Shelley Nation-Watson: Poetry : Oct 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Oklahoma with sausage gravy and biscuits and grits. My paternal ancestors were removed from Georgia and Tennessee through the Trail of Tears. My family lived on their allotments in the Going...
Lydia Yawn: Poetry: Sept 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in Vidalia, Georgia, but I now reside in Valdosta, Georgia, moving from onions into the swampy landscape to study Creative Writing at Valdosta State University. Though my accent may not show it, I am...
Gary Carter: Poetry: Sept 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Having been blessed and honored to have appeared previously in the Mule, I’d proudly hang my southern legitimacy on that fact alone. However, if you need more, let me just point out that when you grow up...
Dennis Ferrara: Poetry: Sept 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live in Virginia, have lived here for 35 years. I know it’s in the South, but I didn’t recognize that at first. I thought the South was where I grew up—in New Orleans, in Louisiana, in...
Jane Blanchard: Poetry: Sept. 2021
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...
Lisa Creech Bledsoe: Poetry: Sept. 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My father’s family were Appalachian farmers from Letcher County, KY and my mother’s were German Jews who ran a kosher deli on Beale Street in Memphis. I live in a remote fold of the NC mountains now....
Mike Horan: Poetry: Sept. 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Mike Horan was raised in the South but now makes his home in the desert outside Palm Springs, California. Landscape I get up while it’s still darkHave toOver 100 before eight a.m.The summer usualBut I need to...
Christopher Louvet: Poetry : August 2021
My Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born in Virginia though the important years happened in North Carolina, now I live in Hanoi, which though considered the north here is still farther south than anywhere else I’ve ever lived. Summer Portrait Nasturtiums and...
David Lohrey: Poetry: August 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I’m a Memphian, currently living just outside Jacksonville, Florida. Ohio She is all about living large, She, with a capital S.Living large is easy when you’ve never worked.Working sooner or later makes you feel small. Itgrinds you...
Chelsea Logan: Poetry: August 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am originally from Dickson, TN… yes Dickson, a town with no Starbucks or Target. I’m now living on the river in Nashville, TN. So Suddenly Mortal I dreamt I was old and nowthe waking hours seem...
Margo Davis: Poetry: August 2021
My Southern Legitimacy Philosophy: The minute I cross the Louisiana border, strangers assume I’m a neighbor, distant relative, someone they know. Like I never left. Maybe it’s my brassy humor, my tuba laugh. Wheel of Misfortune When my future ex...
Jay Sizemore: Poetry: August 2021
Southern Legitimacy? I was born and raised in Kentucky, which is south of Ohio, though a bit north of Tennessee. I think I have more southern cred than J.D. Vance, since I spent more than a few summers with my...
Craig Kenworthy: Poetry : August 2021
Statement of Southern Legitimacy: My family came to North Carolina in the 1600’s. Then we got lost somehow and found ourselves in Iowa. (Still, it was southern Iowa). The U.S. Air Force came to our aid by shipping my father...
Elizabeth Warner : Poetry : August 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born in West Virginia. Torn between the northern and southern cultures in the United States, I grew up conflicted about my identity as a young woman from Appalachia. When I tell someone I’m from West...
Chad W. Lutz : Poetry : July 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: Hope all is well. I’m writing to you from south North America, bottom cousin to our neighbors (Canada) to the north. I don’t know if that legitimizes my submission, but I’m going out on a limb just...
Therese Beale: Poetry: July 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I left Virginia more than 30 years ago to settle eventually in Seattle: “As far away from us as you can get!” my folks would say. Though I’m happily settled in the Pacific Northwest, I reminisce about...
Lisa Taylor: Poetry: July 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born north of the Mason-Dixon line, but with a Southern spirit. Now I’m happily settled where Southern red cedar bedecked in Spanish moss shares the landscape with live oaks and cabbage palms—Florida,the land of flowers,...
Renee Nicholson: Poetry: June 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I live a little over eight miles south of the Mason-Dixon Line in a state carved out of glaciers and war. I only eat Mister Bee’s potato chips. Tracing Inert Gasses on West Virginia Day Truth is,...
William Heath: Poetry: June 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I lived in Kentucky in the 1970s and taught American literature and creative writing at Transylvania University in Lexington, where I frequented the literary scene and gave poetry readings. One of my novels, Devil Dancer, is set...
Raymond Byrnes: Poetry: June 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I have lived in Virginia for nearly 30 years, but that’s not my SLS. I grew up in south Minneapolis, playing hockey outdoors every winter day unless it snowed too hard, so that’s not my SLS. A...
Kamil Czyz: Poetry: June 2021
Not a southern legitimacy statement, but a statement nonetheless: I was born and raised in Olsztyn, Poland. I studied history at UWM in Olsztyn and currently live and write in Gdansk. born It would take two flights of narrow stairs...
Jeffrey Miller: Poetry: June 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised in Michigan, which is south of Canada. When I was 12 years old I was stranded in Kentucky for a week, which is south of Cincinnati. I am a freelance writer and...
Benjamin Nash : Poetry: June 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My family has lived in the south for around 400 years. Something Simple The days are getting longer and longer, a deputy marshal got a shave afterkilling a man on the Western. I want something simple like...
Virginia Craighill : Poetry: June 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: A native Atlantan (not many of those) with deep matriarchal roots in Savannah, I eventually ended up enrolling at The University of the South in Sewanee, TN, where I now teach a course on Tennessee Williams. I...
Jennifer Davis Michael: Poetry: June 2021
Southern Legitimacy Statement: My parents are both Mississippians. My grandfather, Reuben Davis, published two novels about life in the Delta. I grew up in Auburn, Alabama, catching snakes, turtles, lizards, and crawdads, and went to college at the University of...
Poetry
Essays
