Poem by Ashley M. Jones and Tina Mozelle Braziel
Download a PDF of Notions of Flannel, Muslin, and Silk
Watch a version that includes quilts from the Birmingham Museum of Art and Hedges Projects.
Watch the full interview with Ashley M. Jones and Tina Mozelle Braziel.
ABOUT THE PROJECT
We are honored to present this poem by Ashley M. Jones and Tina Mozelle Braziel, a collaboration that pays tribute to the layered meanings and cultural significance of quilting. Ashley and Tina were inspired to write "Notions of Flannel, Muslin, and Silk" after visiting an exhibition of quilts at the Birmingham Museum of Art.
Quilts hold a special place at Pebble Hill, where we celebrate their role in preserving history and telling stories. In 2022, we hosted a symposium titled "Every Stitch a Story," which brought together scholars and quilters to explore how quilts embody our shared narratives. As part of the symposium, the Yarbrough Crazy Quilt (or Silk Quilt), completed by Mary Strudwick Yarbrough, was displayed. This remarkable quilt memorializes family members, with Mary documenting the history of each square in a notebook. The quilt is in the collection of the Alabama Department of Archives & History.
ABOUT THE POETS
Ashley M. Jones is Poet Laureate of the state of Alabama (2022-2026). She received an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University (FIU), where she was a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Fellow. She served as Official Poet for the City of Sunrise, Florida’s Little Free Libraries Initiative from 2013-2015, and her work was recognized in the 2014 Poets and Writers Maureen Egen Writer’s Exchange Contest and the 2015 Academy of American Poets Contest at FIU. She was also a finalist in the 2015 Hub City Press New Southern Voices Contest, the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award Contest, and the National Poetry Series. Her debut poetry collection, Magic City Gospel, was published by Hub City Press in January 2017, and it won the silver medal in poetry in the 2017 Independent Publishers Book Awards. Her second book, dark // thing, won the 2018 Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry from Pleiades Press. Her third collection, REPARATIONS NOW! is forthcoming in Fall 2021 from Hub City Press. She won the 2018 Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize from Backbone Press, and she is the 2019 winner of the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award from St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Jones is a recipient of a Poetry Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and a 2020 Alabama Author award from the Alabama Library Association. She was a finalist for the Ruth Lily Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship in 2020, and her collection, REPARATIONS NOW! was on the longlist for the 2022 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry. She currently lives in Birmingham, Alabama, where she is Associate Director of the University Honors Program at UAB, founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival, and PhD student in English at Old Dominion University. In 2021, Jones served as a guest editor for Poetry Magazine. In 2022, she received a Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets.
Tina Mozelle Braziel co-wrote Glass Cabin (Pulley Press) with her husband, writer James Braziel. A meditation on hope, on frustration, and on people’s places in the wilder parts of the world, Glass Cabin chronicles the thirteen years the Braziels spent building their home by hand on a ridge in rural Alabama. Tina has been awarded the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry for Known by Salt (Anhinga Press), an artist residency at Hot Springs National Park, and a fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts. As the first Eco-Poetry Fellow for Magic City Poetry Festival, she collaborated with the Cahaba River Society to create eco-poetry curriculum and videos. In 2023, she was selected to serve as an Alabama Poetry Delegate, a multi-regional service initiative implemented by Alabama’s Poet Laureate Ashley M. Jones. For her Alabama Poetry Delegate Project, she partners with the Alabama Rivers Alliance to hold poetry workshops along Alabama waterways and create eco-poetry films as part of the Southern Exposure Film Festival. Tina leads poetry writing hikes for The Friends of the Locust Fork and serves on the Board of Directors of The Friends of Big Canoe Creek. Her work has appeared in POETRY, The Cincinnati Review, Southern Humanities Review, and other journals. She directs the Ada Long Creative Writing Workshop for high school students at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Tina holds an M.F.A in Poetry from the University of Oregon, an M.A. in Poetry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and a B.A. in Intercultural Studies at the University of Montevallo.
SPECIAL THANKS
Thank you to the Birmingham Museum of Art and Hedges Projects for the use of images of quilts featured in the poem.
- Album Quilt. Mt. Hebron community, Greene County, Alabama, about 1858. Collection of the Art Fund, Inc. at the Birmingham Museum of Art; Gift of Helen and Robert Cargo.
- Crazy Quilt. Alabama, Tuscaloosa County, n.d. Collection of the Art Fund, Inc. at the Birmingham Museum of Art; Gift of Helen and Robert Cargo.
- Pine Burr or Petal Quilt. Tuscaloosa, Alabama, about 1960-1970. Collection of the Art Fund, Inc. at the Birmingham Museum of Art; Gift of Helen and Robert Cargo.
- Princess Feather Quilt. Johnson, about 1880-1890. Collection of the Art Fund, Inc. at the Birmingham Museum of Art; Gift of Helen and Robert Cargo.
- Crazy Quilt. Alabama, Tuscaloosa County, about 1910-1915. Collection of the Art Fund, Inc. at the Birmingham Museum of Art; Gift of Helen and Robert Cargo.
- Quilt, "Mystery Circle" or "Winding Ways" or "Wheel of Mystery" pattern. Myrtle L. Hubbard, about 1960. Collection of the Art Fund, Inc. at the Birmingham Museum of Art; Gift of Helen and Robert Cargo.
- Jones Valley. Nora Ezell, 1987. Collection of the Art Fund, Inc. at the Birmingham Museum of Art; Robert and Helen Cargo African American Quilt Collection; Gift of Caroline Cargo.
- Everybody and Houses Quilt. May Maxtion, 1994. Collection of the Art Fund, Inc. at the Birmingham Museum of Art; Robert and Helen Cargo African American Quilt Collection; Gift of Caroline Cargo.
- Quilt, Star of Bethlehem Pattern. Freedom Quilting Bee, about 1968. Collection of the Art Fund, Inc. at the Birmingham Museum of Art; Gift of Helen and Robert Cargo.