Pembroke Magazine is an international literary magazine published annually by the University of North Carolina at Pembroke and the North Carolina Arts Council. It offers readers a rare opportunity to move through time, across cultures, and into contemporary literature and art. Pembroke Magazine was founded in 1969 by Norman Macleod, known for editing other highly regarded "little" magazines such as Front, the Maryland Quarterly and the Briarcliff Quarterly. Shelby Stephenson has been the editor since 1979. Number 38 Jesse Peters, Guest Editor. Native American Literature. Gerald Vizenor Lecture. Heather Ross Miller. Ann Deagon. Ronald H. Bayes. Kermit Turner. Sharon A. Sharp. Stanley Plumly Interview. Reinhold Grimm. Billy Edd Wheeler Interview. Click here for more about Pembroke Magazine.

HEATHER ROSS MILLER: Long Ago, Faraway In those days our babies were babies, and our men smelled of young muscle. We had room to get better, and spread ourselves around rich and thick as butter, right necessary angels. We had time to do it, we had nerve and spirit, our teeth white and sharp as the tearing bone they really were. But we got honed down, and made a peace, not at all surrender. Sister, sister, daughter, granddaughter, let us sit for a picture, tall ones in the back, old ones on the chair, babies in laps and arms. Let us look straight ahead in full-frontal splendor.

North Carolina Writers Honor Heather Ross Miller

ANN DEAGON: Song (Excerpt) As for song, it all began as a joke. I had grown up singing opera (only to myself, of course), and when I met my husband Donald joined in his passion for English and Scottish folksong. Then in the 80's I was asked to present a reading of my poems at the cash bar during the annual meeting of the Classical Association, which was to take place in Nashville. Having taught Latin and Greek for more than thirty years, I knew that a couple of hundred drunk classicists who had just had to sit through a presidential address in Latin would not be up to attending to my poems. But since the meeting was to be held in Nashville, and I had the impression that Nashville was the home of country music, I decided to do some research and create a program of country songs based on Greek myth. I had to teach myself to play the autoharp and sing through my nose, but the result was extremely gratifying.

Photo by Jan G. Hensley

 

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