Fred Chappell
"Fred Chappell: I Am One of You Forever"
In November of 2023, PBS NC premiered a 57-minute documentary film about the life and work of author and teacher Fred Chappell (1936-2024). "Fred Chappell: I Am One of You Forever" was produced by UNC Greensboro Media Studies professor Michael Frierson. You can see a trailer for this film by clicking on the screen below.
Fred Chappell was a beloved professor for 40 years at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. "Ole Fred" stated near the end of his life that "what I wanted to do was teach college. That was always my goal. That was my mission in life, to teach school, and that's what I did." While teaching, he wrote poetry, novels and essays. His poetic masterpiece Midquest, which brought together the four long poems "River," "Bloodfire," "Wind Mountain," and "Earthsleep," was originally published in 1981. Four years later, Yale University awarded him and John Ashbery the Bollingen Prize for Poetry. From 1997 to 2002, Chappell served as North Carolina's Poet Laureate. In November of 2022, during an interview with The Smoky Mountain News, he had this to say about poetry: "It seems to me, [poetry is] the most natural kind of a speech there is. It's the most natural, the most elevated, and the most fun - poetry is always attractive. Everybody is immersed in poetry, whether they know it or not."
Fred Chappell's fiction is equally as accomplished. Anchored by his 1987 novel I Am One of You Forever, his stories and novels recall memories of life on his grandparents' farm along Spring Creek in the mountains of Madison County, North Carolina - as represented in his Kirkman Family Cycle of three novels (Brighten the Corner Where You Are, 1990; Farewell, I'm Bound to Leave You, 1996; and Look Back All the Green Valley, 1999).
In the same Smoky Mountain News interview, when asked about his current perspective, Fred answered in two ways: "Well, when I look at it from my usual haunts - doctor's waiting rooms and funeral parlors - I see it's a really pretty day outside. Not too hot, got some sunshine and a little breeze. And what I think I'll do is seize it. It was my lot in life to be called to write and I stepped up to the plate - struck out a whole lot of times and once or twice did not. [The role of the poet and the writer] is to express what people don't want to acknowledge, to acknowledge what people don't want to express."