CliffordBrooks
Pulitzer-nominated poet. Founder of The Southern Collective Experience.Editor and Chief of the Blue Mountain Review and Host of Dante’s New South
A Voice That Belongs to
the Whole South
Clifford Brooks is a Georgia-based poet, author, broadcaster, and educator whose work has helped define the architecture of contemporary Southern literature — not as artifact, but as living conversation.
His Pulitzer-nominated debut announced a talent of rare scope and seriousness. His third full-length collection, Old Gods, published by Mercer University Press in 2023, confirms what those early readers already knew: this is a writer building a body of work that will last.
Beyond the page, Cliff founded The Blue Mountain Review and The Southern Collective Experience — two institutions that have become genuine community pillars for writers across the region. He teaches in the UCLA Extension Writers' Program and hosts the celebrated podcast Dante's New South, bringing Southern voices into dialogue with the wider American literary tradition.
A Body of Work
Built to Endure
The Pulitzer-nominated debut that announced a poet of uncommon ambition — metaphysically charged, deeply Southern, and restless in its search for grace under pressure. A double volume spanning two worlds of verse.
View on Amazon →Tornadic, whirling, and elemental — Brooks picks the reader up in Athens, Georgia and sets them down in Athens, Greece. Barroom denizen, then Orpheus, then Samson, then Doc Holliday. Purely genuine. Wholly authentic.
View on Amazon →Through the redemptive power of words, Old Gods confronts personal battles of addiction, autism, heartbreak, and otherness through journey poems. Bolstered by faith, family, and vocation — meticulous, ordered, and finally at peace.
View at Mercer University Press →A limited-edition chapbook exploring the enduring themes of exile, belonging, and departure that run through Brooks' larger body of work — home and homecoming rendered with intimacy and formal care.
Learn More →New South
Dante's New South is Clifford Brooks' long-running conversation series exploring the full breadth of Southern literary culture — where it has been, what it is becoming, and why it matters.
Each episode brings poets, novelists, critics, musicians, and artists into genuine dialogue. Not panel talk, not interview theater — conversation, the kind that moves the way good writing moves: with curiosity, patience, and a willingness to sit with the hard questions.
The curiosity of a scholar and the instincts of a storyteller — a combination that has made Dante's New South essential listening for anyone serious about American letters.
What sets the show apart is Brooks' own standing inside the conversation. He is not a host who asks questions from the outside. He is a poet and editor who has built institutions, published books, and taught the craft — and every interview carries the weight of that lived experience.
What the World's
Greatest Readers Say
Brooks writes a passionate, eloquent poetry, as wide-ranging as the models he sometimes invokes, including the blues and the epics.
This is poetry full of music and light about God, autism, addiction, and love. Brooks is an alchemist and a lyricist, an agile wordsmith with tenderness and fire.
Brooks is as energetic and creative a talent as I have seen in many years — with an untamed nature, a wild zest for poetry and life, and an imagination that reminds me of Frank Stanford.
If Rilke shared a notebook with Frank Stanford, something like Clifford Brooks's lyric would climb to the surface — traveling through Southern life, music, love, memory, despair, and hope.
Speaking, Teaching
& Literary Community
Available for public readings, university lectures, literary festivals, and bookstore events. Cliff brings to every stage the same rigor and warmth that defines his work on the page and on air.
Faculty in the UCLA Extension Writers' Program, Cliff leads workshops on poetry, craft, and the literary essay — drawing on decades of practice as both writer and editor.
A sought-after panelist and keynote speaker at literary conferences, cultural events, and creative writing programs nationwide — a natural moderator with genuine authority on Southern letters.
Press & Publications
What He's Built
A journal committed to the full breadth of Southern literary talent — poetry, fiction, essays, and criticism — with an editorial sensibility that prizes quality over trend and community over competition. Under Cliff's leadership, it has grown into a genuine cultural institution.
A living ecosystem for Southern writers — events, workshops, and community-building that brings artists together across the full geography of the American South. The SCE exists because Cliff believes literary culture is not something you consume; it's something you create together.
Learning From
Someone Who Lives It
Clifford Brooks was diagnosed with autism at age 39. What followed wasn't a crisis — it was clarity. Suddenly, decades of social anxiety, sensory overload, and misread cues had a name. And slowly, through writing and community, he built a life that works on his terms.
This course is the distillation of those coping skills. Not clinical theory. Not a doctor's distance. A working poet and educator sharing, honestly and practically, what it actually looks like to thrive on the spectrum — in relationships, in work, in creativity, in daily life.
Produced in collaboration with Cristha and Renisha Edwards, with original music by Alain Johannes, Adulting with Autism is equal parts course and companion — something to return to, not just move through once.
Built from Cliff's twenty-plus years of teaching, his work with the UCLA Extension Writers' Program, and his own career as a published poet — a practical, no-nonsense guide to the craft and the business of writing as a profession.
View Course →Four private sessions — by video, phone, or email, whatever suits you best. Open to any aspect of life on the spectrum, the writing craft, or both. Cliff is straightforward about his abilities and will meet you exactly where you are.
Book Sessions →Ready to Work
With Clifford?
For booking, speaking engagements, and literary representation — all inquiries welcome.