Join the Jasper Project and SCAA for a Reading and Launch Celebration of Southern Voices – Fifty Contemporary Poets Edited by Tom Mack and Andrew Geyer

By Cindi Boiter

Poetry and place come together beautifully in Tom Mack and Andrew Geyer’s (editors) new book, Southern VoicesFifty Contemporary Poets (Lamar University Press) Which launched on October 1st on the campus of University of SC at Aiken, where Mack is a distinguished professor emeritus and Geyer serves as chair of the English Department. The two previously worked together editing the fiction anthology, A Shared Voice: A Tapestry of Tales (Lamar University Press, 2013), and have joined forces once again to bring us a new and intriguing look at contemporary poetry from the South.

“Because of the overwhelming success of that collection of paired tales, the folks at Lamar University Literary Press wondered if we could put together an equally attractive book of poems,” Mack says. Mack also edited Dancing on Barbed Wire (Angelina River Press, 2018) which Geyer co-wrote with Terry Dalrymple and Jerry Craven. “We knew from the outset of the multi-year project that we wanted to cover the whole South from Virginia to Texas, from Arkansas to Florida; and we thought that 50 would be the minimum number of poets (4-6 poems by each) that we would need to do justice to the complex geography and culture of this distinctive region of the country.”

South Carolina poetry aficionados will not be surprised by the list of distinguished contributors to Southern Voices, among them Jasper’s own poetry editor and inaugural Columbia city poet laureate, Ed Madden, along with Libby Bernadin, Marcus Amaker, Ron Rash, Glennis Redmond, and forty-five equally accomplished poets from across the region.

“Once we decided on how many poets to include in the book,” Mack says, “we divided the South in half. Because I had edited the South Carolina Encyclopedia Guide to South Carolina Writers (USC Press) and managed the USC Aiken writers’ series for over a decade, I volunteered to invite 25 poets from the Atlantic coast, the part of the South I know best. Drew (Geyer), a native of Texas and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, focused on Southern states from Alabama to west of the Mississippi.”

The theme of “place” features prominently in this collection, Mack says. “It thus made sense to invite as many state and local poets laureate as possible since those individuals had already been selected by governmental entities to represent a particular locale. All of the Southern states have state poets laureate; and some states, such as South Carolina, have poets laureate who have been selected to represent cities and towns. Columbia, Charleston, Greenville, and Rock Hill, for example, have municipal poets laureate. Thus, we were expecting that most of the poems submitted by each invited poet would focus on place: physical, emotional, spiritual, or psychological. We were not disappointed.”

But the co-editors recognized early on that the representation of contemporary Southern poets looks increasingly different than in decades past, as it should. “From the very beginning of the process, we wanted to put together a book that reflected the changing demographics of the region, its growing diversity and burgeoning equality of opportunity. Thus, in choosing our invitees, we kept gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation in mind,” Geyer says.

In his introduction to the volume Mack writes, “Perhaps no other region of this vast country is haunted more by the past. In the case of the American South, heavy lie the legacy of slavery and the specter of the Civil War. … Yet, the winds of change can be felt throughout the American South, due in large part to both a generational and demographic shift—the region is consistently being enriched by transplants from other parts of the country and other nations of the world.”

“This Southern Voices collection is a testament to how far we’ve come,” Geyer agrees. “The poets in this anthology are Black and white and brown, straight and LGBTQ+, native Southerners and northern transplants—a mélange of artists from across the Greater South most of whom have served as the poets laureate of their states and/or local communities. These are the poets whose work everyday folks living in the South chose to represent them. The diversity of voices that you’ll find in this incredible volume is reflective of the people who make the place what it is.” 

Launch celebrations and readings for Southern Voices are scheduled  throughout the state. The public is invited to attend the Columbia event, sponsored in part by the Jasper Project and the South Carolina Academy of Authors, from 6 to 8 pm on November 14th at All Good Books in Five Points. Poets scheduled to read from the collection include Ed Madden, Glenis Redmond, Libby Bernardin, and Ellen Hyatt.

 

 

 

A version of this article appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of Jasper Magazine - Available now throughout Columbia

Poetry of the People's Featured Poet - Libby Bernardin

This week's Poet of the People is Libby Bernardin. Libby is not only a gifted poet, she is a kind and gracious human being. Meeting her is a spring morning where you feel confident the world will go on and you belong in it. She makes you feel important and not the other way around. Reading her poetry is the warm air of a furnace at your feet while sipping tea at her dining room window while she tells you the history of every bush and flower in her yard.

