Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I was born in Houston, Texas January 4, 1950 when there were so many babies born my mother was on a cot out in the hall. I was premature and not expected to thrive so was placed in an incubator with another baby, a boy. My name was supposed to be “Sharon Rose” but when the woman with the clipboard came to my unconscious mother, my grandmother told he my name was to be “Sharon…..and…”. I am grateful to this day my name became Sharon Ann and not Sharon And. I later shortened it to Shann for what I thought were good reasons. We weren’t poor, we were genteel, though sometimes before payday I remember eating cereal with water, giving my dad babysitting money I made so he could buy gas (and it was cheap then). I could go on about moving to Virginia in 1971 after attending the University of Arizona, but I plan to tell that story in a different way when I figure it all out.

Congratulations to these fine poets and writers.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I live in Union, SC, and have all my life. I’m so Southern that NC is little better than a Yankee outpost to me.

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Poetry submissions are open.  Please put your Southern Legitimacy Statement and all poems in the body of the e-mail.  All poems will be left-justified.

Southern legitimacy Statement:

I was born and raised in Robersonville, North Carolina.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I have lived in the North Carolina, the south, since 1986; I was born in Florida, which is more south, but not the south, in 1957. I almost never write about the south or living in what isn’t the south when that’s where I lived.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

Long, long ago a baby girl was born in Memphis, TN. She grew up there until the middle of the sixth grade when she (and her family) migrated to Charlotte, NC. A year later, they moved again, to New Orleans. Imagine an early-blooming 7th grader hitting her first Mardi Gras, watching the Mummers strut down Canal Street, leaping into the air to catch every gaudy gewgaw thrown anywhere near. Five years later, a word-loving 17 year old, editor of her school newspaper (The Tom-Tom if anybody’s from East Jefferson High – go Warriors!) left the South to study journalism at the University of Kansas. She got sidetracked into English, French and law school. Moved to Kansas City. Married and had two kids. Through it all, she wrote. And still writes. Every now and then she ventures back to the South, inhales the gardenias and magnolias, and wonders what life would have been like if……..

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I was born in Savannah, Georgia to a woman born in Hagan, Georgia to a woman named Eula Faye. My aunt owned Mrs. Rogers’ Restaurant which was the most famous pre-highway restaurant on the road from Claxton, Georgia to Savannah. Despite kidney stones caused by sweet tea and high cholesterol caused by fried shrimp (actually, fried everything), southern cooking is still high cuisine in my mind. My favorite memories are reading Flannery O’Connor under a Spanish moss covered oak over two hundred years old.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I grew up in the small Arkansas town of Oil Trough on the White River. My grandparents operated a combination service station and cafe there, and I spent a good part of my childhood listening to the locals spin tales over half a pack of cigarettes and a bottomless cup of coffee. I now reside near Little Rock and am constantly in search of what I consider the best tomato ever plucked from Arkansas soil.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

A Tennessean raised on the grits and glorious heritage of Southern storytellers, there’s no need to inform new acquaintances I’m from the South—-evidence is in each shamelessly drawled syllable. I’ve lived coast to coast in the U.S. and still haven’t encountered anyone who can make fried chicken better than Mama’s or tell a tale better than my Grandpa. Some folks say they must return home to their roots in order to reconnect, to bask in memories that tell of who they will be in the future. I carry my roots around with me, wherever I go. They seem to thrive on humidity and long road trips.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

Although I was born in the southern part of Connecticut, my home for 34 years has been the North Carolina Piedmont, where I raised two children and write most all my poetry. I gladly share my yard with squirrels, possums, copperheads, ticks, and chiggers, and once walked thirty-five miles from Sanford to Chapel Hill just to see what it felt like. I enjoy grits, biscuits, and basketball most any time, but the jury is out on sweet tea.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

