A Pulley Press Trip to the South
In the hopes of connecting with poets in Alabama and Louisiana, Frances decided to take a trip to the South.
Birmingham, Alabama is a city of 180,000 but unlike boomtowns in the American West, Birmingham is getting smaller as the days go by. Miles of abandoned warehouses, manufacturing facilities, and deserted homes lined the roads and train tracks limited access to different sides of the city. The trains came in long strings of freight and sat in the flats.
Salaam Green, a poet who had submitted a proposal to Pulley, met Frances for coffee. They spent two hours together, discussing a book and the life of being a poet. Salaam began her work in a trauma unit at a hospital by listening to and writing poems for those in pain and in need of care. She’s a self-described “poet listener” writings poems that people tell her while in hospice, trauma units, and prisons. In Salaam, Frances saw a poet who really cared about her work. Salaam is also so open to collaboration, to surfacing unheard stories and to developing her craft. She says, “The language of America is right here.” She’s from the town of Calera, Alabama. Pulley is glad to be working with Salaam Green through her proposal.
From the center of Birmingham,Frances drove out to Remplap, a town that is P-a-l-m-e-r spelled backwards. The story finds its roots in the feud between two brothers. On the way out from Birmingham, Frances passed miles of dollar stores, public storage sheds, Easy Money stores, gas stations, and windowless Churches. She also passed a two gated-pole with a confederate flag on top.
A few miles off the main road where the concrete met the gravel an up to a ridge stood the “glass cabin,” the home to Jim and Tina Mozelle Braziel. Pulley is working with Jim and Tina on a book about the process of building their home with salvage materials and living on ten acres that doesn’t have water. Frances was checking on the progress of their book. She could see, firsthand the source material for the poems so far: dishes of tadpoles, gardens, reclaimed windows, and yes! A pulley for the clothesline.
The following day, Frances flew to Atlanta and then New Orleans. Continuing her search for poetry connections she headed to Houma and Dulac, Louisiana with pal and fellow poet Dara Barrois/Dixon who is from a Parish south of the city. Dulac is a place on the bayou south of New Orleans that is home to the biggest community of Vietnamese shrimpers in the country. For years, the oil and gas industry was in the area. Twenty years ago when Frances last visited, there were deep drilling rigs around. Many years ago, Frances met a man who owned a Marina was happy to see that he was still there many years later. He recommended a place where they served crawfish and potatoes alongside a delicious dessert menu.
Frances headed to Houma, a sprawling city with surprisingly good bookstores. Second and Charles Bookstore took two copies of Ricardo’s book and two of Wilma’s to get them into circulation. After driving to Houma, Frances headed to her last stop in New Orleans for the poetry festival. The gathering was held in a healing center with a voodoo shop. From a little table, Frances sold all of the Pulley books she’d brought with her.
