April J. Asbury is a writer, teacher, and editor. She holds an MFA from Spalding University and an MA from Hollins. Her work has appeared in Artemis, Still: The Journal, The Anthology of Appalachian Writers, and other publications. Woman with Crows is her first poetry chapbook.
Now accepting a limited number of participants for the 2024 Highland Summer Conference! This writing workshop has more than 40+ years of history with Radford University, bringing together writers, students, musicians, and community members from the Appalachian region in celebration of creativity.
Original Highland Summer Conference logo by Dell Siler, 1986.
Work with Our Guest Author
The 2024 conference features guest Annie Woodford, winner of the 2022 Weatherford Award in Poetry for her collection, Where You Come from Is Gone. Annie Woodford will lead our daily workshops.
July 8-12, Monday-Friday, at Selu Conservancy
The conference begins on Monday, July 8, at Selu Nature Conservancy. This beautiful jewel of southwest Virginia features magnificent views of the mountains and river. Enjoy the conservancy’s walking trails, and find that perfect, private place to bring your creative dreams to life.
After a beautiful day of workshops and free time, you’ll be able to enjoy our evening programs, which are free and open to the public:
Tuesday, 7 p.m.: Reading by guest author Annie Woodford, McConnell Library at Radford University (Note: new location!)
Wednesday, 7 p.m.: Jam session at Selu Conservancy
Thursday, 7 p.m.: Participant Readings at Selu Conservancy
Yes, I want to create amazing work this summer!
To register, check out our page here or use the QR below. Registration is only $150 for the entire event, July 8-12, which includes the option to camp at Selu or stay onsite free. Discounts are available for seniors and Radford University students. For more information, write us at hwc@radford.edu.
Before October 2022 gets away from us, let’s talk about new poetry by three of my favorite women writers, all of whom share ties with my home state of Virginia.
Poetry and Music in Auburn on an October Friday Night
New Releases from Annie Woodford . . .
Annie Woodford, author of Where You Come from Is Gone
Imagine my surprise when, my first week in Alabama, I’m lucky enough to hear a friend from “back home” read from her new poetry collection!
Where You Come from Is Gone, titled from a Flannery O’Connor quotation, explores different understandings of Kitezh, the legendary Russian city hidden underground to escape invasion: the four parts evoke Kitezh as Family, Country, Body, and even Henry County, Virginia.
Poet Maurice Manning writes, “The sacred act of remembering in this haunted and heart-breaking book is finely harnessed to artistic precision, articulating the history of the rural South. The result cloaks anguish with beauty, suffering with grace, ignominy with a dignity whose desire to redeem is wholly human.”
My own review is less eloquent: these poems hit me deep in the gut. Over and over, I found myself murmuring, “Damn . . . Damn . . . Oh, Annie, damn!”
. . . and Kim Ports Parsons!
Cover for The Mayapple Forest from Terrapin Books
October 31st marks the official release date for the The Mayapple Forestby Kim Ports Parsons. This collection from Terrapin Books has an appropriately gorgeous cover, mayapples painted by Frances Coates.
Parsons’ collection explores memory, sensuality, grief, and family relationships. Images from nature, including the wonderfully scientific, weave through these poems, which show a mastery of style and variety.
One of my favorite poems in The Mayapple Forest is “This is Not a Sestina about Quarks,” a playful exercise about the “charmed” language of quarks; others are haunting in their vulnerability and sensuality. In “Cool Glass of Water,” Parsons writes, “. . . if I could, I would drink that memory like a cool glass of water every day of my life.” Parsons gives us poem after poem, one cool glass of water after another, that leave the reader refreshed, reawakened, and inspired.
One last treat this Hallowe’en weekend . . .
Cathy Hailey Up for Preorder
Cover and photo from Finishing Line Press
Another Virginian poet, Cathy Hailey, has a new book on the way from Finishing Line Press. Her chapbook, I’d Rather Be a Hyacinth,is available for preorder now.
According to Finishing Line Press, Hailey’s work “features ekphrastic poems inspired by an episodic performance of the Moscow Festival Ballet interwoven with poems of refuge from grief, the comfort and healing found in nature, memory, and family.”
Remember that preorders boost the author’s royalty percentage from FLP, so your preorder will help the writer directly, both today and in the future.
