On Strike for My Union Daddy, West Virginia, 1933
We went early, up on the tracks, and sang to the “scabs,” John L. Lewis is our leader, I shall […]
Appalachian Poets, Audio, Poems, Tributes
Tributes
Appalachian Poets, Audio, Poems, Tributes
23 Miners Dead at Century Mine
Thursday, March 22, 1906 No. 1 Shaft Mine Century, West Virginia The first trip out fetches ten men, five alive,
Appalachian Poets, Audio, Poems, Tributes
Katabasis
In a dream: cold rains falling in reverse out the autumn earth I felt my body & my body
Grandmother
I grew up in the gorgeous and harrowing backdrop of North Carolina Appalachia. My days were blessed with the ripeness of the surrounding natural world and simultaneously marred by generational poverty and trauma. Through surreal and overlapping imagery, my poems aim to observe and make sense of life as it moves against the complicated framework of the American South. My speakers question what we can keep of our regional inheritance, and what we must leave behind.
Appalachian Poets, Poems, Tributes
Sometimes the Dream Comes Back to Me
A short gravel driveway, the tatty wooden fence that stumbled—this way, that way— like the strides of a drunkard from
Appalachian Poets, Audio, Poems, Tributes
Imagining Abraham
as my silent immigrant parent My father was a wandering Aramean; he placed a dead deer in my hands.