• Charles Henri Ford, 1913-2002
• Beth Ann Fennelly, 1971-
• Sterling D. Plumpp, 1940-

Charles Henri Ford, 1913-2002. Born in Brookhaven, Mississippi.

Featured items (left to right): Poems for Painters (1945), Blues: A Magazine of New Rhythms (1929), The Half Thoughts (1947), The Garden of Disorder (1938)

Described by one scholar, as not “a southern writer in the traditional sense,” Charles Henri Ford’s work, “reflects a more broad homosexual American and expatriate American experience.” Born in Brookhaven, Mississippi in 1913, Ford exhibited poetic creativity from a very young age. At sixteen, he published and edited Blues: A Magazine of New Rhythms from Columbus, Mississippi. Although only in print for two years, famous poets such as Ezra Pound contributed works. Ford’s poetry continued to flourish during his early years in Paris and New York. On display is a first edition of his first full-length book of poems, The Garden of Disorder (1938), with an introduction by William Carlos Williams. One of the surrealist artists honored in the displayed Poems for Painters (1945) was Pavel Tchlitchew.

Beth Ann Fennelly, 1971-. University of Mississippi, Professor of English

Featured items, left to right: Open House (2001), A Different Kind of Hunger (1997), Unmentionables (2008), Draft of “Mary Speaks to the Early Visitor at the Laying Out” (1996)

Although raised in Illinois, Beth Ann Fennelly made her home in Mississippi and served as the state’s fifth Poet Laureate from 2016 through 2021. Her 1997 chapbook, A Different Kind of Hunger, received the Texas Review Breakthrough Prize, and her 2001 collection of poetry, Open House, was awarded the Kenyon Review Prize. Published in her work Unmentionables (2008), the poem “The Kudzu Chronicles” was noted by one scholar as “grounded in her experience of living in Mississippi. . . how a Midwestern transplant can take root as a southern writer, just as the kudzu vine flourishes.”

Sterling D. Plumpp, 1940-. Born in Clinton, Mississippi.

Featured items, left to right: Galley copy and published volume, the Mojo Hands Call, I Must Go (1982), Draft version and published copy, Clinton (1976), Bound galley copy (inscribed to Dorothy Abbott) and uncorrected page proofs, Blues: The Story Always Untold (1989)

Poet, editor, educator, and critic Sterling D. Plumpp spent his early years on a tenant farm near Clinton, Mississippi, experiences which featured largely in his poem “Clinton.” Plumpp’s work, “examines African American experience through psychology, perseverance and adaptation in a changing world.” After leaving the state as a young man, the author published his first book of poetry, Portable Soul, in 1969. He is widely known for his blues and jazz poetry, such as Blues: The Story Always Untold (1989) and his work, the Mojo Hands Call, I Must Go (1982), which won the Carl Sanburg Literary Award among other distinctions.