Poets Turned Prophets

Three poets stride across the stage of a small auditorium in Louisville, Kentucky, spinning word pictures of South Carolina grandmothers, the sounds of Mississippi Delta girlhood, and the visions of Martin Luther King Jr., envisioned as rapper King Doctah. The images Nikky Finney, Kelly Norman Ellis, and Frank X. Walker conjure of God, family, and rural life give the event the spirit of a Baptist revival service. At the end of his final selection, Walker roars "Can I get an ‘Amen’?" One hundred-fifty people respond, pushing the poems through the roof.

Some of the bluegrass
is black
enough to know
that being ‘colored’ and all
is generally lost
somewhere between
the dukes of hazzard
and the beverly hillbillies
but
if you think
makin’ shine from corn
is as hard as kentucky coal
imagine being
an Affrilachian
poet—from "Affrilachia," by Frank X. Walker

In 1991, Frank X. Walker attended an event in which four white Kentucky authors and one African-American writer, South Carolina native Nikky Finney, read from their works. Previously billed as an evening of "The Best of Appalachian Writing," the event’s name had been changed to "The Best of Southern Writing" to accommodate Finney.

"Why weren’t African-American writers in Kentucky represented?" Walker remembers asking. The Webster’s Dictionary he consulted later in the evening defined Appalachians as "white residents from the mountains." "It meant I couldn’t be a great Appalachian writer if I wasn’t white," Walker said.

Out of need came invention—a birthing, a sacred naming ceremony for him and other black artists from Appalachia. They became the Affrilachian Poets. "There is a power in naming something, naming yourself when the appropriate word is not there. Black writers in Kentucky were grateful for the word, it was something that could hold us—a vessel we could sail across the sea in," says Finney, one of the group’s founders and a member of the University of Kentucky English faculty.

Soon Walker’s community of writers at the University of Kentucky adopted the name. Members would steal "poetry moments" by holding impromptu critique sessions in elevators of the Martin Luther King Cultural Center, turning off the power to share work and get feedback. It’s the group’s intense sense of community that continues to be a sustaining element today. "I think there has been no other writing group since the days of the Harlem Renaissance that is as connected as we are; we really are connected by spirit," says Crystal Wilkinson, whose short story collection Blackberries, Blackberries was published by The Toby Press this summer.

THOSE WHO RESPONDED with hallelujahs to Walker, Finney, and Ellis at the Louisville reading felt part of their poetry; their words about childhood and family reunions reflected a common experience. Walker, now director of the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts, receives similar reactions to his recent poetry collection, Affrilachia, published by Old Cove Press. "The highest compliment has been readers who say, ‘I don’t like poetry, I don’t read books, but I liked Affrilachia.’ It’s accessible; it’s not what they expected. It covers common denominators: social justice, community, identity, place."

Making poetry and art accessible to all audiences is central to the group’s mission. Its 13 members hold writing workshops in underserved rural schools in the mountains of eastern Kentucky with Appalachian and Affrilachian students. "The power of the Affrilachian Poets in these communities shows that no one person owns the term artist. Going into it, I am an ambassador for the power of poetry," says Finney.

Walker has connected with readers in venues that go beyond typical book tour audiences. He recently teamed up with a gospel choir to perform for inmates in a state prison. He presented faith-laced pieces, including his poem "Amazing Grace," between hymn verses sung by the choir. Walker also was sponsored by the Alabama Writer’s Forum to work with adolescents held in the state’s juvenile detention centers who had been pulled out of the regular population as part of an anti-violence program. Walker said that group was one of his more rewarding audiences: "They have recognized they can rehabilitate, given the chance to write, to explore how they feel, and to think." Walker hopes to re-create the workshops at other detention centers.

Finney, whose poetry covers issues of race, gender, and domestic abuse, sees art as a means to an end. "There is power in defining poetry as a political tool. It’s a reminder of being alive and brings people together." Finney reminds us, in "South Africa: When A Woman Is A Rock," that being alive can be a struggle:

"They always put their hands on the women first/They do this for a living/They do it to make a point/cutting away the heart/leaves a hole/big enough for bullets to crawl through/They strike the gentle angry women first/and when they do/They do not know/They are touching rock…." And "A nation is never conquered/until the hearts of its women/are on the ground."

Walker also writes of social and political concerns and has been criticized for letting too much of his politics seep into his writing. "Affrilachia was a good effort with good intentions," one critic wrote, "but Walker’s politics got in the way of the poetics." Walker took it in stride. "It was a compliment. Politics is part of the world and nothing is outside the bounds of poetry."

RECENT DAYS HAVE brought increasing success and recognition. Walker, Ellis, and Finney are featured as up and coming poets in Spirit and Flame: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Poetry. Wilkinson and Walker have published their first collections of work this year and Finney has completed her third collection, "The World Is Round," and is searching for a publisher. Ellis is on the faculty of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Chicago State University, the first of its kind at a historically black university.

The Affrilachian Poets also are the subject of an upcoming PBS documentary film, Coal Black Voices, scheduled for release in November, and an accompanying spoken-word CD featuring the work of all current members: Bernard Clay, Ricardo Nizario Colon, Miysan T. Crosswhite, Mitch Douglas, Kelly Norman Ellis, Nikky Finney, Lerin Kol, Jude McPherson, Daundra Scisney-Givens, Shanna Smith, Paul Taylor, Frank X. Walker, and Crystal Wilkinson.

The Affrilachian name hasn’t served to separate them from other artists or their communities but has made them visible as part of the cultural and artistic landscape of the Appalachian region. As they approach their 10th anniversary, the Affrilachian Poets have, in Walker’s words, "existed to make visible/to create a sense of place/that had not existed/for us/for any unwealthy common/people of color/now claiming the dirt they were born in."

Elizabeth Newberry is editorial assistant of Sojourners. Affrilachia is available from Old Cove Press, or nyokah@earthlink.net. Blackberries, Blackberries is available from The Toby Press at www.tobypress.com or 800-810-7191. For more information about Walker or the film Coal Black Voices, visit www.mwg.org/openstudio/walker/.