Southern Voices: Fifty Contemporary Poets
Edited by Tom Mack and Andrew Geyer
In his introduction to this Southern poetry anthology, Tom Mack says, "There is no exact English equivalent for the Spanish word querencia, but some translate the term to mean 'the place where a person is their most authentic self.' For the fifty contemporary poets in this unique volume, that place is the American South, from the East Coast to the Ozarks." Andrew Geyer adds that the poet-contributors to this volume "have each put their own unique spin on what makes the South to be what it is at this moment, in the year 2024, almost a quarter of the way through the new century unfolding around us...in a variety of forms and on an amazing array of subjects--all the corners of this continually evolving region including its flora, fauna, cultural idiosyncrasies, dark history, and distinctive cuisines."
About the Editors
Tom Mack joined the faculty of the University of South Carolina Aiken in 1976. Since that time, he has established an enviable “record of teaching excellence as well as outstanding performance in research and public service” for which the USC Board of Trustees awarded him the prestigious Carolina Trustee Professorship in 2008. Now Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English, Dr. Mack served as department chair from 1990 to 2015.
Over the years Dr. Mack has written over 100 articles and chapters about American literature and American cultural history. Furthermore, since 1990, he has contributed a weekly column in The Aiken Standard on a wide range of topics in the humanities. He is also the founding editor of The Oswald Review, the first international refereed journal of undergraduate research in the discipline of English; all articles published in TOR are available in digitalized form on library databases hosted by EBSCO Publishing.
Dr. Mack chairs the South Carolina Academy of Authors' Board of Governors, the organization responsible for managing the state’s literary hall of fame.
A member of the Texas Institute of Letters, Andrew Geyer was born in Austin and grew up on a working cattle ranch in Southwest Texas. A lover of the outdoors and an avid runner and canoeist, he has traveled extensively in North America, Central America, South America, Europe, and North Africa. He currently lives in Aiken, South Carolina, where he serves as Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina Aiken.