Poet Laureate Of Knoxville, World Renowned Songwriter

Historic Rugby continues its year-long series of writer visits on Saturday, May 20 with a reading and performance by RB Morris. The reading is free and will be at the Harrow Road Café in Rugby at 7 p.m. The café will open for dinner at 5 p.m. All times are Eastern.

RB Morris is a poet and songwriter, solo performer and band leader, and a sometimes playwright and actor from Knoxville, Tennessee. He will read from his works, perform songs, and tell stories.

He has published books of poetry including Early Fires (Iris Press), Keeping The Bees Employed, and The Mockingbird Poems (Rich Mountain Bound), and music albums including Spies Lies and Burning Eyes, Zeke and the Wheel, and Take That Ride, along with his most recent solo project Rich Mountain Bound.

He wrote and acted in The Man Who Lives Here Is Looney, a one-man play taken from the life and work of James Agee, and was instrumental in founding a park dedicated to Agee in Knoxville. Morris served as the Jack E. Reese Writer-in-Residence at The University of Tennessee from 2004-2008, and was inducted into the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame in 2009. He is the current Poet Laureate of The City of Knoxville.

His work has strong Appalachian themes, and fits in nicely with Historic Rugby’s mission to preserve and promote the culture of our region.

Rugby, founded in 1880 as a British-American utopian village, is just off State Scenic Hwy. 52, sixteen miles southeast of Jamestown and 35 miles from either Interstate 40 or I-75 in western East Tennessee. To learn more, visit historicrugby.org.