My hometown of Fayetteville, Arkansas – small though it may be – has produced or given home to a number of literary figures. First of these was William Quesenbury or Bill Cush as he liked to sign his literary work. Bill Cush was a poet, artist (surprisingly modern in style and subject matter), newspaperman, Confederate Quartermaster in General Albert Pike’s Indian unit during the Battle of Pea Ridge (1862). In 1908, William Rheem Lighton moved to Fayetteville (actually just outside it in those days) and wrote a book about this experience that helped fuel the back-to-the-land movement of the early 20th century. He wrote the “Billy Fortune” stories and the screenplay based on them which starred his soon to be long-time friend Will Rogers. Lighton’s son Louis, or “Bud,” became a very successful screenwriter and producer in Hollywood with some 80 credits to his name. From the 1920s through about 1950, starting with the arrival of adventurer and author Charles J. Finger, Fayetteville was home to several well-known writers including Finger (who was visited here by such luminaries as Vachel Lindsay, William Rose Benet, and Carl Sandburg); his protégé, the prolific and internationally renowned Charles Morrow Wilson; Arkansas Poet Laureate Rosa Marinoni; and one of the few African-American poets in the state during those segregated days, George Ballard, whose cleverly titled book Ozark Ballards, is still a rewarding read today. In subsequent years, most of the better known authors in town have been associated with the University of Arkansas including John Gould Fletcher, John Williams, Donald Harrington, Molly Giles, Michael Heffernan, and Miller Williams—who wrote the inaugural poem for President Bill Clinton’s second term.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

After an island childhood off the coast of northern Florida, I spent eight years in Atlanta wrangling puppets and searching out the most perfect brunch ever cooked by God or man. I recently relocated to a special corner of hell known as Philadelphia, where nobody serves queso dip and some kind of strange ice stuff falls from the sky even in March. After completing my MA in English, my only goal will be to cross back over the Mason-Dixon line so fast you’ll think the devil’s chasing after me.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I lived outside the south twice: three times if you count my six years in Washington, DC as outside. The first time was a year and a half in Akron, OH, which we called the capitol of West Virginia because it had more natives of that state than any city in my home state. The second was in Chillicothe, OH and environs, then considered part of southern Appalachia. I consider myself Appalachian, not southern, but I’ve lived in South Carolina for the past eight years.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

I was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where the paddleboats scoot, where the bars are packed and smoky come night, where Bessie Smith used to howl and shake and strut. I was raised in North Georgia, where the Appalachians curve like cornfed dames, in lacy lingerie of oak and pine. Once when Roy Acuff ran for governor of Tennessee, my great-great uncle on my dad’s side hid up in a tree and pelted him with eggs. When I was a kid, my great-grandma told me that when it’s rainy and sunny at the same time, then the devil is beating his wife. Dixie and I have a turbulent relationship, but we’re working it out.

Southern Legitimacy Statement:

Born and raised in Charleston, SC, I’m more southern than most people now residing in The South. My southerness is just a little different than most. My culinary credentials, for example, are impeccable though a bit more eclectic. Since my family (residents of the Holy City since the 1880’s) kept Kosher, our Okra Gumbo Soup had no ham and Mama’s Red Rice was cooked with kosher salami instead of bacon. We did have sweet potatoes with pecans from one of our two towering trees which met their demise during Hurricane Hugo. Also, our chittlins were made from fried chicken fat and were called “gribbeners”. But enough about food. . .

My southernism came from walking barefoot most of the year through Azalea gardens and Carolina plouff mud. I even got sent home by the school nurse for having round worm which comes from not wearing shoes in the dirt. Our backyard neighbors on one side had chickens and I helped chase them before (and after) they had their scrawny necks wrung. I also shot BB’s with the neighbor boys when I should have been in afternoon Hebrew School. As a teen, I walked the railroad tracks behind the Citadel firing range just so I could find arrowheads in the marsh. Speaking of the Citadel, we lived next door to a Col. Buise who many say is the model for “The Boo” in Pat Conroy’s Lords of Discipline. He was always drunk and had a flamingo pink house which he told Daddy was instead of pink elephants. It didn’t matter to me what color he painted his house; I was just happy to ogle all the Citadel Cadets who came over to visit and drink beer.

Down the block, Daddy built our black maid a shotgun house and I would visit there with her white bulldog barking at me and nipping at my heels. I have never like dogs since. In The South it was not unusual to have mixed blocks though the blacks and whites remained separate everywhere else. When Granny who lived with us caught me playing jump rope with black children in the neighborhood, she called me in admonishing me that good girls didn’t play with “that kind”.

Many of my poems come from my southern roots. The Camellia is one of them and brings back memories of the lovely flowers that graced my childhood. I’m so glad that when I returned to The South ten years ago, we were able to buy a house surrounded by Camellias, Azaleas, and good ole southern honey suckle.