Poet laureate of Tennessee Margaret Britton Vaughn dies at 87

BELL BUCKLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — The poet laureate of Tennessee has just died. Margaret Britton Vaughn was 87-years-old. Friends knew Vaughn as hilarious, talented, and deeply unique.

Visiting Bell Buckle, Tennessee over the years, I’ve just found this little place has so many artists. A proud addition to that is Vaughn.

“When Maggi was your friend, you knew you had a friend,” said longtime friend Annie Rooney. “It wasn’t if you’re rich or poor or have four matching tires on your car, she was your friend.”

Going way back, Vaughn was a songwriter for some country greats.

“Loretta Lynn, yes!” said friend Carla Webb.

To understand the uniqueness of Vaughn, listen to this story.

“Maggi says, ‘honey, you wanna go to the movies with me?’” friend Billy Phillips remembered.

Phillips was nine when he and Vaughn became friends and took a trip to the Carpi Theatre in Shelbyville.

“When I get into the car, there were 200 empty boxes of chocolate bunny rabbits!” Phillips laughed.

“She loved chocolate,” Rooney agreed.

“It couldn’t be hollow milk chocolate,” Phillips continued. “It had to be solid milk chocolate.”

That was just one of many loves. One of the times I got to talk to Vaughn was in 2023. She was selling eclectic things she’d collected. They included a typewriter built out of clothes hangers and a lamp made of forks and spoons.

“Maggi had a lot of stuff!” Phillips said.

She’d call around to antique shops.

“Got anything that looks like me, honey?” Rooney laughed, remembering Vaughn’s calls.

Talking to Vaughn, you came to understand something. She had a deep appreciation for the art and the artist who made it. That’s something that sprang from Vaughn being an artist herself.

“My mother looked down and said, ‘are you sure you don’t want to be a nurse?’” Vaughn told me in 2023. “I said, ‘no, momma. I wanna be a songwriter and a poet.’ People say, ‘Maggi, these books. You’ve written my life.’”

“Maggi had front porch books, not coffee table books,” Webb said.

“She was a poet of the people,” Rooney continued.

Vaughn took on prejudice in her work. She also wrote about all things she loved.

“She covered rural life, southern things,” Phillips said.

That writing carried her to become the poet laureate of Tennessee in 1995. The next year, she wrote Tennessee’s bicentennial poem.

“I gave her her last kiss the other day,” Webb said.

“I’m on the verge of tears,” Phillips added. “This will be a real gut punch.”

Asking around town, people seemed to agree on their favorite of Vaughn’s works.

“Is That You Mama?” Phillips said, naming one of Vaughn’s poems.

Webb read me an excerpt of the poem. It ended with these lines;

“Well, mama, I’m okay now. You tell the Lord I said hi. Was that you, mama, that just kissed me bye?”

“Maggi was a true original, and Bell Buckle was proud to call her our own,” Phillips said.

Do you have a positive, good news story? You can email me at forrest.sanders@newschannel5.com.