Likely born around 1913 in Pace, Mississippi, besmilr brigham was a prolific poet and fiction writer. She earned a degree in journalism from the New School for Social Research in New York. Her books of poetry published during her lifetime include Agony Dance: Death of the Dancing Dolls, published in Mexico by Prensa De Lagar in 1969, and Heaved From The Earth (Knopf, 1971). Run Through Rock: Selected Short Poems of besmilr brigham appeared in 2000, published by C.D.Wright and Forrest Gander’s Lost Roads Press. brigham, with her husband and daughter, moved extensively and itinerantly through the U.S. South, New Mexico, Mexico and Central America, often camping on riverbanks or catching rides on banana haulers. The family settled for a long while in Horatio, Arkansas, where she kept vivid and vigorous correspondence with editors, poets, friends, and family. During her lifetime, brigham’s work was included in anthologies and studies of indigenous poetry, as brigham’s paternal grandfather was of Choctaw descent. She died of complications from Alzheimer’s in Las Cruces, New Mexico, in 2000.

It is because of the dedicated, extensive research, recuperation effort, and archival efforts undertaken by Robert Yerachmiel Snyderman that besmilr brigham’s archive exists at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and that more of her poetry not published during her lifetime can be found in Annulet, West Branch, and Kenyon Review.