George Ella Lyon with Gurney Norman. Photo by Ann W. Olson
This long-overdue author spotlight honors one of my favorite writers, teachers, and people in the entire world: the gracious, multitalented George Ella Lyon!
In addition to her fiction, playwriting, songwriting, and poetry, Lyon’s books for young readers are a favorite in classrooms and libraries. Her newest book, Time to Fly, illustrated by Stephanie Fizer Coleman, features a hesitant baby bird enticed to leave the cozy nest for the first time.
Lyon is a writer who understands the importance of home, as well as the power of continuing to touch lives in a larger community. When her book All the Water in the World appeared in a cereal promotion, she was thrilled to think of her book finding families at the breakfast table.
Lyon’s work has traveled the world, perhaps none more so than her poem “Where I’m From.” She developed a writing exercise used by writers, teachers, and students of all levels; this year, her work turned up in a speech given by a certain familiar professor . . . Dr. Jill Biden.
. . . for my first lesson of the year, I use the poem, “Where I’m From,” by George Ella Lyon. Its verses tell the story of the author’s hometown, not in locations, but in sensations and experiences and memories. Then I ask my students to think about their own lives: Where does their inner strength come from? What made them who they are?”
First Lady Jill Biden, Los Angeles City College Commencement, 2022
Building Creative Communities
Lyon’s creative life is rich with teachers, mentors, and friends. She gives credit to her parents’ love of story and song, her marriage to a musician (a “partner who values the creative life as much as I do”), and her children who, she says, opened her eyes and deepened her soul.
“And I can’t leave out Richard Jackson,” George Ella says, “my beloved editor, who in 1984 invited me to write for children, giving me work that I love . . .” And of course credit also goes to “all the trees who have held and counseled me.” (Appropriate, considering her 1993 poetry collection, winner of the Appalachian Book of the Year award, was titled Catalpa!)
If you ask George Ella what she would most like to celebrate, a list of supporters, teachers, and fellow creatives pours out: Ruth Stone,Danny Marion, Gurney Norman . . . “Gurney got me to Hindman,” she says, “and you know what happens when you cross that bridge!”
At Hindman Settlement School, working with Jim Wayne Miller, washing dishes at the historic Appalachian Writers’ Workshop at Hindman Settlement School with Harriette Arnow, taking part in readings and classes and friendships, George Ella says she “grew up as a writer.” Those days have given her a writing community she still enjoys today.
Below is a writing prompt from George Ella Lyon that may look a little familiar: it’s a variation of a “Map” prompt shared by Leatha Kendrick. Lyon notes she and Kendrick are fast friends. Working together leads to learning together, not just about teaching, but about writing too.
In a perfect example of an entwined creative community, this exercise grew from shared work and creative community, including the shared inspiration of Jo Carson, who published maps of herself and her body in Now & Then magazine.
Writing Prompt: Mapping Your Memory House
While both Kendrick and Lyon begin the exercise with sketches, Lyon’s version “navigates memory in a different way.” Comparing these two is a great example of adapting a prompt for different audiences.
Draw the floor plan of a place where you have lived. Show where all the rooms are. Use another page if you need to.
Now make a note of a memory, something that happened in each room. Include hallways, bathrooms, closets, the attic, basement and garage. Write this directly on your map.
Choose the memory that has the most energy for you.
Draw the scene in that room.
Put yourself back there. Who was with you? How old are you?
Take a sensory inventory. What can you taste, touch, smell, hear see? Write this on your map.
Can you hear anyone talking? What do they say? Is there music?
Is there something in this scene that you can’t draw?
Is this a moment of power? Who has it? Does it shift from on person to another?
Free-write this moment. You might begin “I am in the __________.”
We comfort ourselves by reliving memories of protection. Something closed must retain our memories, while leaving them their original value as images. Memories of the outside world never have the same tonality as those of home and, by recalling these memories, we add to our store of dreams; we are never real historians, but always near poets, and an emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of poetry that was lost.
from Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space(1956, trans. Maria Jolas, 1969)
The autumn leaves turned late this year, and some of them are still hanging on in their red and gold glory. Before they’re entirely gone, I wanted to share a favorite exuberant poem and a new writing exercise.
“I say” is a love letter to autumn and color and jazz, from B. Chelsea Adams, the author celebrated in this page’s first “Spotlight.” The poem, used with her permission, is from her Finishing Line chapbook, At Last Light.
