Ten Southern Appalachian Poets You Should Know

When most people think of Southern literary achievement, they think of William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams. Some who have read widely and deeply will include Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, Ernest Gaines, Harper Lee, and Carson McCullers, all famous for their novels and short stories. Few will be able to name any famous Southern poets, let alone any from the Appalachian region.

I have often wondered why. There is so much here in this land, after all, for the poetic imagination to feast upon. It is teeming with breathtaking natural beauty, tradition, pain, paradox, faith, irony, resilience, abiding love, and redemption. Some have certainly translated all of that into verse.

I spent my formative years in the North Georgia Mountains and most of my adult life in the Deep South, and I'm here to say that not all poetic genius originates in New York and California. I went treasure hunting in my own backyard, so to speak, for established and emerging poets of the Blue Ridge, and I found these jewels (listed in alphabetical order):

1. Marilou Awiakta was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and later moved with her family to Oak Ridge, the infamous site of atomic bomb development, when she was nine. She has said, "My culture has three heritages: Cherokee, Appalachian, and the atom.” She received the Distinguished Tennessee Writer Award, the Award for Service to American Indian People from the American Indian Symposium, and the Appalachian Heritage Writer’s Award, among many others. Her most notable works include Abiding Appalachia: Where Mountain and Atom Meet (1978) and Selu: Seeking the Corn-Mother’s Wisdom (1993). "Long before I learned the

   universal turn of atoms, I heard

   the spirit's song that binds us

   all as one. And no more

   will I follow any rule

   that splits my soul. 

   My Cherokee left me no sign

   except in hair and cheek

   and this firm step of mind

   that seeks the whole

   in strength and peace." – An excerpt from "An Indian Walks in Me," a poem in Abiding Appalachia
   

2. Kathryn Stripling Byer grew up in southwest Georgia and received an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She held the honor of being the first woman to serve as North Carolina's poet laureate from 2005 to 2009. Publishing six collections of poetry in her lifetime, two of her most notable works include The Girl in the Midst of the Harvest (1986) and Wildwood Flower (1992). Her poems grapple with the difficulties of reconciling modern Appalachian life with the past. "… I’ve come a long way

   from what’s been described as a mean and starved

   corner of backwoods America. That has a ring

   to it. Rhythm, like my grandmother’s hands

   in the bread dough." – An excerpt from "Wide Open, These Gates," a poem in The Girl in the Midst of the Harvest

   
   

3. Fred Chappell was born on a small farm in Canton, North Carolina, attended Duke University, and had a 40-year teaching career at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. While there, he helped establish one of the nation's first MFA programs in creative writing. His accolades are many, including a Rockefeller Grant, Yale's Bollingen Prize in Poetry, and the T.S. Eliot Award for Creative Writing. He was named North Carolina's poet laureate from 1997 to 2002. Having published more than thirty volumes of prose and poetry in his lifetime, his most ambitious work was a four-volume collection titled Midquest, written between 1975 and 1980. It explores themes of family, introspection, and the elemental forces of nature. "Let the deep valley take me over With its sundown shadow a little at a time, By little and little, as if the hourglass lay on its side and the grains leaked through one by one into the cloud of infinite separate moments. I shall enter that cloud..." – An excerpt from "A Prayer for Slowness"
   

4. George Ella Lyon grew up in the mountains of Kentucky and works as a freelance writer and teacher based in Lexington. She holds a PhD from Indiana University and was named Kentucky's poet laureate from 2015-2016. Having published over 40 volumes in various genres, three of her most notable poetry collections are Back to the Light (2021), She Let Herself Go (2012), and Catalpa (1993, 2007), winner of the Appalachian Book of the Year Award. Her poems are "never trivial," said fellow poet Jim Wayne Miller. "She writes of things that matter - birth, death, family, community...her metaphors are always vivid and fresh, and often brilliant...Lyon's poems are visions to which art has given voice.” I am from clothespins, from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride. I am from the dirt under the back porch. (Black, glistening it tasted like beets.) I am from the forsythia bush, the Dutch elm whose long gone limbs I remember as if they were my own. – An excerpt from "Where I'm From"

   
   

5. Rose McLarney grew up in rural western North Carolina and earned her MFA at Warren Wilson College. She is associate professor of Creative Writing at Auburn University, co-editor-in-chief and poetry editor of the Southern Humanities Review, and co-editor of A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia. She is the author of three poetry collections, Forage (2019), Its Day Being Gone (2015), and The Always Broken Plates of Mountains (2012). Her poems speak to the subtleties and unvarnished truths of the Appalachian region. Archives collect old photos, evidence of endurance—women’s faces

   stretched long as laundry hung out to dry but caught in the rain,

   
   

   men with copperheads slung over their shoulders, hatchets in hand,

   fields of tobacco filling every middle distance, acres of work always

   
   

   between the subject and the shelter or church on the horizon. And now,

   we seem to have agreed hardship is what’s historical. What’s assured to be everlasting. – An excerpt from "Glossing the Image," a poem in It's Day Being Gone

