Southern Legitimacy Statement:
If the folks in your head are more interesting than those in your living room, and you’re willing to share them, you might be southern.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
A coal car ran over my platinum haired father and killed him in the dank of the Penman, WV mines when I was five months old. That’s when we moved to East Beckley, WV. Grandpa was a retired miner turned hellfire and brimstone Pentecostal evangelist, and he and Grandma looked after me and any other strays she could get her hands on while Mother went off to work in a defense plant as a Rosie the Riveter during WWII. I grew up around the good people of West Virginia, and those of us who didn’t have coal dust under our fingernails still shared some visceral connection to the mines. Grandma said scratch a West Virginian a few layers deep, and you’re bound to find a vein of coal. Mine runs close. Oh, and I recently won the WV Writers First Place Nonfiction Award. And First HM too.

As we say down here in North Carolina, I’m Tar Heel born and Tar Heel bred and when I die, I’ll be Tar Heel dead. Fruit of a good old boy who loved his beer and was full of colorful sayings for every occasion. You know, something that smelled real bad would “gag a maggot,” while a steamy July day was “hot as a young wife’s passion.” His nemesis was dear old mom, who would roll her eyes when these things popped out of his mouth because she was the daughter of a Southern Baptist minister, which makes me the grandson and is deemed worse in some circles, and god knows I’ve tried to live up to it. One of our best family stories involves my daddy standing in line in the ABC store with a bottle of bourbon when one of the deacons from granddaddy’s church happened in, getting a little spooked when he knew he was spotted. “I’m, uh, just picking up something for a friend,” the deacon claimed. “That’s okay,” daddy told him. “I’m getting this for the preacher.” My granddaddy stayed pissed off about that for a long, long time.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
My connection to the South stems from my father’s job which brought us to relocate to eastern South Carolina. At a formative age I learned to crave the biscuits, pecan pies, and grits served with breakfast (even if not ordered). I still envy those mild winters–and once in awhile even say y’all.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
We buy our fireworks in a trailer, from a man with no arms.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
One of my earliest memories is of a relative sipping a Budweiser while I sat on his lap and “drove” a tractor down U.S. 601 to the creosote plant. That’s pretty Southern, isn’t it?

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
My Southern condition just keeps getting worse. I was born south of the Mason-Dixon line in that North-South ambiguous state named Maryland. Southerners call me a Yankee and Northerners call me a redneck, so there’s no winning really.

At the age of eighteen I started college at a former plantation in Virginia, a school for women founded by a slave-owner’s daughter. There I developed long-lasting addictions to sweet tea and cheese biscuits, and an unironic appreciation for Lynyrd Skynyrd. The day before graduation, my friends and I walked to the slave graveyard and offered words and watermelon wine to the dead.

Now, I’m ankle-deep in the North Carolina Piedmont and who knows where I’m going next? All my life, I’ve gone farther south and I’ll admit it: I feel at home here.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
My family has been holed up in the mountains of western North Carolina since the 18th century—living within 10 square miles for over 200 years. Despite this sturdy geographical placement in the South, Southernness is a theme I’ve been exploring a lot recently in my current book project, especially as I unpack my family tree and remember a third-grade classmate of mine who broke down and cried for 2 days when he learned the South lost the war (I’m not sure what’s more shocking–his reaction or his not-knowing). Even though I was born and reared in the South, I’ve found Union-fighting and Confederate-supporting kin in my family tree. Southerness, especially for us mountain folk, is both a place and choice. I materialized in the South, but I’ve found its ways both confusing and comforting, and I, like those who came before me, have chosen to settle in here. I, like the fiddle tune, Brother Green, proclaims, “shall die a Southern.”

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I have proof.

My grandfather spent his twilight years drinking cognac and reliving the War. Initially Papa Jules had been assigned submarine duty. Fortunately he was transferred to a desk job in Belgium. This, of course, only after his commander realized Papa spoke a peculiar form of French. When Papa died we found over a hundred naked photos of Belgian women in various poses . When my New Orleans born Creole grandmother saw the photos, she noted each woman’s posture accordingly. That fact alone would tell you that if only the names were different my family would be considered as deeply southern as if we lived in Cumberland County.

Grits: Butter usually; sugar never; shrimp sometimes.

Southern Legitimacy Statement taken from the story:
“…Then she knew that he was not seeing her as she was, but as she had been in high school when she strutted the halls in her pleated cheerleader skirt and tight sweater, white socks and saddle oxfords. Those were her greatest moments, the times when she was an acknowledged force in control of all around her.”

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
We had two mules on our old farm–Bob and Mike. Bob was blind in one eye and Mike died from the grass founder. Bob got old and died a peaceful but lonely death.

My dad was from Mississippi, outside Oxford, and my mom from North Carolina, where I grew up. The old farm was in Randolph County. The old man up and left us and my mom rented out our tobacco allotment and got a job in a mill in town. Later on my grandpa moved in with us. He’d lost half of one arm to a cotton gin back in 1919. Everyone called him “Nub.” He was eighty-two when he moved in and I was ten.

