Deep Down in the Delta
Folktales and Poems
Greg Alan Brownderville, with paintings by Billy Moore

In Deep Down in the Delta, a book like no other, tales and poems by award-winning writer Greg Alan Brownderville are paired with paintings by “outsider” artist Billy Moore to evoke the Arkansas Delta in unforgettable fashion. One of the most soulful, most mysterious regions in America comes to life in words and pictures.
Reminiscent of Jean Toomer’s Cane and Alice Rae Yelen’s Passionate Visions of the American South, this book leads the reader into strange country where a buzzard the size of an airplane circles over buried Confederate treasure; an indestructible rabbit haunts a graveyard; a pool table dances across a juke joint; and a hoodoo woman treats a girl who flies around the house like a balloon losing air. The poems are folkloristic, the tales poetic, and the paintings downright beautiful.

Greg Alan Brownderville, a native of Pumpkin Bend, Arkansas, is the author of the poetry collection Gust (Northwestern University Press, 2011). He completed an MFA in poetry at the University of Mississippi in 2008 and currently teaches creative writing at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri.

Billy Moore picked up a paintbrush seven years ago when his daughter, Lauren, then four, left out her Crayola paint set. He has been painting ever since. Moore has clients all over the world and travels throughout the Southeast to attend arts festivals. Moore lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

February 2012
10 x 10, 96 pages
$19.95 paper
978-1-935106-33-3

Distributed for the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies.