An introduction to Millie Jackson's Travels through Life

Millie Jackson is a visionary with words. Born in 1944 and raised in Jackson County, Florida, in the Panhandle, Millie has seen cotton fields turn to convenience stores and vegetable gardens become home sites. She has seen poverty, but she relishes in wealth provided by God.

Millie has been interested in writing since she was a child. She was particularly fond of poems that brought her to people, places, and things, to feelings and emotions. She began writing herself in the 1960s, inspired by the poetry of Browning, Frost, and McKuen. She writes as a way to explore feelings and emotions. Writing is her way of speaking when she can' t talk to a person. It is her way of dealing with joy as well as with sadness.

Millie has a unique vernacular writing style that knows its own spelling and grammar. Her writings, which she interchangeably calls poems and letters, are meant to be spoken in a soft, steady voice. Millie speaks as she writes.

She writes of pain, she celebrates nature, and she explores the interaction of Man and God. She rejoices in a flower, she takes pride in knowing particular people, she sees beauty in Christ and his message. Her writings are statements about the ways of the world as she has experienced it.

Millie is a survivor. She has experienced domestic abuse and is on her journey to survival. It is a southern journey because this is where she was born and raised. As she says, "You take you with you wherever you go." For Millie, this is to her corner of the Panhandle.

It is a southern home, a place to be safe and secure. Millie has experienced lack of safety and security. Her poems are her way to construct a sense of home as she would like it: safe and secure, where people treat each other with care and compassion. They are messages from a person who strives to be caring, compassionate, and open.

I first met Millie in December 2003 at a holiday party in Chipley, Florida, also in the Panhandle. There she read Wings, one of her poems/letters in honor of the party's host. We didn't meet again until February 2004 when she told me she had written a series of poems that she would like to have published. I took the poems home with me and read the fluid expressions. I decided to help get them published.

To get a sense of how the poems were put together, I asked Millie to record them for me. That way I could get a feel for verse structure defined by her breath. I then transcribed the poems/letters.

Millie sees herself traveling through life on a journey that is never-ending. In the following pages she invites you to join her as she Travels Through Life.

Jan Rosenberg
April 2004

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