Libby Bernardin is the author of House in Need of Mooring and Stones Ripe for Sowing, both published by Press 53. She has published two chapbooks and contributed to many journals. She has won poetry awards from the Poetry Society of SC and the NC Poetry Society, and is a member of both poetry societies. She is a lifetime member of the Board of Governors of the South Carolina Academy of Authors. She writes and shares new work with The River Poets, a group of women who are dedicated to poetry.

____


The Price for Long Lives is Sorrow

 

You could say a long and measured life walks with a dream,

mysteries clotheslined across the sky blowing like sheets—

Words keep unpinning     unfolding     letters spelling

out worn-out stories. What am I to do with Joseph

of the many-colored coat, an imprisoned Hebrew

 

with God-inspired dream talk. Pharaoh chose

him who stored the grain to save plague-torn Egypt.

 

And where are the Josephs among us?

 

The would-be king thank God is gone.  We have a new leader.

May he be among the long lived for we the people

who haven’t the courage of a sharecropper’s son

crossing the bridge—first to violence, last to peace,

always his aim. His caisson marches. Remember his

long life of sorrows, his scattered good-trouble seeds

 

like wildflowers—purple fringed     lily-leaved     sweet shrub

spicebush     bloodroot uproot into the world     blossom     blossom.

 

 (Included in House in Need of Mooring)

Again,                                                            

 

morning moon    Pink    among leaves  

 

drops into the West    

flirting I think    

with me

 

demure as a silken scarf

 plucked

            by a sly wind

 

to flutter out

the window

from a bed side table

 

the barest hint of liminal—

 

O Holy Space 

that winters where you bloom—

light another day

 

dreams now ebb 

into darkness as the croon

of a white crowned sparrow

   

lilting notes distinctive

as its pink bill     opens the day—

and    here      yet again     anew

 

 (Italicized line from David Havird’s poem, “Midnight Oil”, included in his book, Weathering)

~~~

 

 Litany                                                                                                                                                                                                  

 As the world holds beauty in the deep and lonely forests

                                    Conduct me in wonder

As the moon rises high enough for me to see from my bedroom window

                                    Conduct me in fascination

As the woodpecker pecks around the pecan tree burl

                                    Conduct me in pleasure

As the white camellia layers its petals, pinwheels of sighs

                                    Conduct me in love

As the iris blue flag flutters in a wind

                                    Conduct me in resilience

As the hatching from mother alligator swims confidently in briny water

                                    Conduct me in gentle laughter

As the snake sheds its skin, leaves it on the rim of my strawberry pot

                                    Conduct me in respect

As the red-winged black bird breeds in marshes and scrubby fields

                                    Conduct me in new life

As starling murmuration creates angular shapes of dark clouds over Norway

                                    Conduct me in astonishment

As I wonder about the god hiding, languishing in the star-filled sky

                                    Conduct me in faith

As I hold my hand over my heart about suffering in Ukrainian photos

                                    Conduct me in compassion, in mercy

As I cover my eyes in anguish over the murder of children in Uvalde

                                    Conduct me in mourning and right action

As there is any inequity in my hands, ire in my heart

                                    Conduct me in truth, the morally right, the just

As I have lived a long life of love complex as the moon’s pull of tides

the sight of the Southern Cross in Brazil, the birth, the birth, the birth

Conduct me in knowledge, grace, heart

   

~~~                            

 

Shreveport 1954, Before the Late Crowd                     

  

It was a barrel of a room. music a boom

from speakers, the sultry drumbeat

as though a queen arrived expecting voices

with hands full of dollar bills, me sitting

between my cousin and her husband—

and before me, a beauty with stars on her tits

and I guess a G-string—oh she was stacked

and shone like she could make it in LA.

So, what’s she doing in this raunchy beer-smelling

place with me feeling sorry for her, as we watched

those long stockinged legs—a garter for dollars—

wrap themselves around a pole, no moola

anywhere I could see—early patrons

just eatin’ peanuts over at the bar,

knocking down a few—then the MC

introduces a Miss Douget? here on her 18st

birthday give’er a hand, guys, c’on put ‘em together

for the Carolina girl, and me turning around to see her,

Miss Douget. Miss Douget? then my cousin elbowing

me and whispering, Stand up, stand up, take a bow

which I reckon I did, stunned—Did I hear a drum roll?
I awkwardly stood up, sat down red-faced—beauty

blowing me kisses, gingerly.No warily.

Later that night, I thought of her pole dancing

on my birthday, and I hoped she would make it to LA,

and I would find her on the cover

of Photoplay Magazine, far away from

that vacuous room, empty except

for a few beer-barrel guys with no money

in their hands for her garter.

