A SOUTHERN STORYTELLER
What if a poem could take you back—exactly as you were, exactly where you stood?
In “You There, Reading This Poem,” North Carolina poet R. Steve Martin invites readers into a deeply personal and quietly powerful body of work shaped over more than three decades. This debut collection gathers 85 poems that explore connection, faith, memory, and the small, defining moments that make up a life.
Drawing from a 36-year career in special education-working in public schools, developmental disability services, and a juvenile correctional facility-Martin brings a compassionate, observant voice to the page. His poems reflect a lifelong commitment to reaching those who feel unseen, offering readers a sense of recognition, empathy, and shared experience.
Rooted in the rhythms of Southern storytelling, Martin's style blends metaphor, personification, and a natural musicality. These are poems meant not only to be read, but heard-echoing with the cadence of lived experience and the quiet truths of everyday life.
For Martin, poetry serves as an "emotional photograph," capturing moments that can be revisited again and again. Whether reflecting on faith, relationships, or the passage of time, his work reminds us that even the most personal stories carry something universal.
Accessible, thoughtful, and often gently humorous, You There, Reading This Poem is a collection for both devoted poetry readers and those discovering poetry for the first time-an invitation to pause, reflect, and perhaps see your own life more clearly in the lines.
A New
Book by
R. Steve Martin
About the Author
R. Steve Martin was born in 1952 in Wadesboro, North Carolina, into a family of cotton mill workers. He spent his childhood on the mill village. He holds degrees from East Carolina University and Francis Marion University. He taught public school, managed a facility for the developmentally disabled, and taught at a juvenile prison.
Martin began writing poetry at age forty. He wanted to answer the question “Who knows you?” He lives in Lenoir, North Carolina, with his wife. They have two children and two grandchildren.
Praise for ‘You There, Reading This Poem’
In this collection, Steve Martin achieves what all poets are always after, But only a few occasionally accomplish — the creation of observations at once familiar and fresh, the oxymoron of familiarity and freshness in the same piece created through the difficult surprise of down-home details with an undercurrent of weighty philosophy. These are poems to be read and enjoyed over and over again.
Scott Owens
City of Hickory Poet Laureate
