Category: Poetry

My SLS varies with my mood and the moon. Sometimes I think about how race relations and people’s perspectives have and have not changed. Sometimes it’s as simple as what’s on the table for dinner. Sometimes it’s about the overarching...

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...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born, reared, and educated in South Louisiana, the sixth generation of my family in the New Orleans area. When I was really little, my family used to watch Hee-Haw every weekend, and somehow I learned...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Missouri and now live (very, very) close to Atlanta. With the exception of college, I have spent my entire life in the South. She Would Always Be My Girl From birth,...

As for a Southern Legitimacy statement, here goes:I was born and raised outside of Knoxville, Tennessee.  One great-great-great grandfather was an abolitionist state representative in the Radical Republican legislature in Tennessee during Reconstruction.  Another great-great-great grandfather was a member of...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: There’s more to the South than culture, food, idiom, hunting, fishing and football. I have been a citizen of the South for a long time. I have seen changes in the demographics, the climate, the culture seen...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: In keeping with the theme of this poem, various motorcycles marked my years in the South. In high school in Winston-Salem, I rode a Honda CT90, low on speed and power, but I got back and forth...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: We moved to North Carolina when I was ten. It was 1979, and I watched The Dukes of Hazard religiously. I spent summer days in the woods along the Haw River. My buddy and I would walk...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Work, labor, and economy have been areas of focus in my art practice over the last several years. Before I began my journey as a visual artist and educator, I worked blue collar jobs in the printing...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Kristina Heflin spent her formative years hiking in the Georgian foothills of the Appalachians. It was there she learned a love for all animals, from the squishy frogs of the backwoods criks to the bumbling bears of...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Kelly Jones hates the sound of cicadas but loves lightning bugs, biscuits, and the way kudzu makes fun shapes out of old houses and powerlines. Their power animal is the manatee, and Wild Turkey is their strong...

Southern Legitimacy Statement Born and raised in Caldwell County, North Carolina, I have lived in the Old North State most of my life (except for two soggy years in Oregon — what was I thinking?). I am the youngest of...

I’m Charlie Southerland. When you check up on me, you’ll also find ‘Charles’ Southerland in most of my published work. It is regrettable and unavoidable. However, I live on my 240-acre farm, which is more than I deserve or can...