 

After “Nashville After Dark” by Ada Limon

 

~~~

A Photograph, February 23, 1934                                                  

 

Forever in sepia on their wedding day—

Their lives unreel as moonflowers

open to the dark sky

Or early evening primroses uncurl at dusk

 

A light wind scatters leaves and twigs

I put down the photograph     

on my kitchen counter—

            begin to knead my dough     think of how

mother rolled her biscuits in the palm of her hand.

 

Once, after a hurricane snapped off tree crowns

from the tallest pines     felled a thick

                                    limb from the old oak

wrapping Spanish moss around and around

a twig, yet      not even in two hours green burst forth

 

light ladled on trees

in the longingly pure air—Father came

home     the day’s shift done

puts his hands on Mother’s

waist     pulls her slightly to him

plants a kiss in her hair

 

I am calm watching them    

I was always calm watching them

 

I look out my window

I think     how young they are     I could swoon

            at their fierce beauty    Did I come to soon

 crush of time already            

                                               

burdensome—remind me

how quickly storms shift from high winds to breezy jasmine scents

            love returns                 yearns for better times

~~~

About Yesterday…

 

It’s always behind us

holding on to what needs to go—my husband’s death,

your divorce—those days left us brooding

under a dappled bluesy sky

 

Today you and I alive with the sun’s

glint on the loquat tree, breakfast on the porch—frittata of onion

& mushrooms served with avocado

We watch the young flicker feed, furtive, wary

 

                        We take solace in our past

for me the farm, Grandfather and Grandmother in their kitchen—

he rolls his cigarette, watches her, hands in biscuit dough

their yesterday in growing crops, feeding field hands

 

You at play on the river,

fishing, your stories of Daddy Ben & how he taught you hunting

ethics—kill only what you will eat, waste nothing of your catch

be a good master to the pup I give you

 

So about yesterday, it’s behind us

flits of memory—lost loves we can’t catch, grief rendered

            useless, the choices we made, but look here—this poem

                        I wrote for you on the desk you made for me

 

 

 

RIVER POETS Poetry Reading Sunday Afternoon at Stormwater Studios

The public is invited to attend a poetry reading Sunday afternoon featuring Jasper Magazine Poetry Editor Ed Madden at Stormwater Studios, 413 Pendleton Street, behind One Eared Cow Glass.

Organized by Libby Bernardin and Susan Craig, the reading will also feature Nadine Ellsworth-Moran, Ann-Chadwell Humphries, Ruth Nicholson, and (in adsentia) Mary O’Keefe Brady, as well as Bernardin and Craig themselves.

Madden, who is the former poet laureate for the city of Columbia, will be reading from his newest collection, A Pooka in Arkansas.

The event begins at 4 pm and will conclude with a Talk-Back session with the poets.

Libby Bernardin Book Launch at Stormwater

LIBBY BERNARDIN’S NEW BOOK LAUNCH

HOUSE IN NEED OF MOORING

 

Thursday, November 10; 5:30 – 7:00pm

 

Fellow poet, Jim Peterson, has written about Libby’s new book:

“These poems by Libby Bernardin are keenly sensitive to nature.  They also embody the losses, fears, sorrows, loves and simple pleasures of life lived deeply—a quiet mind seeing, and yes, reflecting, but never looking away from what has gone so wrong and so right in these times.  Bernardin’s poems reveal without explaining.  They conjure her beloved South Carolina—lowcountry wetlands, city streets and suburbs, mountains, the people and their endeavors—and yet at the same time embrace the unknowable.”

 

Poetry reading and book signing for her new book, House in need of Mooring:

Libby’s reading will start shortly after 5:30; other invited poets will also present readings.

Book signing: 6:30- 7:00pm.

 

About the Author:

South Carolina poet Libby Bernardin is the author of Stones Ripe for Sowing (Press 53, 2018) and two chapbooks, The Book of Myth (SC Poetry Initiative, 2009) and Layers of Song (Finishing Line Press, 2011). Journal publications include The Asheville Poetry Review, Southern Poetry Review, Kakalak. She has won poetry awards from the Poetry Society of South Carolina and the North Carolina Poetry Society, and has served as co-director of the highly respected Litchfield Tea & Poetry Series until 2019. Her new book, House in Need of Mooring (Press 53, 2022), is yet another testament to the silver lining of the pandemic. A retired English teacher from the University of South Carolina, she leads poetry workshops for the Georgetown County Library. She is a lifetime member of the Board of Governors of the SC Academy of Authors.