I say
. . . yes to autumn its intense colors deep bronzes, oranges, and golds.
An adult season, which has known clouds, been blinded by sun, frozen ice solid, caressed by a tender wind.
An adult season, where the shameless red maple, alluring and vibrant, shatters the late afternoon.
I want it to keep on— its deep color a warm thrust in my belly, a sensual brush across my lips,
like jazz, the drum thumping in my chest, the pulsating strings of the bass, the truth told by the alto sax,
a truth that disturbs the sleep of dried leaves.
B. Chelsea Adams, 2012
Saying Yes: A Writing Prompt
When I heard Chelsea read “I say” aloud, I was struck by the love in her poem and the warmth in her voice. It hit me that I had been inundated with messages of rage, sorrow, grief . . .
There is a time for all of those things. But there’s also a time to say “yes.” To celebrate what we love, what thrills us, what we find so beautiful it hurts the heart. That week I went into my Poetry Writing class with a new exercise, one both simple and open-ended.
Ready? Write the words, “I say yes to . . .”
Now finish the sentence.
Go for the specific and the sensory. Try to dig deeper than just a list. (But I love lists myself!) Dig deep into all the rich, wonderful details about what you love. As you write, relish that love. Make it as real and vivid as you can, Just live in that exuberance for a while.
Well, that took longer than I thought . . . For the last three weeks, I’ve been updating the site, mostly through trial and error. It’s still a work in progress, but I’m always learning something new.
Now, if you check out apriljasbury@com, you’ll see new additions and upgrades:
Please take a minute to check it out. I hope you’ll sign up for the newsletter, too; this month the Author Spotlight will be turned on the legendary George Ella Lyon. You won’t want to miss it!
Shadow is unimpressed by the lack of October content.
“Where I’m From” by George Ella Lyon is called “the poem that went around the world.” This poem, a favorite in all levels of writing and literature classes, is rich with specific sensory detail: a child’s fascination with clothespins, cotton ball lambs, family names, and the secret taste of dirt.
Where are you from? Photo by Craig Adderley on Pexels.com
These organizations came together to recommend “Where I’m From” as a way to reach across cultures, regions, and other differences, both as an expression of identity and a reminder of our common humanity. Using “Where I’m From” encourages empathy in the classroom.
The Exercise
Share a copy of “Where I’m From” with students. There are multiple recordings of George Ella Lyon reading the work. You can share a video of the author reading the poem in her own voice, bringing another living writer into your classroom.
Open the floor to as much discussion as you need for your class. (You might find yourself explaining “carbon-tetrachloride,” for example!) Then, when you’re ready, ask the students to answer, in their own way, where they are from.
Lyon’s web page gives a list of helpful ideas to build on. Ultimately she reminds us: “Remember, you are the expert on you. No one else sees the world as you do; no one else has your material to draw on. You don’t have to know where to begin. Just start. Let it flow. Trust the work to find its own form.”
If you’re a teacher, do the exercise with your class. While you work with them, you’ll uncover your own powerful images and memories. When you write with your students, the exercise becomes a shared experience of learning and connection.
In the Classroom
Lyon says the work of poet and dramatist Jo Carson helped inspire the poem. Carson’s poetry collection, Stories I Ain’t Told Nobody Yet, gathers many different voices. Each speaker reveals their cares, worries, and passions.
Over the past 20 years, I’ve led students from elementary to graduate school in readings and exercises based on “Where I’m From.” From elementary school to college, creative writing to literature to first-year composition, this exercise continues to resonate.
Often I pair “Where I’m From” with work from other Appalachian writers whose work touches on themes of identity, the music of different voices, and connection:
Additional work by George Ella Lyon. Lyon has also written children’s books and young adult work, so teachers can find supplemental readings for any age level.
Selections from Frank X Walker, Affrilachian poet. Walker’s poetry includes books imagining historical voices, from the enslaved York to activist Medgar Evars; poems from Walker would enliven American history classes too.
Kettle Bottom by Diane Gilliam. This review gives an excellent overview of the writer’s work, as well as samples from her poetry.
Hearing voices such as Lyon, Carson, Walker, and many others opens up a class to exploring their own identity, as well as hearing and respecting the stories of others.
The nature of “Where I’m From” focuses on the intimate details of life and memory. When we connect those evocative details, with their hints of history and shared experience, with our own, we practice empathy. We could all more of that.
