Coastal Carolina University professor Daniel Cross Turner has written a scholarly book, "Southern Crossings: Poetry, Memory, and the Transcultural South," just released by the University of Tennessee Press.

"Southern Crossings" illustrates the centrality of poetry written in and about the American South to historical conceptions of "Southernness" as well as "Americanness." Offering innovative perspectives on a diversity of recent and still-practicing Southern poets, Turner's study illustrates poetry's value as a genre well suited to investigating historical conditions and the ways in which they are culturally assimilated and remembered. With its array of new insights on poets of considerable reputation (six of the writers discussed have won at least one Pulitzer Prize for poetry) "Southern Crossings" is a field-shaping work that makes a vital contribution to the study of not only modern poetics and literary theory, but also of the U.S. South and its place in the larger world.

Current U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey, one of the poets addressed in "Southern Crossings," has praised Turner's work: "Daniel Cross Turner has made a key contribution to the critical study and appreciation of the diverse field of contemporary Southern poetics.... Turner's close readings are dynamic, even lyrical.... This is a valuable and important book that entwines new visions of poetic forms with forms of regional remembrance and identity."

Turner, assistant professor of English, earned a Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt University. His articles have been published in edited collections as well as prominent scholarly journals such as Mosaic, Genre, and Southern Quarterly, among numerous other publications.

The book is available from the University of Tennessee Press as well as online booksellers.