I’ve lived down here most of my life. Did the Southern thing and left, determined to never come back, and came back a few years later. The old farm place was sold years ago and is a trailer court now. I live in a city and work as an editor. I love sweet potatoes.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I grew up on grits, greens and biscuits with sawmill gravy. I never knew vegetables could be cooked without pork fat (strained and recycled from my mom’s Maxwell House coffee can) until I went away to college. One of the highlights of my childhood was driving throught the streets of Birmingham, AL, and giggling at the crack of Vulcan’s ass as an enormous statue of the iron god sits atop the main hill in 5-Points South.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I have lived in Texas and Louisiana my whole life. When I taught at a school way out in the country, I was surprised to learn that “Hunting Safety” was a course requirement. Yet, my father and brother-in-law loved to hunt. My boyfriend loved to hunt. I was ready to give it a try. Instead, hunting gave me a try.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I once asked a prospective suitor if I could cook him up some catheads ‘n pig skins. He never called again.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I was born in Texas, lived also in Georgia, mostly Alabama, now live in Arkansas. I mentioned, once, to a friend who was from Chicago, that I hadn’t had a good, sliced ‘mater in quite a while. He looked at me like I was from Mars. I’m Southern. Y’all have nice day.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Basically, I am southern legit because when I moved from Delaware to Oregon in 1982, all the west coast kids made fun of the way I said the word “door.” And oh, I got my MFA at Warren Wilson College.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I am a product of the Georgia flatlands, my feet cow-hoof tough from running barefoot through the acres of words that stretched untouched and wild from the Okapilco Creek to my back door. The pinelands were my bedroom and study. I cooked greasy eggs over campfires on pond bank where I shot squirrels, smoked rabbit tobacco and stolen cigarettes, and impressed friends with cuss words I learned on the bus. In the heat of the late afternoon I would stretch out in the spider-webbed sunlight, pine boughs pillow enough, and read of Travis and his yellow dog, Billy and his little red ones, and Brian eating choke-cherries on some far-off Canadian lake.

I am reborn each summer in the brackish waters of the St. Johns, my life reduced for a week to sunburned ears, shellcrackers on taut lines, and coke cans floating in a red and white cooler. The low hum of a trolling motor, the far-off grunt of an alligator, and craft’s rhythmic rocking soothe my spirit. The whine of a line zipped quickly by a retreating bream holds more excitement than it should, and the foam lapping the side of the boat baptizes me as we move from fishing hole to hole, memory to memory. It is here I know myself best and understand life most clearly, the river’s murky water cleansing me again and again. It is here I find God, his existence undeniable in a sunset over Shell Point, his presence unmistakable in a blue heron’s awkward flight from atop the channel marker, and his love overwhelming in the arm of my father on my shoulders as we load fish baskets into the bed of a Dodge pickup at the end of the day.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I was raised to catch lightening bugs in a Coca-Cola bottle, say “I swanny”, and praise Margaret Mitchell in a tone that most people don’t even use when talking about their mothers. When I was ten years old and I asked my mother what kinds of cultures our ancestors had, she didn’t bat an eyelash when she replied “Southern”.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
To me the South is home. It’s where you know folks because you always knew them. You know their parents and their grandparents, their brothers, sisters, husbands, and wives. It’s a place you can wear a smile and not feel like it’s a mask. It’s where you can be yourself because that’s how folks expect you to be. It’s where looking people in the eye is a good thing. It’s where you can sit down and enjoy the pie. It’s home. To me the South is home.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Along with my brother and sister, I was hauled away from Minneapolis at a knee-high age by a couple strangers who took us to red soil red brick red hot Atlanta, and then to a sleepy town near Charlotte. To ease our alienation they said they were our parents, so we were nice to them and let them read us stories and take us to the Dairy Queen, though I had my doubts when they committed us to a fenced brick edifice full of kids screaming Yankee and whistling spit wads, that is until I knew the Civil War would never end and that we were outnumbered and surrounded. By then we had grown older than tree frogs in The Old North State and so they figured we had surrendered, as indeed we had, gracefully; that trial by assimilation gave us our root and heart home not merely in the South, but in North Carolina: ‘with all the rights, honors, and privileges thereunto appertaining.’

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Although I was not born in The South, I have often regretted that fact. I have seriously considered changing my first name to Beauregard. I not only know where the Mason-Dixon Line is, I know what it is. It is a great pleasure to mention that I have written, fondly, about mules. I have been in each of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia at least twice. I have written about Louisiana and South Carolina. I have consumed, and enjoyed, both bourbon and sour mash. I am going to pout a glass of bourbon as soon as I send of this submission.
Grits are certainly one of the foods I enjoy. I admit that I prefer them fried.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Reared in Mississippi; married in Louisiana; raised a family in Texas. When I get north of Kentucky I get shortness of breath, cold sweats, blurred vision. It’s a weary existence far from home.