The first Poetry Reading & Open Mic for the West Region of the Poetry Society of Virginia is scheduled for Sept. 28, 2021, from 7-8 EST. I’ll be reading new work, as well as poems from Woman with Crows.
The event also features internationally-recognized poet and translator Pedro Larrea, author of The Wizard’s Manuscript, The Free Shore, and The Tribe and the Flame.
In the past few months, Dribben organized new events (like this one), increased outreach, publicized other writers and events, and helped members connect with publishing and writing opportunities.
You don’t need to be a PSV member to attend this reading and open mic, but now is a great time to join . . . Especially with the annual poetry contest coming up. Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday (the traditional deadline) is sooner than you think!
A few days ago a student told me she loved poetry written by my friend. In fact, she enjoyed my friend’s book so much that she asked if she could write an essay about it for high school English.
Her teacher refused. My friend was an unsuitable subject . . .
For this assignment, the subject had to be dead. My friend and I are very happy she didn’t make this particular cut. But why not encourage students to read writers who still have heartbeats?
In his LitHub article, “Whatever Your Classroom, Please Teach More Living Poets,” Nick Ripatrazone describes the movement to “Teach Living Poets,” as well as the elder “Poets in Schools” initiative. Even currently-deceased writers Robert Frost and Donald Hall argued that living poets belonged in the classroom.
These vital programs help connect living writers with current students. Melissa Alter Smith, creator of “#TeachLivingPoets,” has collected a slew of resources for teachers, including a virtual library, a network to find poets, poetry reviews by teachers for teachers, and lesson plans.
Just check out this fantastic page of lesson plans for Crystal Wilkinson’s new collection, Perfect Black. This unit, a whopping 41 pages, brings a living, contemporary writer to students in an immediate way . . . While also connecting her work to writers such as Maggie Smith, Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, and Elizabeth Acevedo.
As much as I love centuries-old writing by dead authors–I have not one, but two “I Read Dead People” T-shirts–we can’t send the message that “real” literature is old literature, and the “good” writers are molderin’ in the grave.
Byron wants you to know he has never, ever been fed. Not ever.
Some of my favorite people, writers included, are deader than a Norwegian blue. By all means, read as many dead writers as you want, but use the work of the not-dead-yet to show students that poetry itself is a living tradition.
Not to mention living writers still need to eat. We have bills to pay and adorable pets to feed, so maybe toss us some change, will you? “Big Textbook” won’t miss it.
Poet Charles A. Swanson may have retired from teaching English, but he will always be a writer. An MFA graduate from Queens University, he currently publishes as a designated “Frequent Contributor” for the quarterly e-zine Songs of Eretz Poetry Review.
As a pastor for Melville Avenue Baptist in Danville, Swanson writes weekly sermons and reflections. His spirituality, including deep concern for nature and rural life, runs through his poems. “My poetry comes from a pastor’s view of the world,” Swanson says, “and, I hope, from a pastor’s heart.”
Books, with a “hardshell” visitor
Swanson’s lovely chapbook, Farm Life and Legend, is available from Finishing Line Press. (This book, with cover art by Drew A. Swanson, is even prettier in person.) The book brings together narratives and the witness of nature, as in “Turtles Rising.”
After the Garden: Selected Responses to the Psalmsis Swanson’s full-length poetry collection from Motes Books. Seeing the words, “Responses to the Psalms,” might lead you to expect didactic, oatmeal-plain paraphrases.
But Swanson’s work is full of surprises, including wry humor and the realities of rural life. Swanson begins each poem with verses chosen for beauty of language, spiritual challenge, and unexpected connections.
Consider “The Profane and the Holy,” inspired by the verse, “He who has clean hands and a pure heart . . .” And subtitled “Hog killing on the day before Thanksgiving.” This concise poem mingles the spiritual resonance of the verse with powerful, bloody imagery.
Writing Exercises: Image as Gateway
For this spotlight, Swanson provided two exercises involving imagery. As he says, “Imagery can evoke emotions, and be the horse on which intriguing narrative rides.”
Both exercises have been classroom-tested in secondary school English for years. Swanson had great success with first-years, sophomores, juniors, and seniors . . . And I bet they’d translate well in other levels, too.
The “Scentsational” Experience
Take 12 lidded Styrofoam cups. Place a strong-smelling everyday substance in each. Substance can be solid or liquid. (Make sure to avoid known or common allergens, such as peanut butter!)
