The music of Doc Watson, clear and bracing as a stream running through Deep Gap, NC, is brought to new life through John York’s compelling biographical poems. This is ancestral memory, “a spirit from a deep vein of salt/the grit that preserves.” Doc’s struggles to make music as child and man, as student, busking musician, husband and father, are distilled in his tunes from the Appalachians and beyond, and, in York’s powerful poems, anchored in authentic voice and vision, “the hawk’s high regard,/both large and particular.” This book is a treasure.

--Valerie Nieman, author of Leopard Lady: A Life in Verse

John York’s The Charge boosts me to remember Doc and Merle Watson and to recreate and sing the landscape around Deep Gap, North Carolina. These poems sing so precisely, angels sing right along . . .What splendid harmony!

--Shelby Stephenson, Poet Laureate of North Carolina from 2015-2018. His recent books are Country and Cow Mire Songs.

This project was supported by the N.C. Arts Council, a Division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, The Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, and The Arts Council of Greater Greensboro.

Biographical Notes

John Thomas York, born in Winston-Salem in 1953, grew up on a dairy and tobacco farm in Yadkin County, in northwestern North Carolina. His memories of that time and place, as well as his parents’ separation and selling of the farm, serve as the foundation of his central themes. He was educated at Appalachian State, Wake Forest, and Duke, and also has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. For nearly forty years he taught English in the public schools. In 2003 he was named Teacher of the Year by the North Carolina English Teachers Association. He was also a recipient of fellowships from the Council for Basic Education and the National Endowment for the Humanities. His work has appeared in many journals—including Appalachian Journal, KROnline (Kenyon Review), Poetry East, and Tar River Poetry—as well as in anthologies such as Word and Witness: 100 Years of North Carolina Poetry and The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume III: Contemporary Appalachia. He has four chapbooks, Picking Out,Johnny’s Cosmology, O Beautiful Bug, and Naming the Constellations. In 2012, Press 53 of Winston-Salem published his first full-length poetry collection, Cold Spring Rising. In 2011, he received the first annual James Applewhite Poetry Prize and, in 2017, the Alex Albright Nonfiction Prize, both from the North Carolina Literary Review. He and his wife, Jane McKinney York, live in Greensboro, where they have raised their daughters, Elizabeth, Kathryn, and Rachel. You may visit his website at: https://www.johnthomasyork.com/

Rachel Anne York is a transdisciplinary artist and musician from North Carolina. Her work incorporates drawing, print, sound, music, place, performance, and installation, creating communal experiences of ecological emotions. She received her undergraduate degrees in Music Performance (Double Bass) and Art & Design from East Carolina University in 2012, and a Master in Fine Arts in Studio Art at the Maine College of Art in 2020. Influenced by her Southern Appalachian heritage, she has also benefited from study and work in Brazil, Italy and New England. York is the recipient of the McClelland Roberts Memorial Scholarship, Lane Family Music Scholarship, and the MFA Dean’s Scholarship. https://www.rachelanneyork.com/

John York is a Parkinson’s patient, and he urges you to support those who suffer from PD. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research: https://www.michaeljfox.org

This book is associated with an ongoing project by Rachel Anne York to arrange and record her versions of traditional songs recorded by the Watson Family. You may access the recordings and follow the project here:

https://www.johnthomasyork.com/thecharge

Thanks to the following organizations for providing an Artist Support Grant, which paid for the publication of the chapbook, as well as a stipend for Rachel York, who wrote the arrangements, performed the songs, designed the book, inside and out:

The N.C. Arts Council, a Division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, The Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, and The Arts Council of Greater Greensboro.