Appalachia Kicks

I live in Appalachia. Supposedly, this, too, is North Carolina. I live here because it’s cheap. Economics is the great leveler. I eat what I can grow. Why is that supposed to be a humiliation. This is the land of No One Makes Much Around Here Anyway. We are not…

Tim Barrus: Clown Car Reboot

I seriously doubt that this one will be published. They’re fishing for a voice. I am not that voice. It’s a voice I know how to play to. I just don’t always use the same exact voice because the rhythms will begin a rendering of monotone because it’s pretending to…

Tim Barrus: Jared Leto

I would not have minded if the book critic had taken issue with my work. But no. They always go after me as a human being. I am, of course, the monster, the criminal, the itinerant, the Boogeyman, Coyote. I will gladly take Coyote. The coyotes around my cabin eat…

Tim Barrus: I Lived Here Because I Liked How The Light Slipped Through The Window

Not everyone in Appalachia lives in a hollow in a trailer. Fuck the stereotype. There can be an archive of poverty porn in your face if you are attempting to see Appalachia the way it actually is. There are a lot of old Civil War era brick buildings and people…

Tim Barrus: Appalachia Town

I am already getting hits and numbers on Appalachia Town. There’s (so far) no text. Just photographs of Appalachia. I have not so much as really starting this project with the exception of a few of the photographs. This project could take me another year. My average is 2 photographs…

Tim Barrus, Appalachia Town

Tim Barrus: Appalachia Town

“Do you reckon you will take pictures of the house.” “No.”

Tim Barrus, New York Times

We dance a fancy dance all around the issue of deep poverty. Because deep poverty is doing its bloody dance all around us. These constants – deep poverty, abortion – beg an irony that has babies no one wants. No one supports kids in crisis anymore because there is no…

Tim Barrus, New York Times

It’s all in your head. What you need is LSD. We need more LSD. More LSD. Boom boom dope. I call that hope.

Tim Barrus, My Appalachia

Imagination flows now, a great constancy and the beggermaid.  

Dead Stones

The House of Stills. Whiskey in the making. People who are unfamiliar with moonshine are surprised to find out that moonshine is as clear as bottled water from France. The stereotype has the moonshiner as an old and obstreporous man who has a shitload of guns, and a still in…

in these appalachian hills

in these appalachian hills groaning under not an anchor but a lack of them reading itself is like the scrap dealer bent so close to poverty one can only wonder why it is white people mainly cannot bring themselves to understand that reading is a warship that has kissed the…