Poor-Mouth Jubilee (Tupelo Master Series)

Advance praise: Andrew Hudgins says, "No book about happiness has made me half as happy as I was made by POOR-MOUTH JUBILEE, Michael Chitwood's sublime book about sorrow. Chitwood gives sorrow all its due respect - and no more, so the book is often laugh-out funny in its wisdom. POOR-MOUTH JUBILEE pulses with the exhilaration of being alive." And Sydney Lea says, "At a time when 'religion' is too often misrepresented by literalists and scorekeepers, all through Poor-Mouth Jubilee we're reminded that genuine belief (and doubt) resists the sound bite. The moment we try to articulate a thing as ineffable as faith, we're reduced to formality, and too often to formula. This brilliant poet resists such facile - and anti-Scriptural - recourses, paradoxically noting the poverty of his own expression, which for this reader is a richness rare in current poetry."

Michael Chitwood was born in the foothills of the Virginia Blue Ridge in a small town named Rocky Mount. He grew up there, attending the county's only high school. He attended Emory and Henry College for my undergraduate degree, earning a BA in English in 1980. He worked as a science writer for a number of years at the University of Virginia Medical Center, eventually becoming assistant editor of the magazine Helix. While there, he also became a full-time student in the MFA program, receiving his degree in 1986. He moved to North Carolina that year and worked as a science and medical writer at Duke University Medical Center and then at Research Triangle Institute where he edited the magazine Hypotenuse. His books include the poetry collections POOR-MOUTH JUBILEE (Tupelo Press, 2010), SPILL (Tupelo Press, 2008), and The Weave Room (Chicago, 1998). Chitwood has also published two prose books, Finishing Touches: Selected Essays and Fiction (Tryon Publishing, 2006) and Hitting Below the Bible Belt: Baptist Voodoo, Blood Kin, Grandma's Teeth and Other Stories from the South (Down Home Press, 1998). After the birth of his son, he became a freelance writer and full-time Dad. And he became a commentator for North Carolina's WUNC affiliate of National Public Radio. He also began teaching at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is now a full-time visiting lecturer at UNC and lives with his wife and two children in Chapel Hill.