Category: Poetry

Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Valdosta, Georgia. My grandfather was more tied to the mythos of the South than my parents were. My grandfather said at the kitchen table one time, “Your grandmother is a Yankee [from Ohio],”...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: Fayetteville, Arkansas is my home. I grew up here and then was gone for a very long time. But I came back to live here again and to research and write. I’m a local historian, a novelist,...

Southern Legitimacy Statement: When we think of the south, those of us who are older remember sitting on porches to visit or to help others string beans when the crop was in. Our house, in southwestern Virginia, faced a street...

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...