Farewell to Maggi

We like our characters in the South, and Maggi Vaughn was one of the great characters of our time. The Poet Laureate of Tennessee since 1995, Maggi was a poet, storyteller, songwriter, and art collector who lived out a big life in a small town. With her recent passing, we at Humanities Tennessee feel the loss of a member of the Southern Festival of Books family. 

When I first began working at Humanities Tennessee more than 25 years ago, I was in charge of working with Festival exhibitors. I could count on an annual call from Maggi: “Make sure I get my same booth now! You know, the corner one.” Everyone knew where Bell Buckle Press was located on Legislative Plaza in those days, and Maggi held court there. As poet laureate, she put together her own sessions, sending us the participants and session titles. Maggi was on the program for 26 of the Festival’s first 37 years. 

Maggi lived in the small town of Bell Buckle for 44 years, settling into a cottage there and building an impressive collection of folk art, antiques, and memorabilia. She loved to have visitors, and many would stop by to say hello and hear a tale of her years as a Grammy-nominated country songwriter or her long career as a poet. Maggi’s poetry was grounded in family, community, and place. She was proud of being a “people’s poet,” wanting her work to be accessible to all. She published numerous books and wrote poems for gubernatorial inaugurations and commemorative occasions like the Tennessee Bicentennial. 

We live in a time of swirling, dizzying amounts of data, of impermanence and uncertainty. There are so many things that we think we know but can’t quite reach out and grasp. Maggi’s life was the solid antithesis of that. She was a fixture from another time who brought a past way of life forward with her. The storytellers and the poets of today have a model in her, the best possible legacy she could leave. 

Maggi’s lovely full obituary is here, and a 2021 interview with her can be heard here.