SPOTLIGHT: Adia Victoria Reshapes Story of the South Through Music and Poetry

Alongside her music career, set to blazing in the wake of the release of Silences a few weeks ago, Adia Victoria is also a working poet. For a deeper look into the art and heart of No Depression‘s February Spotlight artist, we asked Victoria to share one of her poems with us, which she has done via the beautiful video below.

Here’s what she told us about the poem, titled “to mississippi (or, a blueswoman speaks back to the delta.)”:

“I wanted a chance as a blues singer to speak back to the story the South sells of itself, to center the perspective of a black Mississippi woman (Rosie) as she peels back familiar delta blues tropes exposing a violence and a reality the very blues musicians we celebrate had to navigate and negotiate in order to survive.

“This poem is one part of a whole piece written in collaboration with fellow Nashville-based poets Ciona Rouse and Carolina Randall Williams. We have come together to form the Blair House Collective — three black Southern women centering their stories and their legacies as the true benefactors of the blues.”