North Carolina's Poet Laureate

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appstate.edu

Joseph Bathanti was born and raised in Pittsburgh. He even went to college and graduate school there. So it's a testament to his passion for North Carolina that he was just announced as the Tar Heel state's newest poet laureate. Bathanti came to North Carolina in the late 1970s to be a VISTA volunteer.

He fell in love with our landscape, food and culture. And now, many collections of poems later, he is a professor of creative writing at Appalachian State University and, for the next two years, our literary ambassador. Joseph Bathanti joins host Frank Stasio in the studio today to explain what that means.