Ask the students, by smell only, to make their best guess about each cup’s contents.
After all the sniffing is over, guessing, and debating is over, the instructor identifies each cup.
Then the students are asked to choose one scent. (They can choose any of the 12, another strong scent tied to memory, or even their misidentification of a cup’s contents.)
Now write about how the smell figures in memory.
Swanson warns the excitement of the exercise may not lead to the most literary poetry, but you’re going to see an entire classroom come to life.
More “Hands-On” Learning
Give each student one piece of white bread from an ordinary loaf of store-bought bread.
Ask them to remove the crust. (Some ask if they can eat the crust; Swanson says he always allowed it, but in days of Covid use your best judgment.)
Squeeze a generous amount of white school glue on each student’s crustless slice of bread.
Work the bread and glue into a putty.
Show the students how to shape the “clay” into rose petals
Press the rose petals gently onto the end of a toothpick and allow to set. After it hardens, students can paint the rose if they choose.
After experiencing the changing texture of that sticky paste, ask them to write about any experience they remember involving a strong sense of touch.
For an example of how this exercise can bring out memories turned to poetry, Swanson offers a poem from the Spring 2021 issue of Songs of Eretz Poetry Review. His poem, “What would I put my hand in?” is an obvious response, but I’d bet his poem “Afghan,” from the same issue, would spark a lot of tactile images too.
Make one, two, three, ninety squares– somewhere in there the shape becomes rote, as do the twists of wrist, the slide of yarn over the finger holding taut the thread and emerging weave.
from “Afghan” by Charles A. Swanson, published in Songs of Eretz
A working writer can’t wait for inspiration. The stereotype of a writer sitting with pen in hand, eyes rolled heavenward while waiting for “The Muse” to descend, bears little resemblance to reality. Waiting for inspiration just leads to blank pages and frustration.
Can’t you see she’s already busy? (Clio, Muse of History, by Johannes Moreelse)
Just ask Jack London, who advised writers, “Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don’t get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.”
Rather than wait for divine inspiration, we keep our clubs at the ready. We have hundreds of books with writing prompts and exercises. Take Holly Lisle’s frankly-named book Mugging the Muse: Writing Fiction for Love AND Money.
Below is an old poem I wrote about a violent Muse encounter. It still makes me smile. (No writers or Muses were actually harmed in the writing of this poem.)
Why I Don’t Walk So Good Anymore: The Minor Regional Writer Tells All
Well, I was writing. And the words were coming fast as a cat with its tail on fire, big as life, bright as spring, thick as Jesus’s great big gobs of sweat when he talked to God in the garden.
Then I saw Her, standing at my chair, her hand all chummy on my shoulder, and felt her carbon-sweet breath at my ear. She had big yellow wings and a long white robe under a flannel shirt with cowboy boots poking silver tips out under the hem.
I knew I’d found my muse.
She smiled, caught in the act, and rose those big gold wings fanned out for takeoff. I knew she’d be gone, lickety-split, so I caught her by the wrist. Ever wonder why nobody grabs onto a muse? Well, I saw that left hook coming and reckoned I’d figured it out.
The rest of the night is hazy. I reached for her neck; she reached for mine. Her wings swept my shelves clean when I tackled her to the floor. Feathers flew like a live duck in a blender. She hissed and squawked and swore I’d never write again, but her hand smacked my thigh instead of my arm, and numbness seeped through to the bone.
I held on. She shook me like a spider on a wet rag. I dug in my nails until her ink-blood rose. We grappled through grit and grime and fist-sized dustballs, until I got her. I got the Muse by the throat, got my hands on the pulse of Art itself, and I began to squeeze.
That’s when she brained me with my Bill Shakespeare lunchbox.
And I saw galaxies and whirlwinds and those dustballs spinning loops in the cosmos and about three or four of Her ascending into a blaze of glory and little singing birdies.
When I came to, my lunchbox was busted. But I haven’t stopped writing since.
Revised from publication in The Ampersand, Spring 1996.
Writing Prompt: Your Own Inspired Encounter
What would your Muse(s) look like? Try to imagine them as they would appear to you. What are they wearing? What do they smell like? Do they speak, sing, nod along with your work? Have some fun with this one!
Hey, hey, the gang’s all here . . . Nine Muses on a Roman sarcophagus.
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