North/South Afterward Volume 3
I first remember the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia as a child, driving into them from North Virginia with my family was inspirational
and awe inspiring. I began to wander through the Jefferson and George Washington National Forests while I attended Virginia Tech and in search of a poem, which I often found beside the New River, at the edge of a cliff on Mountain Lake we called "the Rock" and in the deep woods beside Caldwell Fields. Later on I discovered an old School House at the other side of Pilot Mountain and was inspired to have poetry shows there and create a little library, it is the spirit mists and the open air of incline and sleepy blue pine that still keep me wandering out there.
The Cherokee Indians of Virginia called the Blue Ridge Mountains "'the Great Blue Hills of God "
Appalachia is a culture that is struggling to find an identity outside of the one that has been prescribed by those that are not from this region,
and the Poets and Artists of North/South have been helping to make that transformation happen very gradually. If we keep looking outside our region in Appalachia to define ourselves we will continue to be lost internally. I have always thought that Poetry is the people's art form. Good books of poetry & poems are really eternal as William Blake and Jim Morrison noticed; they are not to be read just once like a library book, but meant to be lived with and read many times over. If you are trying to make art or write poetry (or even a novel) keep writing or painting or drawing, you're doing something of value in this broken world. Keep going, the miracle of your unique "heartsongs" of words and visions may be used as a direct channel of Heaven. Thank you to those that contributed to our North/South poetry and art project for this volume and those we have previously published, your voices matter, are important and are making a difference as we seek to understand who we are and to redefine our beautiful region from hearts within it that actually care and understand it.
-T. Byron Kelly
2/3/2024
Blue Ridge Mountains
Far Eastern Region of Appalachia