Carol Bond: Swamp Witch
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
My favorite southern saying is "happy as a one-eyed cat in a barrel of fishheads."
Paul Owen: Railroad Tracks
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I am a college professor in the Asheville, NC area and have lived here for the last eleven years. I assume that qualifies me as living in the South.
Tracei R. Willis: When You Tell My Story
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I consider myself to be a Southerner with Northern tendencies, an illegitimate daughter of the South if you will. I was born in Ohio to parents who were born and bred in Alabama. They felt their southern roots wilting when I was five years old, so they uprooted their flower child from sidewalks, snow, and front stoops, and transplanted me in red clay of Alabama, the Magnolia trees of Mississippi, and right up on my Big Mama's front porch. Whenever my Northern idiosyncrasies began to surface, my parents would send to one of my grandmothers for some Southern reconditioning. It was in the kitchens of Nellie Willis and Annie Jones that I learned some vital Southern lessons: 1. In the South there are canisters on kitchen counters that contain sugar, flour, corn meal and grits-- store brand sugar is acceptable, but anything other than Martha White Self-Rising flour, Sunflower corn meal, and Jim Dandy grits, and you'll have a sure-fire riot on your hands. 2. There are as many ways to cook grits as there are women who cook grits, just smile and rave about not ever having had a finer bowl of grits and you'll be okay. 3. Every kitchen counter has two blue cans of Crisco, one that actually has Crisco in it, and the other to hold bacon drippings. (Don't ask questions, just eat.) 4. Sweet tea comes two ways down here, cold and sweet. You can make it on the stove top, you can make on the back porch, you can add lemon, mint, peaches or berries-- just don't make it from a jar of instant powder mix, and don't make it with sugar substitute-- if you ask for unsweetened tea down here, you're libel to end up with a cold glass of ice water. 5. The best seasoning for greens, peas, beans, squash, and corn? Meat. Preferably smoked meat. Preferably the neck, hock, or tail of a turkey, hog, or ox. Running short on meat? (That's what that can of bacon drippings is for.) I am a Southerner, by way of Ohio, transplanted in Mississippi, with kudzu-like attachments to Alabama.
Cody Badaracca: Sludge
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Although hailing from North Routt County, Colorado, Cody Badaracca spent 5 1/2 years of his recent young adult life living in Nashville, Tennessee, where he developed an affectionate spot for Tennessee, grits, Coon Hounds, and irregular word contractions. If he should die in the Volunteer State, Cody requests that his body be allowed to be overgrown by kudzu somewhere in the Cherokee National Forest.
Alan Reynolds: Four Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I was born and grew up in Asheville and later lived in the south of New England before moving on to the south of England and the south of Amsterdam, none of which are The South, but many of my poems about The South because I still think about and dream in Southern. I dream about The South, especially the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains. And about cleaning dirt off windshields and rust off exhaust pipes with the RC Cola left over after drinking half of it to keep away carsickness after gobbling all the moon pies.
Berrien C. Henderson: Four Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I’ve lived in the South all my life—southeast Georgia, in fact–and currently live so far in the sticks that the turkey buzzards feed on the other turkey buzzards that have lost a vehicular battle of one sort or another.
Charlotte Hamrick: Three Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
The summer I was fifteen I was sitting on the pier at the local swimming hole waiting for friends when I was approached by an older boy. He asked where I lived and when I replied, "Down the road a piece." he asked, "Is that near yonder?" I knew immediately he wasn't from the south.
Robert Cory: Three Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I confess to the following: a) learned to eat (and like) grits, biscuits and ham gravy at a little cafe on the town square in Fayetteville, AR. b) one of my favorite all time authors - Barry Hannah, whose characters are The South, to wit: "We invented gin and tonic." c) I still use the term "Y'all"; d) I talked to a man in Daytona, FL. in the early 70's who claimed he could limp on both legs; e) in the poem “Just Past Midnight” I was the only Yankee on board.
Matt Byars: Three Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I've lived in the South my entire life thus far with the exception of a foolish year I spent in Seattle. There was a girl involved. I figure twenty-nine years in West Texas and six years in Atlanta will more than atone for my youthful indiscretion with the non-South.
Jonathan Patterson: Two Prose Poems and Two Haiku
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Born and raised in a small town in Western Kentucky. A progeny of a long line of southern men who know nothing but carpentry and southern disposition; hence, some might say, I am a southerner. I currently live in Illinois, but, for better or for worse, Kentucky never leaves me.
Jennifer Hollie Bowles: Two Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I've lived in the South my entire life, well, except for that short time I lived in Kansas City, MO, but we won't talk about that. I'm well-educated, but the slang still slips out, sometimes like chicken gravy, and sometimes like molasses. I have a nose-ring, and I don't look Southern at first glance, but if you get to know me a minute, you'll see. I've got that thing you can't put your finger on about Southerners, that thing that hissy-fits through life screaming: “I'm going to forge my own path come hell or high water!” And because I'm so damn charming, you'll never know what hit you... As my granny always says, “butter wouldn't melt.”
Jeanetta Calhoun Mish: Two Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
All my folks on my momma’s side that I know of came to Oklahoma from South Carolina and Kentucky, on the Southern route. I grow collard greens, sweet potatoes, and okra in my vegetable garden (or did, before I moved to the mountains of New Mexico. Does anybody know of you can grow okra in the mountains?). I used to try to hide my accent but have decided it’s an asset. My husband likes to tell the story of when we were in a Powdrell’s, a barbeque restaurant in Albuquerque, and the owner, a man from East Texas, came all the way acrost the room to tell me how much he loved to hear me git excited about finding “sweet-tea” on the menu. And anyway, Oklahoma (especially eastern and southern Oklahoma, where I’m from) is a Southern state where the eighth college of the Seven Sisters of the South was founded, where barbeque is a sacrament (served dry, sauce on the side), and where I learned to eat granny’s homemade chow chow with beans. The story of Sarah Venable Little as told in my poem, my great-great-great is true so far as I know it; the baby she’s carrying is my great-great grandpa. The diary section is purely imaginary.
Ry Frazier: Two Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I lived in Savannah, GA for some odd years. I'm awfully fond of the way it feels when I say the word "Tupelo". The last girl I kissed was from Florida.
George Nixon: Two Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I was raised in and around Edenton, NC, mostly working on farms. I learned about enduring August heat, working with mules, and how to get to the end of the next row of peanuts by singing and creating diversions in my head. All that served me well in later life. I learned the 3 R"s and ended up in Richmond, VA. where I have been a counselor for the last 30+ years
Philip C. Kolin: “Farewell Big Easy: A Post-Katrina Eulogy”
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I am married to one of the most beautiful Southern belles from Mobile.
Poetry
Essays
