Blog

Like most kids, Emily Louise Smith grew up thinking the South Carolina town she lived in and the people she knew were unremarkable. It was only years later that she came to realize the rarity of the environment and ethic around her – the acres of farmland, waterways, and forests that disappeared a little with each of her visits home. Poetry might seem a small effort at saving the rhythms of rural speech and life, but, as she says, it is the only means of elegy she knows.

 During her time as the solo HUB-BUB writer-in-residence, Emily took full advantage of her adopted home in Spartanburg.  The poems she wrote reflected the fragility of dying mill villages, the eccentricities of community characters, and afternoons of whistling trains.  Many of these poems have appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, Front Porch, The Journal, Smartish Place, Tar River Poetry, and the anthologies Daughters of the Land (Texas Tech University Press) and Beloved on the Earth: 150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude (Holy Cow Press).  Smith also worked closely with local photographers Carroll Foster and Mark Olencki, culmintaing in her biographical introduction to the Hub City Writers Project's 2007 lead title, Spartanburg Revisited: A Second Look at the Photographs of Alfred and Bob Willis.

Since leaving Spartanburg for Wilmington, North Carolina, Emily has been teaching in the UNCW Department of Creative Writing and directing its literary book imprint, The Publishing Laboratory.  She serves on the advisory board of the literary journal Ecotone, and is production manager for Chautauqua, the literary journal of the Chautauqua Institute.  In her spare time, she works as a freelance editor and book designer, often for the Hub City Writers Project.

View these photos on flickr.com...