Upcoming events and things to do in Asheville, NC. Below is a list of events for festivals, concerts, art exhibitions, group meetups and more.

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Thursday, August 18, 2022
THE MOTH Presents: Asheville StorySLAM – “Happy”
Aug 18 @ 7:30 pm
The Grey Eagle

– FULLY SEATED SHOW

THE MOTH resumes their recurring monthly Asheville StorySLAM at The Grey Eagle on the third Thursday of each month through December at 7:30pm! This month’s theme is….

HAPPY: Prepare a five-minute story about smiles and sunshine. Think unbridled joy—landing the dream job, winning the talent show, or bowling a perfect game. The quest for your soul mate or for the perfect cup of coffee. The Midas touch. The good old days. Tales of finding happiness or letting it slip through your fingers.

Thursday, September 15, 2022
THE MOTH Presents: Asheville StorySLAM – “Juggle”
Sep 15 @ 7:30 pm
The Grey Eagle

Thursday, October 20, 2022
Poetry Reading: Jeffery Beam
Oct 20 @ 7:00 pm
Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center

Reminiscent of Eastern Bhakti love poetry, and Western Troubadour and Green Man traditions, Verdant recounts a mid-life passage within a shadowed natural landscape of intense physical and spiritual longing.

At the age of 42, queer poet Jeffery Beam fell in love with a younger man, threatening his then 15-year relationship. These poems were born of that spiritual alchemical blaze, and its substantial healing power. The poet-lover’s sacred quest through heartbreak, suffering, grief, and regret, progresses ultimately to a joyful ecstatic reunion with the Beloved Divine. A mini-essay, “Don’t Forget Love: Sacred Longing’s Dark Project”, further illuminates the actual, mythological, and spiritual origins of the poems, and describes the poet’s lifetime search through experience, teachings, and literature, to a condition in which Desire and Love enrich instead of subsume the Self.

What could be more important than a love poem? These by Jeffery Beam are gorgeous, rich, and wise. I’m reminded how the thinnest membrane separates rapture from heartbreak, how both the human realm and the insect kingdom are awash with love. Beam’s poems flicker between Mirabai and the evening cricket, between Rilke and the night-clad firefly. Look close. Look close again!

-Andrew Schelling, author of Love and the Turning Seasons: India’s Poetry of Spiritual and Erotic Longing

Jeffery Beam’s work hailed for its “transcendent, lush beauty, its minimal sacrament, simplicity and physicality” fuses through Gnostic intention the physical and spiritual worlds, creating a conversation between the natural world, the body, and the spirit.