E. Craig Wall Jr. Academic Center

Jack McMichael Martin (1936–2023), who published as Michael Martin, was a member of the Davidson class of 1958 and the eldest son of David Grier Martin Sr., the 13th president of Davidson College (1958–68).

“Mike,” as he was known to family and friends, excelled in many fields. He was president of his high school class and voted “most likely to succeed,” a star on the basketball and tennis teams at North Mecklenburg High and at Davidson, an Army captain, Phi Beta Kappa, and a Duke-trained historian. Yet he ultimately cared little about public notoriety. He later wrote that the most important heroes of his early years were his father, his grandmother Martin, and Samson, the African American foreman of her Georgia dairy farm. The kindness, generosity, and strength of spirit of these towering figures of his youth compelled Mike to pursue a path that would leave a lasting contribution. From his second year at Davidson onward, he single-mindedly devoted himself to his vocation as a writer, thinker, and artist.

Called “the foremost meditative poet of Appalachia” by North Carolina Poet Laureate Shelby Stephenson, Martin lived and wrote for 30 years in southwest Virginia, in a mountaintop cabin he built himself, a mile from the nearest road or utility line. There he wrote and drew, and created works of photography, woodworking, and sculpture. He forged deep friendships with members of his rural community, especially his “mountain mother,” the now-renowned ceramic artistic Georgia Blizzard (who becomes “Beulah” in his poetry), and his “mountain father,” Hugh Lee Breedlove (who becomes “Philo”). Much of his writing chronicles their joys and struggles, as well as those of their ancestors who lived in the hollers beneath his mountain in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and links these lives to the continual striving of human history. His deep exploration of a small place achieves a resonant universality.

Martin’s poems and visual art grant equal respect and love to his rural Appalachian neighbors and the natural world. His work implores us to remember the forgotten and notice the hidden. As poet-historian, Martin drew arresting connections between nature, history, philosophy, and the triumphs and tragedies within his own extended family. In words, images, and spoken verse, he resurrected the chestnuts felled by the Great Chestnut Blight, the ancestors, and all of Creation. His timeless work compels us to pause and pay attention in an era of paralyzing distraction and speed.

In his later years, Martin returned to live in his family’s home on Lake Norman, where he continued to develop his art and his profound connections to nature, family, and friends. His poems have appeared in journals including Shenandoah, a special section of Pembroke Magazine, and a special issue of Iron Mountain Review devoted to his work, to which another North Carolina poet laureate, Fred Chappell, contributed a literary analysis of Martin’s oeuvre. His visual art has been featured in galleries around the Southeast. Approaching History was the overreaching title he gave to the body of his lifework.

This exhibit features visual and poetic works from several of Martin’s most enduring series: Plan for Ailing City, A Memoir, On the Fall of the Great Trees, the Dance of the Woodman, and Appalachian Fall. All provide messages of encouragement to persevere, connect, and contribute as we navigate the challenges that face our earth and contemporary civilization.

-- Eva Martin, Alex Martin, and Jessica Ellis

Visit his website by following this link.