An Interview with Faculty Member Maurice Manning

An interview with faculty member Maurice Manning on writing about Abe Lincoln, and finding inspiration in the woods

Maurice Manning writes poems about turnips, and copperheads, and tire swings, and a woman who gets her apron strings caught in an old wringer washer. His work is dug from the ground of the Kentucky farmland where he lives. But it’s also elevated, universal, as high and expansive as the stars.

Manning was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for an earlier book of poems called “The Common Man.” His new book Railsplitter is a series of poems written in Abraham Lincoln’s voice from beyond the grave. It’s a tribute to another plainspoken man with visions of something bigger.

Listen to the interview on SouthBound.