Thanks for coming to the site. To All who have sent their best wishes during this period of immense sadness and joy, you have my sincerest thanks. Rev. Isaac Lewis Sanders, my father (1943-2009) passed in Memphis and was buried on daughter's birthday. Ruby Magdalena Elizabeth Sanders was born healthy and bright-eyed on 21 November 2009 at the Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne, Australia. Many Thanks to the Brunswick community for their kind words, visits, as well as to the Memphians, MTS, and MBCC family who have been so terrific in their support of my wife, Ruth Sandy as she recovers from the pregnancy and shares my family's sorrow at Issac's passing.

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I am in Melbourne, Australia. Look for more changes to the site soon, especially info about my first year in OZ and new formatting for ease of navigation. Enjoy.

It is my hope that future versions of this site provide a centering place for academic, social, and spiritual change for the betterment of the Greater Memphis Metropolitan Area, Melbourne, Australia, and the world. I would personally like to thank all the beautiful souls I have met on my journey to date who have aided in my personal, spiritual, emotional and artistic growth.
I especially express my heartfelt thanks to Melbourne, where love, learning, and a life written and spoken are encouraged.

I love Memphis, & Memphis is my hometown.  I am a native Memphian, who for over 18 years has spent his blood, sweat, and tears educating and inspiring children and adults willing to put pen, imagination, and breath to the service of making Memphis a wonderful place to live, work, and create. Perhaps because my level and consistency of service to the varied populations of Memphis and the Mid-South I have been nicknamed "Memphis Poet Laureate." I have performed in schools, churches, bars, clubs, parks, restaurants, and homes. I have performed solo, with bands, with the homeless, with visitors to our Bluff, and with some of the most precious children planet Earth has ever sown.

I was called crazy for leaving one of the "best schools in America" and returning to a city that, as far as most of the world is concerned, had no literary history of note-especially poetic history. Call me crazy all my life if you must, but is there honestly a better reason to be, to live for than being in love? Absolutely not. Farewell Otter Creek, Hello Again Ol' Man River. A decade plus of teaching has confirmed I was not crazy at all to generate a living cultural and intellectual investment in the children of Memphis. The positive impact made educating many Memphis children before they graduated high school with poetry pays its many dividends everyday, all over the world. 

Presently I am serving as the Poet Laureate of the Center for Southern Folklore. My time on Earth has been an interesting journey thus far, teaching me often that One thing other than change is certain: We as Memphians are connected, and our home is unlike any city on the globe. Our soul shines in our instrumental music, it shimmers in our BBQ sauce, it blossoms in the syllables of our world-renowned songs.

If you have any questions about available residencies, classroom instruction or performance rates, please e-mail me at poetiq@hotmail.com.