Lizzie Krieg: Two Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
As a child, I lived in Fairfield, Ohio. During the summer, my mom and dad would take me to Cincinnati to get ice cream at Graeter's and we'd hang out on the riverfront. I'd eat my ice cream, always chocolate chip, and look out over the Ohio, and marvel that not only was I looking into another state, but at the subtle distinction that separated the Midwest, where I was, from the South. Even then, at six, I saw something wild about that land over the river, and wondered why Kentucky should seem so much freer than where I was, less than a mile away.
Malinda Fillingim: Two Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I was born and raised in South Carolina, and now I’m living in the Tar-Heel State.
Carol Lynn Grellas: Two Poems
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
My favorite movie is Gone with the Wind. I’ve saved the drapes from every home I’ve ever owned hoping I might salvage a gown or two that even Scarlett would be proud to wear.
Allie Coker-Schwimmer: Caught Between Two Worlds
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I realize that the phrase "Bless Your Heart" is both an insult and a mildly compassionate remark.
Michael Dwayne Smith: Blues for a Day
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
First off, cookin' ... I mean Grandmama's fried chicken, roadside shack boudin sausage made with crawfish, and speaking of crawfish, I mean crawfish étouffée and oyster po-boys and blackened catfish for lunch, with ice cold Turbodog poured all over it-- and don't forget the fried dill pickles, please. Second, blood ... I wasn't born in the South (yes, I admit, southern California), but my family runs through Missouri and Texas, by way of Tennessee. And third, brotherhood ... one of my best friends is from Mississippi, and it's because of him I get to spend time eating, drinking, and photographing in Jackson and Vicksburg and New Orleans. It's just something that walks with you all your days, whether you like it or not, whether you want to feel blues or bluegrass or Irish or cajun in your blood, or no. I'm hungry.
Joanna S. Lee: incongruent
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Of closer bloodline to Robert E. than to Bruce, I grew up learning battle names: Manassas, not Bull Run; Sharpsburg, not Antietam. And though I was raised nigh the border (Winchester—three battles of its own), I call Richmond, and the banks of the James River, home.
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.
Poetry
Essays
