Margaret Gibson’s latest book of poetry, One Body, was published in October 2007 by Louisiana State University Press. She has authored eight previous poetry collections, also from LSU: Autumn Grasses (2003); Icon and Evidence (2001); Earth Elegy: New and Selected Poems (1997); The Vigil: A Poem in Four Voices (1993); Out in the Open (1989); Memories of the Future: The Daybooks of Tina Modotti (1986); co-winner of the Melville Cane Award; Long Walks in the Afternoon (1982), winner of the Lamont Poetry Prize; and Signs (1979).

Gibson has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Lila Wallace/Reader’s Digest fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and grants from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. She lives in Preston, Connecticut. Her memoir about her family and her adolescence in rural Virginia and Richmond is forthcoming in 2008. “Southbound” is excerpted from this memoir.  

Photo by Christie Williams