Simpson was born in Georgetown, South Carolina, in 1931, and earned degrees from Winthrop College in South Carolina and Longwood College in Virginia. She taught English, creative writing, and journalism at Prince Edward County High School from 1973 to 1988 while continuing to publish her work in such journals as the Southern Poetry Review, Negative Capability, the Formalist, the Cincinnati Poetry Review, the Christian Century, and Snake Nation Review.

In volumes such as Dancing the Bones and her chapbook Speech Lessons (1993), Simpson mostly avoids standard poetry forms, instead writing in free verse that combines restraint in diction and line-use with an exacting attention to rhythm. She creates that rhythm through a range of aural repetitions, often layering sounds, as well as words and phrases, onto a two- to three-beat base, as exemplified in the opening stanza of "Palm Sunday" from Dancing the Bones: Cross our palms
with palm crosses,
raw-wood color,
stiff and drawn
as mummy skin,
shaped for our sins
at the state asylum.
Let them mean something.

Simpson's tone is generally observant, detached, and humane in the face of the poems' sometimes grim subject matter. Rather than rely on exaggeration, her poems are understated and quietly gather force, often on the back of a strong narrative. Simpson's primary subjects include personal and family history, religion, nature, and the South. Her poetry also reflects a sharp visual sense and some of her poems respond to specific paintings, such as "Marriage at Cana" (1562/63 by Paolo Veronese) and "The Skating Minister" (officially called "Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch," 1790s) by Sir Henry Raeburn.

Dancing the Bones was published by Scotch Broom Press, a small press founded and run by Simpson and her husband Hassell Simpson, professor emeritus of English at Hampden-Sydney College (since 1962 the couple has resided on the campus in Virginia). The volume draws on autobiographical material, reflecting a plain-sighted nostalgia for the poet's youth, though it is often darkened with tragic strains. She mentions the after-effects of her father's debilitating stroke and his impending death when she was a child, as well as her brother's suicide. Perhaps the volume's major concern is the poet's effort to extract some meaning out of death that may give sustenance to the living. The title poem presents one approach, depicting a Madagascan burial ceremony that turns the mourners' grief into ritualized celebration before the grave. The poem further exemplifies Simpson's rhythmic control, as sound is neatly interwoven with sense, the lines themselves "swaying and whirling" to a pulsing pentameter base while the mourner-celebrants go "with flags and music to their loved ones' tombs," lift out the decayed bodies and hoist them overhead, "swaying and whirling, dancing the bones—seven turns around the crypt."

Major Works

• Speech Lessons (1993)
• Dancing the Bones (2001)