's going to be on your prog.. What book are you most embarrassed to admit you read?

Joel's collection of poetry.

What distracts you the most when you're trying to write?

My cat.

What is your favorite book of all time?

Probably Ron Rash's One Foot in Eden.

How many hours a week on average do you spend reading books?

10 to 20.

On average, how many audiobooks do you listen to in one year's time?

Very few.

Yes, audiobooks aren't my thing.

What author do you most admire?

Margaret Atwood.

How many books are on your nightstand right now?

20-plus.

What book have you read multiple times?

Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.

How many times?

At least four.

What's your least favorite book of all time?

JD Vance's Hillbilly Elegy.

Roughly how many books do you own?

500 or 600.

If your book was made into a movie, what actor do you want to star in it?

Pass.

What celebrity would you most like to co-author a book with?

David Duchovny has a great book of poems out.

What's the last audiobook you listened to?

Something by Isabel Allende, but I can't remember the title.

How many pages is your latest book?

[buzzer] [thunders] [music] Denton, we always love to hear the authors speak the words that they wrote on paper.

Would you mind reading from your latest book, Feller, for us?

Yes, I'd love to.

Thank you.

I referenced this poem, Returning, and I'll read it and maybe the title poem.

Returning.

"My heart is divided, split in devotion to where I am and where I want to be.

My wish to sew my own lifeline with a single, simple thread is thwarted by these rolling Appalachians, their foothills and low reliefs, so my path unwinds like cable stitch that twins and twists but never breaks."

This is the title poem, Feller.

"This is the white oak that grew among other oaks and beech, pine, and hemlock.

This is the tag that marks the tree.

This is the saw with whirring blades.

This is the sawdust that thickens the air.

Praise the machine and the task it achieves.

This is the creak of the trunk splitting.

This is the fracturing of fibrous limbs as they bend and break.

Praise the thunder of the falling.

Praise the quake of the earth accepting its weight.

This is the log hauled to the sawmill, cut into lumber, measured by board feet.

Praise the planks that will shape a dwelling.

This is the crown of the tree.

These are the branches left to rot.

This is the wood cellulose and lignin that replenish the soil.

These are the fungi, the beetles, and the earthworms that flourish in the oak's remains.

Praise decay and decomposition.

This is the feller that brought the tree down.

Praise the worker and the work of felling trees.

Praise the quickening pulse and the flowing blood.

This is the first green leaf from last year's acorn taking root.

This is the light that enters the woods and cleanses the wound.

Praise the wood and the woods.

Praise the light.

Praise the wound."

[music] Denton, there seems to be a resurgence, at least I get a sense of poetry being written, read, talked about a lot more in the literary world.

What advice do you have for someone sitting out here watching, streaming our show about how do I become a poet?

I think the most important thing is to be part of a community and to have people who can read your work and that you can share work with.

That means you have to also learn how to read other people's work and be able to comment and talk to them about it.

There's this idea of writing as a very solitary sort of endeavor, and it can be.

A big hunk of the work is done when you're by yourself, but it really takes a village to produce a poem or a book, whatever you're trying to do.

For me, the most important thing in my journey has been finding people who understood what I was trying to do and supported me, but helped me be a better writer by telling me what was wrong or what was not working with it.

Without those people, those readers, those first readers, somebody who's not your mother, who is not going to tell you how great everything is.

Does your mom critique your work?

My mom does not critique my work, but I think most moms don't critique people's work.

I think they-- You need t.. [laughs] She critiques everything.

[laughs] I think you need someone who really can give you good reasons and expla.. for how to make the work better.

It makes it a lot more fun when you feel like you're not in it alone.

Some people go to graduate school programs, like I did, which is where I found.. You don't have to go to graduate school.

There are writers groups at libraries, at bookstores.

There are writers guilds in lots of towns.

There's coffee shops that will facilitate groups.

There are lots of people.

I'm constantly surprised by how many peop.. who are secretly writing poetry.

What they really need is to come out into the light and write it with other people.

Have you ever done one of those coffee shop open mic nights?

Oh, yes.

Yes.

Those are coming back.

You see from the '50s and '60s, the beatnik er.. That's sort of coming back.

Yes, I did.

I was a reader last week at a great commu.. called Poetry at the Table in Lexington, Kentucky.

There were over 60 people there in a coffee shop for open mic night.

Only about a third of those people actually read poems, but there was a huge community that came out to listen and be part of the night.

It was a lot of fun.

If people want to contact you, stay up to date with all your books or to purchase your books, where do you send them?

I'm easy to find online.

All you have to do is Google my name.

I have a website.

I'm also very easy to find on social media channels, on Facebook and Instagram.

What's your website?

It's dentonloving.com.

There's not a lot of Denton Lovings- There's not.

-there, so that's good.

Dentonloving.com,- Yes.

-b.. Is there going to be a third one, a fourth one?

There is.

I'm workin.. I don't know how soon it'll be fi.. but yes, it's in progress.

Do you have a deadline?

No, I don't.

Okay, that's always nice.

Yes.

A deadline would probably be help.. but no, I don't have one.

It comes when it comes.

We have come to the end of this edition of Tennessee Writes.

We want to thank you for joining us and sharing about Daniel Boone, Cumberland Gap, your journey to becoming a award-winning poet, and so much more.

Thank you for coming on.

Before you leave, Denton, would you sign your book for us?

Yes, absolutely.

Thank you.

For WLJT and God Bless PBS.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We have a writing gift for you.

Oh, wow.

We call this the.. It's an organizer, a messenger briefcase, water bottle, a latte mug, a notebook, and a plethora of pens, all to help with future writings as a thank you gift for coming on.

Thank you so much.

It's really nice.

Thank you for watching Tennessee Writes.

Please join us again as we meet another author and get up close and personal with them.

Remember, you can watch all past episodes of Tennessee Writes on YouTube in the PBS app.

As Walt Disney said, "A good story can take you on a fantastic journey."

I'm Peter Noll reminding you to keep on reading, Tennessee.

For comments about today's show or to suggest a Tennessee author for a future program, email us at tennesseewrites @westtnpbs.org.

Tennessee Writes, on air and streaming now.

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[music]