Sherry Chandler

Licking Valley Writers Workshop

I will be signing from 4:00 to 5:45 tomorrow at the Licking Valley Writer’s Workshop sponsored by the Licking Valley Campus of Maysville Community and Technical College.

The event will be held at the historic Prizing House* and will be followed by a dinner with music by Rusted Clay. After dinner, and Kentucky’s Poet Laureate Gurney Norman will deliver the Clay Lecture.

The signing includes a stellar collection of Kentucky’s authors: Gurney Norman, Frank X. Walker, George Ella Lyon, Anne Shelby, Leatha Kendrick, Diane Gilliam, Jill Morgan, Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, Marianne Worthington, David Dick, Karen Angelucci, Lynn Shaffer, Buck Pennington, and Britt Kennerly.

On Saturday, workshops will be presented by Walker, Gilliam, Lyn, Shelby, Norman, and Kendrick.

This Licking Valley Writers Workshop was conceived and created, as was the Licking Valley Campus itself, by Bruce Florence, a woman of vision. I, for one, am very grateful to her.

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*A prizing house was a place where cured and graded tobacco was “prized” into hogsheads for shipping.

Department of Second Chances

If you missed the first “Retreat of One’s Own,” here’s a reprise to take place October 16-18 at Kenlake State Resort Park.

Staff includes Silas House, Anne Shelby and Kate Larken.

Registration must be postmarked by August 15.

Appalachian Studies

Anne Shelby makes me laugh.

Anne Shelby makes me think.

Anne Shelby makes me shake my power fist and cry out “Right on, Sister!”

And oh, how refreshing that is.

The poems in Appalachian Studies aren’t difficult. They are plain-spoken statements from a plain-spoken witty woman who is by nature a storyteller and a humorist.

Shelby is also clear-eyed, and though her poems, like her stories, tend to the folksy, there is nothing of the sentimental about them.

Appalachian Studies is a volume of poetry you can devour at a sitting.

And I did.

Nice review by Margaret Ricketts here. Says Margaret:

Like her fellow Southerners Flannery O’Connor and Molly Ivins, Shelby uses dialect to prick stereotypes like soap bubbles. You can’t have a grandbaby on this thing / without special arrangements. One spell / transformed my taters into tatters, served / me subpoenas when I ordered soupbeans.

The poem quoted is “Spell Check,” which begins

It’s handy but not much account for writing
hillbilly poems with.

If you’d like to see some sample poems see here and here. You’ll see that “hillbilly” isn’t the only stereotype she busts. She’s also hard on sexism. And ageism.

By the way, Anne has a new children’s book out: The Man Who Lived in a Hollow Tree.

And you can catch her this weekend at the Mountain Heritage Festival, along with a passel of other talented mountain writers, including Denise Giardina and Gwyn Hyman Rubio.

Anne Shelby II

Backstage with a Member of the Folktale Troupe

When I was young I could play the pretty girls,
you know, the ones that get handed off at the end
with a sack of gold and a coach and six?
I got into it for a while — costumes, lights, me
center stage. But it took too much energy,
having to act so impressed night after night,
just because he performs some adolescent
trick, or rescues you from some dilemma
he got you in in the first place. It got so
I had to get drunk to do it. Then when I started
stepping on his lines, they gave the part
to somebody else, a younger girl.

Cast me as the ugly sister. Fine by me.
I spent a lot less time in makeup,
got to wear loose clothing, comfortable shoes.
Got to be rude and sarcastic onstage.
But it was always somebody else�s story,
and me ending up with nothing, finally,
but scorpions, snakes and toads.

A few hairs, nothing heavy,
sprouted on my chin.
Now I�m the witch, a part I can stick with.
I�m no longer interested, anyway,
in the handsome young hero,
a doofus, in my opinion.
I like living here alone, deep in the forest.
I like the simplicity of the all-black costume.
I like talking with owls and foxes, stirring up
an amusing little brew now and then.
But all these people keep showing up —
hunters, lost children, young lovers —
The plot demands I eat them,
though I�d prefer
to give them a simple supper,
a place to rest for the night,
and a few wise words, something cryptic
that would prove prophetic later, like

You are the monster. You are the prince.
You are the hero. You are the witch.
Go home, and practice the part
of someone kind and wise.

