Quotes from Joyce Dyer

I am out listening for the words, for the breath of my ancestors

who value a handshake more than an unreadable fancy signature,

Perhaps it takes a hybrid to help create a body of writing where once there was only oral tradition.

The women congregated in the kitchen or, in warm weather, sat in rocking chairs on the shady porches. The few men present squatted and talked in the yard or sat on a porch on the opposite side of the house.

As this poem illustrates, place is not just location, geography; place is history, family, the shape and context of daily life.

I am a southern woman, and I write about the places that flavor me. I cannot help myself.

Through writing, I have been looking back ever since, trying to recapture all that was left behind

I regret now that I didn't listen to their stories more closely, for they were yarn spinners, too.

I piddle with words.