FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - At one time, the names of great Southern writers could be listed like a registry of country gentry - rural, white, male. And the works of these men could be identified by the rich twisting of language, the gothic bent of imagination that was so characteristic, it was said to give voice to a region.

No more, says Sidney Burris, a poet and professor at the University of Arkansas. The South is not a voice. It’s a place. And if any common characteristic still exists among Southern writers, it’s the way they mold their identities around this place, he said.

Burris has a keen perspective on the subject, not least because he was born and raised in Virginia, educated at Duke. He was also recently invited to join 43 other writers and poets for a conference hosted by Vanderbilt University. Called "A Millennial Gathering of the Writers of the New South," the event assembled leading writers of the region to examine and discuss the state of contemporary Southern literature.

Vanderbilt University provided an appropriate setting for such a gathering. Decades earlier, the Nashville campus had been home to the Fugitive poets - a group of Southern literary legends whose membership included Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate and John Crowe Ransom.

"One of the things this conference proved was that Southern writing has become extremely diversified since the days of the Fugitives. It’s no longer this gallery of white, male faces," Burris said.

In other words, Southern literature now represents a multitude of voices - spanning the gamut of race, class and gender. While this makes the genre more complete, it also makes it harder to label.

"With diversity comes a certain vigor but also a lack of unanimity," Burris said. "There’s still a vital group of Southern writers hard at work, producing remarkable stuff, but they’re no longer linked by common perspective. If anything binds them now, it’s more fundamental - a connection to the land, the South, and how they carry it with them."

Burris himself recently published a book of poems titled Doing Lucretius. Among the concluding pieces, a poem called "Sanctuary" reads in part: ".It’s said/ if you stand long enough/ in one place in the Delta, and long enough/ down there is not long at all, you will likely take root."

And Southern writers are not easily uprooted. Even those who move out of the region continue to classify themselves as Southern, and this has become a common and recognizable trait, said Burris - the tendency to base their personal identities on a place.

"It’s part of our strength as a group of writers but also a weakness. We get accused of being 'professional Southerners’ - always showing up with a bottle of bourbon and a Faulkner novel. It’s become incredibly cliché. On the other hand, it’s part of what gives us cohesion," Burris said.

Burris’ own work reflects the link to land and to the people. Highly acclaimed since its publication this spring, Doing Lucretius is part of the Southern Messenger Poets series, published by Louisiana State University Press. Each year, the LSU Press selects one or two manuscripts to represent the series, which includes works by Kate Daniels, James Seay and T.R. Hummer.

Burris’ collection traces a personal history of life in the South. It begins with reminiscences of a childhood spent barefoot on blistered pavement, looking out on "the long-grass face of the world." It ends with an adult’s pondering of "war and passion" - those hard journeys we take down unpaved roads. In between is shifting light and the tension of living even though light fades, death nears and other forces move us.

"There’s an urgency to the act of writing just as there is in the act of living. It’s a stay against death," said Burris. "As writers, we’re conscious that the world we observe in our poems is decaying, dying, pulling downward. But the act of lyricism, of celebration, is an upward movement. That’s the tension you sense in good poetry."

Burris heightens this tension with classical drama - weaving the grief and plights of ancient heroes into a modern scenario and sensibility. Educated in Greek and Latin, Burris’ knowledge of classical literature and legend weaves into the poetry, hints at the enduring nature of human experience.

But true to his roots, Burris superimposes these classical themes over a contemporary Southern landscape where one might find Ulysses sailing through "sea oats" or a young girl who sits and feels "the old Roman grief propping her up/ on the back stoop/ where she saw car lights/ fading down the street."

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