The Text Beneath

From 1960 to 1990, Charlotte Barr belonged to a religious order in Nashville, Tennessee, where she was known as Sister Mary Anthony, OP. She was a teacher for over forty years, most notably at St. Cecelia Academy and Aquinas College on Nashville's Dominican Campus. After leaving St. Cecelia, Charlotte taught of two years at the Webb School in Bell Buckle, Tennessee. Since 1992, she has taught at the Baylor School in Chattanooga, where she held the position of poet-in-residence. Charlotte retired from teaching in 2007. During her novitiate year, Charlotte began seriously to write poetry. Her early convent poems appeared in the collection, Brief Blue Season, in 1966. Over the years, Charlotte's work has been published in several periodicals and journals, including The Sewanee Review, The Cumberland Review, The Distillery, and The Spire, a publication of the Vanderbilt Divinity School. Two volumes of poetry, Sister Woman (1989) and The Bell Buckle Years (1992), were published by Maggi Vaughn at Iris Press.