Affrilachian Poets
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.
For more on the Affrilachian Poets please visit the
documentary site.
