Jane Morton
Jane Morton is a poet and writer based in Birmingham, Alabama. Their debut poetry collection, Shedding Season, is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in 2025. Their poetry chapbook Snake Lore won the Black River Contest from Black Lawrence Press and was published this year – look here for more details. They received their MFA from the University of Alabama, where they were Online Editor for Black Warrior Review. Their poetry and short fiction have been published widely in literary journals, and they have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. They currently teach English and creative writing at the University of Alabama.
Snake Lore
Snake Lore explores the intimacy and violence born of a particular place, weaving a broken narrative fraught with the tangled dynamics of individuals and their environment. This collection is steeped in dirt and framed within the politics of disgust concerning sexuality and the gendered body in the often-fantastical world of the American South. Morton uses formal play to hold contradictions together—a contrapuntal poem to tell two versions of a story, or a string of sonnets, which queer the form from poem to poem, invoking both familiarity and mutation. In these poems, spiritual and religious concerns—the beauty and the harm that they potentiate—converge and haunt. Look here for more information or to order the collection.
Selected Publications
Poetry
“Development” in Quarterly West (Web)
“Self Portrait in the Mirror” in Ninth Letter (Print)
“Hunger” in Gulf Coast (Print)
“Self Portrait as Bacchus” in West Branch (Print)
“Promise” in West Branch (Print)
“Nature” in West Branch (Print)
“Snake Lore” in Boulevard (Print)
“Distance” in Frontier Poetry (Web)
“Aubade with Cow Tongue and Wisteria” in The Journal (Print)
“Refrain” in New South (Web)
“Drive” in New South (Web)
“Snake Lore” in Passages North (Print)
“Dogwood” in Third Coast (Print)
“One Summer He Showed Me Mayflies” in The Rupture (Web)
“Tiktaalik” in The Offing (Web)
“Split Portrait” in Booth (Web & Print)
“Self Portrait with Feathers” in Meridian (Print)
“Overnight” in Poetry Northwest (Print)
“Milk Snake” in Sugar House Review (Print)
“Chorus, Legs on Legs” in Poet Lore (Print)
“Overgrowth” in Cutbank (Print)
“Cottonmouth” in Chicago Quarterly Review (Print)
“Solstice” in Chicago Quarterly Review (Print)
“Snake Lore” in The Lilac Issue of Fairy Tale Review (Print)
“There are so many flies in the kitchen” in Hunger Mountain (Web)
“Thistle” in Hunger Mountain (Web)
“Drought” in Redivider (Web)
“Shedding Season” in The Rupture (Web)
“Aubade” in The Rupture (Web)
“Self Portraits in Retrospect” in Muzzle (Web)
“Dayton” in Yemassee (Print)
Fiction
“Death or The Dog” in Joyland (Web)
“The Forest” in Cream City Review (Print)
“The Sun, The Water” in Dream Pop Press (Web)
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