Even on the beach in winter, this writer can close her eye and feel the familiar red clay of her home state beneath her feet
by Amanda Bennett | illustration by Alia El-Bermani

Amanda Bennett is a poet, public humanities practitioner and Carrboro Poet Laureate. She is the author of Working the Roots and holds a PhD in Literature from Duke University. “I wrote this poem from the feeling that the South is not only a geography, but an inheritance and orientation toward the world. For me, Black Southern life honors history, spirit and revelation at once — keeping one eye on the sparrow, one eye on freedom and both feet planted in the ground of our ancestors.” 

Artist, teacher and independent curator, Alia El-Bermani was raised in a small town just south of Boston, where she spent most of her childhood enjoying the outdoors and discovering the natural history of the south shore of Massachusetts. She received her BFA in 2000 from Laguna College of Art and Design in Laguna Beach CA. The talented figurative painter has had several solo exhibitions and her work featured in group exhibitions across the country.  Her work has been showcased in museums such as the Palm Springs Desert Museum in California, Customs House Museum in Tennessee, Anchorage Museum of History and Art in Alaska, West Valley Art Museum in Arizona, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto and the Greenville Museum of Art in North Carolina.

This article originally appeared in the June 2026 issue of WALTER magazine.