I was born and raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. It’s a small town where almost everyone knows your name, and if they don’t they still wave at you as you drive through town. Everyone grows a garden, has a rocking chair on the front porch, and owns a couple of dogs. Fried chicken and succotash are staples on the dinner table. My father considers corn bread crumbled in a glass of buttermilk to be dessert. Most people still have a wood stove even if they don’t cook on it anymore. And practically everyone has a mason jar of moonshine tucked away in a safe place.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
My favorite flower is a magnolia blossom because we had a Magnolia in the backyard of my southern Alabama home and because it was the first flower I ever gave a girl. I have lived in Alabama, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, and South Carolina for a spell. I am fond of whittling.”

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
If having a book of poetry published in which many of my readers’ favorite poem is called, “Tomato Sandwich,” and writing this essay about my “Granny” and “Papa” White doesn’t firmly establish me as a “Southerner,” I don’t know what else to say…

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
If your ring tone is “heartaches by the number and trouble by the score,” and you’re willing to talk about it, you might be southern.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Seven out of ten people I speak to out of state cannot understand a single word I say. I have done all of the following: eaten chicken I saw running in the yard a few short hours before, lived in a house with no plumbing for more than a year, been held at gunpoint by a drunk coal miner and swam in the creek with my dogs. Likewise, I grew up in Eastern Kentucky reading and writing and, as a result, developed a mean right hook I use every chance I get.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
… grew up in Maine but lived in Maceo, Kentucky, on my family’s farm from the middle of high school till I went to college. Though “she has not asked Jesus into her heart, she does love okra, cornbread, grits, and heirloom tomatoes. Taylor also plays old-time fiddle, which she learned from her father. Taylor lives in Boston most of the year, but this summer, she is at home in Maceo helping her mother grow tomatoes for the farmer’s market. ”

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I can cook red beans rice like the Cajun lady, Miss Odile, who taught me, I like my tea sweet and my whiskey neat, and I can find an ancestor of mine in more Southern graveyards than you could shake a stick at, and I call everyone over about sixteen “Sir” or “M’am”.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I live in Sweden now, but I grew up saying you’uns and howdy. I’ve made my home in Louisiana, Tennessee and Kentucky. I know all the verses of Redwing and Mexicali Rose, learned at my daddy’s knee while he played his gee-tar.

I think I can still chop off the head of a old rooster. I know I can still make a pecan pie. I respect cottonmouths.

I just love Eudora and Flannery and homemade sassafras tea, don’t you?

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I love grits, fried okra and fried green tomatoes. My grandpappy was a mule skinner from MS. in WW I.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Not only am I from the South, Arkansas, but with a few exceptions “Southern” or “South” has been part of most everywhere I’ve lived and worked. When I moved from Arkansas just before I turned 16, I moved to the very southernmost area in Southern California – the Imperial Valley, right along the Mexican border. When I went in the service I did basic training in San Antonio, Texas and technical school in Biloxi, Mississippi – in late 1964, the latter was almost “too” southern for me actually. After two years in northern (uh, oh) Japan, I was stationed in Goldsboro, North Carolina. I went to Korea after that – but it’s South Korea. After the service, I had a couple of stints in Nebraska (definitely out of the pattern) but then I began a series of travels taking me south of the border. I lived in Puerto Rico (very south of the border), spent some time in Central America, and a good chunk of time in Mexico. I lived in the southwest as well – in southern Arizona. I think that’s enough places to counter the times I spent in more northern areas like Nebraska, Colorado, and Missouri – although Missouri south of I-70 and west of Columbia is so much like northern Arkansas that you have to be a native to know the difference (if there is one).

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Pat Conroy once wrote, “I am a prisoner of geography.” I know the feeling. I’ve been stuck in New York most of my life. However, I’ve crossed the Mason-Dixon Line a few times, and I’ve always felt a lot better entering the South than leaving it. I use Louisiana Hot Sauce — thank you, Justin Wilson — on foods that other people flavor with maple syrup, and I read The Dead Mule, to see what I’ve been missing.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
“I was raised by nomads and so am a native of nowhere (but also of everywhere). This makes me Southern not by birth (or the “grace of god” if those bumper stickers everyone has on their trucks down here are to be believed) but through choice. I’m currently working on a YA novel set in my current residence; Nashville, TN.

Black Lawrence Press is now accepting submissions for the Fall, 2010 Black River Chapbook Competition. The Black River Chapbook Competition is a semi-annual prize from Black Lawrence Press for a chapbook of short stories or poems. The winner receives $500 and publication. Previous winners of The Black River Chapbook Competition include: Helen Marie Casey, Frank [...]

If there no longer is a political motive these days for American poetry because George Bush is no longer President, what else can poetry be? Is there anything that can call people away from their iPods and cable TVs? It could be that poetry is now at a place where painting is. What to paint and how to paint it echoes what to write and how to write it.

Gemini Magazine is pleased to announce the Poetry Open, a competition with absolutely no restrictions on content, length or type of poetry. Grand prize is $1,000. Second and third place win $100 and $50, and there will also be three honorable mentions. All six finalists will be published in the February 2011 issue of Gemini. [...]