Mama Talks to Herself by J. S. Absher

Background photo: Sam Cox/Flickr, CC BY NC 2.0.
Manipulation and design layout: Elizabeth Stark

J.S. Absher has been a missionary, offset printer, teller, janitor, records manager, editor, and consultant, sold mutual funds, and surveyed scrub timberland.

Absher’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in numerous journals and anthologies, including Tar River Poetry, North Carolina Literary Review, Dialogue, The Southern Poetry Anthology, VII: North Carolina, and The Well-Versed Reader. His most recent book, Mouth Work, won the 2015 Lena Shull Book Contest sponsored by the North Carolina Poetry Society and was published by St. Andrews University Press in 2016. (It is available on Amazon.) His poems were featured in a recent issue of Visions International and have won various prizes sponsored by the NC Poetry Society, Kakalak, and elsewhere.

Absher has published two chapbooks, Night Weather (Cynosura Press, 2010; e-book, 2016), and The Burial of Anyce Shepherd (Main Street Rag Publications, 2006). The members of his two poetry critique groups, the Poet Fools and the Black Socks, have made significant contributions to his development as a poet. He is a Visiting Professor at Southern Virginia University in Buena Vista, VA, and lives in Raleigh, NC, with his wife, Patti Martin-Absher.