A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

Six Haiku

Old Roads is a collection of haiku and photographs by East Tennessee writer Brett Taylor. The photographs were taken in an array of Tennessee locations, including Wartburg, Petros, Greenback, Pall Mall, Norris, Cades Cove, and south Knoxville. Taylor has written for The South Carolina Review, Skeptical Inquirer, Fortean Times, FilmfaxGreen Mountains Review, Folio, Ampersand, Redivider, Big Muddy and San Pedro River Review.  

“Ballad”

Marianne Worthington is a poet, editor, and cofounder of Still: The Journal. Her work has appeared in Oxford American, CALYX, Grist, and other outlets. She is coeditor, with Silas House, of Piano in a Sycamore: Writing Lessons from the Appalachian Writers’ Workshop. She grew up in Knoxville and currently lives in southeastern Kentucky.

“The Holes I Have”

Henry L. Jones is a Black poet, artist, playwright, performance artist, and activist. His poetry has appeared in The Willow Review, The Vanderbilt Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. His second poetry collection, Black Skillet Blues: Poetry without Cornbread (Beatlick Press) is due in late 2021. A Fisk University graduate and the inaugural poet laureate of Hendersonville, Jones is an editor of Sinew: 10 Years of Poetry in the Brew, an anthology of work from the long-running open-mic reading series based in Nashville.

“A View That Wasn’t There Before”

Jeff Hardin is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently Small Revolution, No Other Kind of World, and A Clearing Space in the Middle of Being. His work has been honored with the Nicholas Roerich Prize, the Donald Justice Poetry Prize, and the X. J. Kennedy Prize. Hardin will read from his work at Scarritt Bennett Center in Nashville on November 18.

“Ascension”

Didi Jackson’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, New England Review, Kenyon Review, Best American Poetry, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day. She currently teaches creative writing at Vanderbilt University. 

“The holiday / of catastrophe …”

Dan O’Brien’s Our Cancers chronicles the year and a half during which both he and his wife, actor and writer Jessica St. Clair, were treated for cancer. O’Brien is the author of three previous poetry collections and the recipient of many playwriting honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and two PEN America Awards. His essay collection A Story That Happens: On Playwriting, Childhood, & Other Traumas was published in 2021. He has served on the faculty of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference for more than a decade.

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