   
   

6. Ron Rash was born in Chester, South Carolina and later moved to western North Carolina with his family when he was eight years old. He earned his M.A. at Clemson University and taught writing at TriCounty Technical College in SC and Queens College in NC. He was awarded the Academy of American Poets Prize, the Sidney Lanier Prize for Southern Literature, and is currently the John Parris Distinguished Professor of Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina University. His poems often turn the reader's gaze toward a way of life that is slowly fading. All that once was is this,

   shattered glass, a rot

   of tin and wood, the hum

   of limp-legged wasps that ascend

   like mote swirls in the heatlight. – An excerpt from "Abandoned Homestead in Watauga County"
   

7. Bettie Sellers lived and wrote poetry in the small mountain town of Young Harris, Georgia. After earning a B.A. from LaGrange College in 1958 and a M.A. from the University of Georgia in 1966, she accepted a position as professor of English at Young Harris College, where she taught for 32 years. Sellers published four volumes of poetry, including Spring Onions and Cornbread (1978), Morning of the Red-Tailed Hawk (1981), Liza’s Monday and Other Poems (1986), and Wild Ginger (1989). She was named Georgia's poet laureate from 1997-2000, and the Georgia Writers Association gave Sellers a lifetime achievement award in 2004. Conservation of the land and the complex relationships of those who live on it figure prominently in her verses. When September’s quarter moon tips down

   toward Sunset rock cool and distant at dusk,

   the mountains darken blue in solid shapes

   quieting the valley for the coming of the night.

   Crickets scratch in the grass; a catbird whines.

   The dome fills up with darkness, reveals

   the Dippers, great and small. My eyes

   trace the distance to the farthest star—

   but the mountain holds my feet in place. – An excerpt from " Moment at Dusk" from Wild Ginger
   

8. Frank X Walker is Professor of English and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky in Lexington and the first African American poet to be named Kentucky Poet Laureate. He has published eleven collections of poetry, including Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers, which was awarded an NAACP Image Award for Poetry and the Black Caucus American Library Association Honor Award for Poetry. Voted one of the most creative professors in the south, Walker, a Danville native, coined the term “Affrilachia” and co-founded the Affrilachian Poets. His most recent collection is Masked Man, Black: Pandemic & Protest Poems. As a historical genre poet, his works often give voice to unheard or uncredited black individuals from the past. I learn today that mama,

   being property,

   was massa's investment.

   That taken all together,

   the only thing more valuable

   than us was the land.

   That like the land, I, too, was property

   and also my mama's interest

   —same as her increase. – An excerpt from "Silent Partner"
   

9. Crystal Wilkinson is Professor of English in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at the University of Kentucky. She is the award-winning author of Perfect Black, a collection of poems, and three works of fiction—The Birds of Opulence , Water Street and Blackberries, Blackberries. She is the recipient of a 2022 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry, a 2021 O. Henry Prize, a 2020 USA Artists Fellowship, and a 2016 Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence. She was named Kentucky's poet laureate from 2021-2023. Many of her poems explore the difficulties in shedding expectations while accepting the realities of an imperfect society. Ohio is a long legged sister with kin i share eyes with.

   Twelfth Street, a ribbon of brown faces peeping from

   concrete porches. High laughs on cool June afternoons.

   Kentucky frowns at black faces, pulls crying children from

   mothers’ laps. She lays waste to the land. In Kentucky i

   glide through dusty back roads, navigate Green River

   trying to find out if home is lie or truth. – An excerpt from "Motherland"

   
   

10. Annie Woodford is a native of the Virginia Piedmont region. She earned her MA in Creative Writing from Hollins College and teaches at Wilkes Community College in North Carolina. Her poetry has appeared in Appalachian Heritage, The Southern Review, and Blackbird, among others. Her latest collection, Where You Come from is Gone, explores the economic and racial violence of rural America. Rain almost falls.

    The scent of clover

    and car exhaust

    caresses. Roses

    spill off porches

    of leaning houses

    built back when trains

    were still built downtown.

    Tarps flap rooflines,

    windows stuffed with rags,

    and sagging air

    conditioners, dripping.

    The city pool,

    with waters chilly

    and clean, waits for

    Memorial Day’s

    children, cracks patched

    for at least this year. – An excerpt from "Great Road"

This is by no means an exhaustive list. It was hard narrowing it down to ten! If you have a favorite Southern Appalachian poet not listed here, please add them to the comments. A collection from any of these fine poets would be a great addition if you're participating in the Sealey Challenge this August. Happy reading!