Chapter 16
A Community of Tennessee Writers, Readers & Passersby

"In Praise of Winter Trees"

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Bill Brown, a native of Dyersburg, Tennessee, was the author of many poetry collections, including Late Winter, The News Inside, and The Cairns. Brown also spent much of his life nurturing the work of other writers, chiefly during his years as a teacher at Nashville’s Hume-Fogg High School. He died on December 17, 2023.

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The Edge of Breath

Annette Sisson’s new poetry collection reminds us that we are living and dying at once

In her latest poetry collection Winter Sharp with Apples, Annette Sisson considers the ordinary but important moments that bind people together. Sisson will appear at The Nocturne Reading Series at Land of a Thousand Hills in Nashville on January 21.

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“There Is a Snake”

Book Excerpt: Florence

Bess Cooley is a winner of The Mississippi Review Poetry Prize, and her work has also appeared in Prairie Schooner, Western Humanities Review, and Verse Daily, among other publications. She is the co-founding editor of Peatsmoke Journal and teaches at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

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America’s Promise

Frank X Walker’s Load in Nine Times gives voice to enslaved and enslaver in Civil War-era Kentucky

Load in Nine Times is Frank X. Walker’s poetic exploration of American life in the period surrounding the Civil War. The collection takes Kentucky as its geographical framework, speaking through enslaved mothers, fathers, and children and masters and mistresses.

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Not Quite a New Day

Three recent poetry collections seek form and language to reflect an uncertain world

In three recent poetry collections — Blas Falconer’s Rara Avis, Danielle Chapman’s Boxed Juice, and Todd Osborne’s Gatherer — our world’s inherent uncertainty takes center stage, fueling each poet’s inquiry into how our everyday lives (and our deeper internal longings) can survive the unknowable.

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Loss, Life, and Hope

Poet Christian Collier on craft, engaging an audience, and his debut collection, Greater Ghost

Chattanooga poet Christian Collier focuses on loss and grieving in his debut collection, Greater Ghost, while still infusing every poem with a pulsing, insistent life.

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