X-POST from UPK: 25 Years of Renegade Poetics

This message is from Mack McCormick, University Press of KY:

When Frank X Walker coined the culturally encompassing term "Affrilachian" twenty-five years ago, he had no idea the group of colleagues who got their start inside of an elevator at the University of Kentucky would transform into a radically influential social movement. The Affrilachian Poets emerged out of a desire for solidarity and to advance the visibility of diverse voices through the cultivation of writing that is both challenging and evocative. This innovative clan of artists and activists number nearly forty today and continues to shape the literary and social landscapes of the Appalachian region and beyond.

In Black Bone: 25 Years of the Affrilachian Poets, editors Bianca Lynne Spriggs and Jeremy Paden curate a groundbreaking anthology of poems, essays, and stories that provide a historical, aesthetic, and thematic overview of the movement. This essential, cohesive collection celebrates a collaboration built on artistry, political engagement, and enduring friendship. Black Bone contains pieces from National Book Award for Poetry recipient Nikky Finney, Crystal Wilkinson, Kelly Norman Ellis, and a spectrum of others. The anthology, which features thirty-three writers ranging from aspiring undergraduates to award-winning authors, serves as a vital resource for highlighting the diversity and rich traditions of Appalachia.

This first-ever collection captures the broad cultural reach of the group, which extends beyond genre and discipline, to reveal interwoven relationships between family, identity, and society. Black Bone is divided into three parts—Root, Limb, and Tongue. In Root, poets act as witnesses as they engage in the prophetic act of claiming and naming identity within the Appalachian region. The theme of identity carries over into Limb, as works are curated to exemplify the multifaceted nature of identities that are entangled with family, history, and politics. The writings featured in Tongue are explicitly aware that poetry is inherently political but also speak to a multitude of audiences. Linguistically daring collections of words are cultivated throughout the anthology in ways that tell compact yet visceral depictions of what it is like to be born and raised Affrilachian.

The Affrilachian Poets have dedicated two and a half decades to producing work with the distinctive poetics of liberation, acting as an ongoing literary and political concept, shaped by the intent to amplify the voices of those previously gone extinguished. Through their art, life, and activism, these writers have managed to mold the region and country in indelible and extraordinary ways. The anthology encompasses the sentiment expressed by Nikky Finney, "Any portrait of land worth its salt must also include a landscape of its people worth its weight in blood, sweat, and tears," as it documents and gives voice to the underrepresented while also celebrating their rich heritage. Black Bone is a testament to the work of thistrailblazing group which has created a poetic revolution by demanding recognition and promoting racial justice through dynamic and impactful writing.

To coincide with the release of Black Bone, University Press of Kentucky has also released The Birds of Opulence, the first novel by Affrilachian Poet Crystal Wilkinson, in paperback. In it, she introduces readers to the Goode-Brown family, led by matriarch and pillar of the community Minnie Mae. Situating the family in the fictional black township of Opulence nestled in the foothills of the Appalachians, she traces multiple generations through interconnected stories that weave together to form a complex, multilayered whole. Minnie Mae is headstrong and determined, yet plagued by old secrets and embarrassment over mental illness and illegitimacy. Just as her mental disorders echo through the generations of women in her family, her pride and obstinacy have devastating effects on them as well.

Named the winner of multiple awards, including the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, the Weatherford Award for Fiction, and the Judy Gaines Young Book Award, Wilkinson's The Birds of Opulence resonates with a reverence of a people with whom she is intimately familiar: strong, proud, yet flawed Southern men and women, coping with adversities and lives not fully recognized or lived. Each interconnected story portrays a powerful moment in these characters' lives, making the readers bear witness to their most intimate thoughts, pains, and struggles. At its essence, it is a story of love and loss, beauty and pain, and recovery and redemption that only a true teller of tales could articulate so fully.

Bianca Lynne Spriggs is a writer, multidisciplinary artist, and assistant professor of English at Ohio University. She is the recipient of a Kentucky Arts Council 2013 Al Smith Individual Arts Fellowship in Poetry, as well as a recipient of multiple artist enrichment grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Spriggs is the author or coeditor of a number of books, including Kaffir Lily, Call Her By Her Name, and The Galaxy Is a Dance Floor.

Jeremy Paden is an associate professor of Spanish and Latin American literature at Transylvania University. His poems have appeared in such places as the Atlanta Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cortland Review, Louisville Review, Naugatuck River Review, pluck!, and Rattle, among others. He is the author of two collections of poems, Broken Tulips and ruina montium.

Crystal Wilkinson is the author of Blackberries, Blackberries, winner of the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature, and Water Street, a finalist for both the UK's Orange Prize for Fiction and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. The winner of the 2008 Denny Plattner Award in Poetry from Appalachian Heritage magazine and the Sallie Bingham Award from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, she serves as Appalachian Writer-in-Residence at Berea College and teaches in the Spalding University low residency MFA in Creative Writing Program.