Okay, new guidelines. Submission requirements being tweaked daily at our convenience. We’re brain-storming about the How’s and Why’s but are leaning toward publication upon acceptance — encouraging Mule RSS feeds to our fans. Yup. You heard me. It’s a good thing, eh? Meanwhile, back at the Dead Mule School we hang Holly and Ivy in [...]
The Dead Mule prides itself in being family. You know, writers who support each other. Here are some comments from recent Mule poets that I found on the web. This is not an attempt to find all comments nor an attempt to imply that others have not left comments elsewhere nor even an indication that [...]
Meet one of the newest poets in the Mule family as Helen Losse, Poetry Editor for the Dead Mule, interviews poet Evie Shockley. The amazing, in-depth, insightful conversation is poetry itself. I hope our readers enjoy the interview as much as I did — V. MacEwan, Editor/Publisher
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I grew up playing baseball on fields with chicken wire backstops and no outfield fences. We named our dogs after the ones on the Beverly Hillbillies. We weren’t farmers, but we raised two acres of potatoes, an acre of peanuts, and slaughtered a black angus bull every other year. We named the bulls after famous explorers. The biggest dare was riding a bike across the top of the textile mill dam.
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
In one sense, my response to the idea that “southern legitimacy” is something I need to demonstrate exists in the form of a poem: “cause i’m from dixie too.” (It appears in my book a half-red sea.) On the other hand, since this a requirement for all contributors to The Dead Mule, my poem is not exactly apropos! So I will simply say that I was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee.
[Don't miss the Dead Mule interview with Evie. Just click on "essays."]
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I have lived in North Carolina my whole life (except the first 6 months of it and the first 6 months after graduation from undergrad when I lived as far away as Virginia). I grew up in Pasquotank and Perquimans Counties, went to college in Greensboro and ended up in Charlotte.
My great-grandfather was supposedly Cherokee. But his last name was Driggers AND he may have changed it to hide from the law. So . . .
And then there was that time in high school when I said “ya’ll” in front of a German exchange student and then had to explain. Good thing he didn’t ask me the name of what I was eating and drinking at the time. Heaven forbid I had to explain an RC cola and a moon-pie.
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I live in Louisiana. Most of my recent writing has taken place on airplanes or in airports on my travels between the South and the Non-South. We are our own breed. As Flannery O’Connor put it, “Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.”
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I have one uncle and my wife has one uncle. Both uncles are certain that the War of Northern Aggression is still being fought. Either will bend your ear, at supper or a funeral, about how the South is on the cusp of victory because them fools north of the Mason-Dixon still don’t realize the war never really ended. My wife and I bristle a little at this talk, and wish we could dissuade our uncles, but how could we? They’re South Carolina boys, and we both had the poor sense to be born, schooled, and settled in North Carolina. What could we possibly know about the South?
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I grew up in Michigan, but my mom is from Tennessee, so I suppose my first language was Southern. Every summer my mom would drive us kids down to Chattanooga to visit with my Gran and other relatives. Banana pudding, Rock City, sweet tea, cobwebby Confederama*, 8-ounce Cokes = childhood summers. Funny that I married a Nashville musician — I’ve lived here almost 20 years now.
*Confederama is now called The Battles for Chattanooga Museum. (Rolling my eyes.)
The rest of the poems will be online sans the photos just after noon tomorrow. The pictures will be up later. Sometimes we’re “dazed and confused.” Sometimes family comes to town, sometimes our luck runs out, or we’re just busy. . . .
Folks, if you don’t know Carter, then you ain’t been reading the Mule.
my southern statement thing:
I lived the first major chunk of my life near Little Rock, Arkansas and the second big chunk, the one I’m in now, in Birmingham, Alabama. Sometime in there, I spent four years in Memphis. Yes, my life has been sort of like a Civil Rights Movement bus tour.
I’m grateful for the experience and mindful of all my beautiful neighbors along the way.
okay, maybe not hot… Nov. 15th we’ll start posting some poetry, a couple of poets a day (with a little luck) and ya’ll will love Bill’s photographs. Fiction and essays loaded next!
New work from eight poets, Dale Wisely, Jilly Dybka, Ross White, Leslie Joseph, Jessie Carty, Evie Shockley, Tim Peeler and Carter Monroe, will be published on or about November 20. I am completing an interview with Evie Shockley that will be online the same day. Photographs by Bill Losse will be published at this time. [...]