
Ray Whitaker :: Three Poems for October ::
My Southern Legitimacy Statement: After moving west, I find that I to this day, compare things out here in Big Sky country to standards set by having lived in North Carolina for a lot of my life…. truly I do...

Michael Lee Johnson :: Halloween Poems ::
Not sure what a Southern Legitimacy Statement is but – in fact I lived in Titusville, Florida and worked at Cape Canaveral between 1966-1969. I also returned after 10 yrs. in exile in Canada the Vietnam War & lived in...

Matthew Johnson :: Three Poems for October ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am not Southern by birth, though the South has become an adopted home, having been a resident of Greensboro, NC for a few years now. I carry many of my upstate New York and New England...

Bill Pendergraft :: Three Poems for October ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am a sixth-generation North Carolinian. I was a high school English teacher in Burgaw, NC and years later an environmental writer/producer who depended on major environmental organizations for my paycheck, although Southerners were sometimes seen as...

Joyce Compton Brown :: Three Poems for October ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Having grown up in a little mill town hanging balanced between old family farms and local factories, I feel eligible for membership in the Dead mule school,. My family held on to its German American roots and...

Carol Parris Krauss :: A Four Iron for Bashing Brains & the curls against the back of her neck ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I have eaten liver mush, frog legs, and gator bites. Worn orange overalls and purchased with $2.00, tiger stamped bills at Clemson football games. I have walked the swinging bridge at Grandfather Mountain and known that I...

stella graham-landau :: just be present ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: i have a snarly relationship with the south. i was born in richmond moved to south carolina back to richmond then north carolina back to richmond stint in ohio back to richmond. always here in spite of...

Karen Lozinski :: Directions Defy Horizons ::
Here’s my Southern Legitimacy Statement: Is geographic location enough in this instance…? I guess for me, it’s going to have to suffice. I’m from generations of hardcore New Yorkers. The city of my birth, most of my education, and my...

Sam Barbee :: “A Dead-On Toss”, “Generous Gods” and “Tiny Dancers”
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and given away at birth; raised and educated; married and divorced; defiled and defined, and churched, in North Carolina. Southern writers such as Flanner O’Conner and James Dickey molded my fiction and poetry. As...

Jerry Hogan :: “Bright Light,” “Reconcile,” and “Setting the Bar” ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Too often, our Native American past has been ignored or left out of Southern history. Here in Fayetteville, Arkansas we have a long connection to the Cherokee Nation. From 1839, when the John Benge detachment on the...

Jane Blanchard :: pluff mud ::
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...

Alan May :: The Boy and the Monster ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in Central Heights in northwest Alabama, and I’ve lived in Tuscaloosa and Knoxville. I have never been outside of the south for more than a few days at a stretch. I was 25 before...

Malcolm Glass :: The Last Time He Tried ::
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in Florida. And that certainly doesn’t count. Surrounded by rich Yankees for twenty-some-odd years, I had no idea what the South was about. But I came to Tennessee sixty years ago and went to...