— Anne Shelby, originally published in Appalachian Studies (Wind Publications).
Reprinted by permission of the author.

Anne Shelby

Homeplace

�Is it haunted?�
the fifth grade wants to know,
when I tell them I live in an old old house
where my family has lived for a hundred years.
The children are well versed in local haints.

They�s a woman gets in the car with you
if you stop on a foggy night in Hounchell�s Bend.
She�ll ride to the graveyard and then get out.
You can see straight through her.

Long time ago a Davidson hanged hisself
from a cliff up the Rocky Branch.
My uncle says if you�re up there drunk
you can see that feller swing.

No, I tell them.
I don�t believe in ghosts.
I don�t mention
the bacon I smell frying
winter mornings before daylight
when all I�ve got is oatmeal,
the blue-clad figure
at the edge of the field,
the smoke still rising
from long dead fires —
the crowd,
forever poorly dressed,
always crossing
the Atlantic in crowded boats,
forever with their dogs,
their children,
their baptizings,
funeral dinners,
their sickbeds,
always grubbing newgrounds
with dull little
hoes —

To tell the truth, sometimes
I wish they�d let me alone.
It�s hard to draw a good breath around here.
I entertain fantasies —
an apartment off in a city somewhere,
near theaters and a Greek restaurant,
or a small private cottage by the sea.

They�d follow.
I know they would —
wash their feet,
pack a cheap suitcase
and tag along.
I can see me now,
trying to negotiate
the New York subway
with this bunch in tow.
They never change:
Aaron always showing off
how he can name
every county in Kentucky,
Bernice telling you
her dreams every morning, Gene
with his childish pranks, and Mae
with her sad stories —
like somebody you never heard of
drowning in the river,
or a baby a hundred years ago
dying of a fever. Now what
am I supposed to do with that?

And the beach is out.
They have to have shuck beans
wherever they are, and redeye gravy.
We can�t even
run up to the county seat
without dragging an enormous
trunk of old pictures,
and all that slow, mournful singing
doesn�t go over with the beach crowd.

But nobody ever asks,
�Are you
haunted?�

— Anne Shelby, originally published in Appalachian Studies (Wind Publications).
Reprinted by permission of the author.

Anne Shelby is a Democrat in Clay County, Kentucky, which may give you some idea of her strength of character. Poet, essayist, storyteller, political activist, and singer, Anne is both a preserver of culture and a creator of art. She has taught creative writing at the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts and the Appalachian Writers Workshop at Hindman Settlement School, has worked with the Kentucky Arts Council’s artist-in-the-schools program, and has been a contributor to many other workshops and conferences. She performs a one-woman show based on the life of folksinger and activist Aunt Molly Jackson. Anne is also a member of Public Outcry, a group of Kentucky writer/musicians fighting against mountaintop removal coal mining.

She is the grandmother of triplets.

In addition to Appalachian Studies, her books include The Adventures of Molly Whuppie and Other Appalachian Folktales (University of North Carolina Press) and Can A Democrat Get Into Heaven? Politics, Religion, and Other Things You Ain’t Supposed to Talk About (MotesBooks)

I lifted this photo of Anne’s homplace from her website:

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P.S. Gail Chandler is also from Clay County.

A Retreat of One’s Own

A Retreat of One’s Own
The Gathering of Writers and Songwriters
May 17-19, 2009
Greenbo Lake State Park

This retreat, sponsored by Motes Books, is designed especially for writers of fiction, creative non-fiction or poetry, and for songwriters. Silas House, Anne Shelby & Kate Larken will teach during this event; Marianne Worthington & Sue Massek will be guest presenters. Gather with us at beautiful Greenbo Lake State Park May 17-19 for an inspiring, creative experience. (Application deadline is April 25.)

Details at the link.