Traci Elliott: Poetry: Oct 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I come from Charlotte. When I was little, we went to church at Long Creek Baptist, and I was baptized by a preacher named Kenny, all the way under the water, but just for a second, hardly...
Shelley Nation-Watson: Poetry : Oct 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Oklahoma with sausage gravy and biscuits and grits. My paternal ancestors were removed from Georgia and Tennessee through the Trail of Tears. My family lived on their allotments in the Going...
Lydia Yawn: Poetry: Sept 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Vidalia, Georgia, but I now reside in Valdosta, Georgia, moving from onions into the swampy landscape to study Creative Writing at Valdosta State University. Though my accent may not show it, I am...
Gary Carter: Poetry: Sept 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Having been blessed and honored to have appeared previously in the Mule, I’d proudly hang my southern legitimacy on that fact alone. However, if you need more, let me just point out that when you grow up...
Dennis Ferrara: Poetry: Sept 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live in Virginia, have lived here for 35 years. I know it’s in the South, but I didn’t recognize that at first. I thought the South was where I grew up—in New Orleans, in Louisiana, in...
Jane Blanchard: Poetry: Sept. 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Native to Virginia and long-resident in Georgia, I’m as Southern as Southern can be. (Let’s not talk about the seven-year stretch in New Jersey.) A prominent Mid-Western poet once told me during a workshop, “I could listen...
Lisa Creech Bledsoe: Poetry: Sept. 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My father’s family were Appalachian farmers from Letcher County, KY and my mother’s were German Jews who ran a kosher deli on Beale Street in Memphis. I live in a remote fold of the NC mountains now....
Mike Horan: Poetry: Sept. 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Mike Horan was raised in the South but now makes his home in the desert outside Palm Springs, California. Landscape I get up while it’s still darkHave toOver 100 before eight a.m.The summer usualBut I need to...
Christopher Louvet: Poetry : August 2021
My Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born in Virginia though the important years happened in North Carolina, now I live in Hanoi, which though considered the north here is still farther south than anywhere else I’ve ever lived. Summer Portrait Nasturtiums and...
David Lohrey: Poetry: August 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m a Memphian, currently living just outside Jacksonville, Florida. Ohio She is all about living large, She, with a capital S.Living large is easy when you’ve never worked.Working sooner or later makes you feel small. Itgrinds you...
Chelsea Logan: Poetry: August 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am originally from Dickson, TN… yes Dickson, a town with no Starbucks or Target. I’m now living on the river in Nashville, TN. So Suddenly Mortal I dreamt I was old and nowthe waking hours seem...
Margo Davis: Poetry: August 2021
My Southern Legitimacy Philosophy: The minute I cross the Louisiana border, strangers assume I’m a neighbor, distant relative, someone they know. Like I never left. Maybe it’s my brassy humor, my tuba laugh. Wheel of Misfortune When my future ex...
Jay Sizemore: Poetry: August 2021
Southern Legitimacy? I was born and raised in Kentucky, which is south of Ohio, though a bit north of Tennessee. I think I have more southern cred than J.D. Vance, since I spent more than a few summers with my...