Sherry Chandler

Crystal Wilkinson

Crystal Wilkinson, one of the original Affrilachian Poets, tells me she hasn’t written poetry in a long time, but I heard her read from her unpublished novel at Holler Poets #xx and I beg to differ. And her bio at MSU says:

Crystal Wilkinson’s short stories have been described as “story poems.”

Crystal has graciously allowed me to reproduce this poem from the Coal Black Voices site. I love this poem because, though Crystal is African American and I am white, our granddaddies had much the same attitude toward tobacco.

O Tobacco

You are a Kentucky tiller’s livelihood.
You were school clothes in August
the turkey at Thanksgiving
Christmas
with all the trimmings.

I close my eyes
see you tall
stately green
lined up in rows.
See sweat seeping
through Granddaddy’s shirt
as he fathered you first.

You were protected by him
sometimes even more
than any other thing
that rooted in our earth.

Just like family you were
coddled
cuddled
coaxed
into making him proud.

Spread out for miles
you were the only
pretty thing
he knew.

When I think of you
at the edge of winter,
I see you, brown, wrinkled
just like Granddaddy’s skin.

A ten-year old me
plays in the shadows
of the stripping room
the wood stove burns
calloused hands twist
through the length
of your leaves.
Granddaddy smiles
nods at me when he
thinks I’m not looking.

You are pretty
and braided
lined up in rows
like a room full of
brown girls
with skirts hooped out
for dancing.

— Crystal Wilkinson, used by permission of the author

Crystal Wilkinson is the author of two books, Blackberries, Blackberries (July 2000), and Water Street (September 2002), both published by Toby Press. In 2001 Blackberries, Blackberries was named Best Debut Fiction by Today’s Librarian Magazine. She received the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature in 2002. Water Street was a long-list finalist for the prestigious Orange Prize and short-listed for a Zora Neal Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Legacy Award in fiction. Crystal is currently writer-in-residence at Morehead State University.

You can read an excerpt from Blackberries, Blackberries here.

Coal Black Voices is a

free teaching curriculum to help learning communities explore, understand, and honor contemporary African American culture and celebrate regional expressions of the African Diaspora through the works of the Affrilachian Poets.

Affrilachian is a

term coined by Frank Walker in his poem “Affrilachia” to describe people of color living in the Appalachian region, “Affrilachian” became the name of a group of like minded poets who came together for mutual support and encouragement. As Walker explains, “One of the things I’ve encountered traveling outside of Kentucky is having to defend the fact that people of color actually live here… I’m trying to say, not only are we here, we’re here in a very large way, we’re part of Kentucky’s history, we’re part of the landscape…”

I invite you to go and explore the site and also the official Affrilachian Poets site.

__________
2010 Pulitzer Prizes here. Rae Armentrout for poetry for her book Versed (Wesleyan University Press)

Pulitzer in Poetry 2009

From The Pulitzer Prizes

For a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000). Awarded to �The Shadow of Sirius,� by W. S. Merwin (Copper Canyon Press), a collection of luminous, often tender poems that focus on the profound power of memory.

The jury:

• Anne Winters, poet and professor of English, University of Illinois at Chicago (chair)
• Carl Dennis*, professor and writer in residence, University of Buffalo
• James Baker Hall, professor of English emeritus, University of Kentucky and poet laureate of Kentucky 2000-2001