SEPTEMBER 24TH AT AL’S BAR

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Short Stories Only finalists !!!!!!!
Thursday, October 2^nd at 6:30 pm

The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning
251 West Second Street
Lexington, KY 40507

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CKCPJ 25th Anniversary Reading

Friday, October 10th 2008
6:30pm – 8:30pm
The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning
251 West Second Street
Lexington, KY 40507

Central Kentucky Council for Peace and Justice

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HAPPY HOLLERWEEN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

holler poets series 6

w/ rebecca howell, eric sutherland, spooky q’s

HOSTED BY JUDE MCPHERSON

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29TH, 2008

8:00pm – 11:00pm

AL’S BAR

LEXINGTON, KY

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27th Annual 2008 Kentucky Book Fair!

November 15th 2008

9 to 4:30 p.m

Frankfort Convention Center
405 Mero Street
Frankfort, KY

Admission is free

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Affrilachian Poets Reading

Eastern Kentucky University
Wednesday, November 19th 2008
11:00am – 2:00pm

Poems: 

“Brokeback Mountain.”  Glass, online.  http://glass-poetry.blogspot.com/2008/03/brokeback-mountain-by-rane-arroyo.html

“The Cubans.”  The Alembic.

“The Floating: A Triptych.”  Three poems.  Strange Horizons, online.  

“Imitations Of Bruce Springsteen.”  Corpus. 

“A Latin Lover Is never Alone.”  Inertia Magazine.  http://www.inertiamagazine.com/i4/arroyo.html

“Whose Son Am I Now?”  Istanbul Literary Review, online, http://www.ilrmagazine.net/poetry/issue11_po7.php

“Sex In A Stolen Car.”  “My Own Private Idaho,” “No Local Boy,” “Todo Sobre Mi Madre/All About My Mother,” and “Dreaming Of Rob Thomas.” The Antioch Review.

Book:  The Roswell Poems.  WordFarm Press. 
 

Anthology:

Essay:  “Books.”  Poets Bookshelf II:  Contemporary Poets On Books That Shaped Their Art.  Ed. by Peter Davis and Tom Koontz.  Barnwood Press (Seattle, WA):  33-35.

Essay:  “Some Debts Are Angels:  Introduction to The Buried Sea: New & Selected Poems.”  Forthcoming,

September 2p08: 1-9.

“Foreword:  The Here In Where.”  Primera Pagina: Poetry from the Latino Heartland.  Ed. by Latino Writers Collective.  Scapegoat P (Kansas City, MO):  11-13.

Poems:  “Saturday Night In San Juan With The Right Sailors,” “Almost a Revolution For Two In Bed” and “Tropical Fever.”  Our Caribbean:  A Gathering Of Lesbian And Gay Writing From the Antilles.  Ed. by Thomas Glave.  Duke University Press (2008): 51-52.  Groundbreaking anthology.

Poems:  “Single Conquistadores” and “Sodom (Club  Remix).”  Los Otros Cuerpos: Proyecto de antología Gay, Lésbica y Queer desde Puerto Rico y su diaspora. (Editorial  Nuevo Tiempo).  Ed. by David Caleb Acevedo, Moisés Agosto Rosario y Luis Negrón.  Editorial Tiempo Nuevo: Fall 2007, 201-202.  First Gay & Lesbian Puerto Rican Anthology.  Translated into Spanish.

Poems;  Seven poems included in Mariposas: Gay Puerto Rican Poems.  edited by Emanuel Xavier.  Seven Poems: Soft Skull Press. 
 

Professional Activities:

AWP:  Co-Vice-President and also Co-Chair of the Chicago Conference 2009.

Evaluator for Giles Whiting Foundation: Poetry.  Fall 2007.  By invitation only, major honor.

Judge:  2007-2008 Rainmaker Award.  Zone 3: 152, bio page.  Major honor.

Ohio Arts Council Excellence In Poetry Award (one of the two excellence prizes of all funded grants.)  Report turned in June 2008.

Poetry Magazine Online:  Poem “Always” is voted #2 of the year! 

September 2008

18-19 Reading/Workshop
Bowling Green Public Library
Bob Kirby Branch
175 Iron Skillet Court
Bowling Green, KY 42104
6 PM reading, 10 AM workshop

20 Reading
Lexington Emancipation Day
Lexington History Museum
11-11:45 AM

25 Reading
Hanover College
Hanover, IN

October 2008

6 Reading
Paul Sawyier Public Library
6 PM
Community Room

10 Affrilachian Poet Reading
w/ Bianca Spriggs-Floyd, Mitch Douglas, Jude McPherson, Ricardo Nazario Colon and Nikky Finney
Central Kentucky Council on Peace and Justice 25th Anniversary Reading
Carnegie Center
Lexington, KY
6:30 PM

23-24 Reading/Discussion/Interview
Frank X Walker Literary Festival
Emory & Henry College
Emory, VA
contact:
John Lang, Professor of English,
Editor, IMR
Emory & Henry College,
P.O. Box 947
Emory, VA 24327,
(276) 944-6143 (office), (276) 944-5769 (home)

November 2008

5 Reading/Discussion of Coal Black Voices
Campbell County Library
7 PM

12-13 Brief Residency/Reading
Southeast Missouri State University
Cape Girardeau, MO

15 Signing
Kentucky Book Fair
Frankfort, KY

19 Affrilachian Poet Reading at EKU
W/ Bianca Spriggs, Amanda Johnston, Jude McPherson, Ricardo Nazario Colon, Rane Arroyo

I currently work part-time in a music store that sells vinyl and cd’s and some clothing and dvd’s and stuff.  Mostly hip-hop and r&b. It’s in the basement of a building with a couple of eclectic shops and a Korean restaurant. The store is called ‘The Album,’ but most of us call it after the owner, ‘Sami’s.’

Sami is a DJ who decided to sell music full time. He’s from Kuwait and is like the chillest employer ever. A die-hard patron of hip-hop, he’s a cornerstone of our town’s music scene.  And, he’s super diplomatic even when his customers come in tryna hustle him, get smart, or start contraversy about other artists or stores in town.

To imagine Sami’s, picture walking up to a brick building among a strip of campus shops, and then down a flight of stairs where the walls are littered with curling-edged posters and tags. You can see some fluorescent lighting, a neon sign, and then you’re surrounded by racks of CD’s, display cases, tagged walls, and the kind of clutter that’s reminscent of somebody’s Mom’s basement they stash all their stuff in while they’re living in a studio apartment.  Plenty of people turn right around and go back up the stairs.

The regulars always come in to chat Sami up, “Yo, Sami man, did you hear about–”and proceed to fill him in on the latest of whatever. Most recently, a local rapper, Thuro, was shot to death. We actually just saw Thuro in the store about a week and a half ago. I think Sami sold him some Jeezy. He was on on the KYAliens album with my husband and like twenty other local artists including myself. Now he’s gone…

“Yeah, sun sun,” Sami is always interested.

And then you get the folks who hear about the spot and want to sell him some music, like the older gent who came downstairs today.

Currently, my ongoing job is to alphabetize records. I was kinda hired to help organize, alphabetize, and ya know, lend a woman’s touch to the shelves.  The room where most of the vinyl is kept, is directly to the right of the entrance and if you don’t know to look for me, you might not catch me hip deep in dust and dust covers, at first.

Anyway, today towards the end of my shift, a heavy set, gray-haired guy with a trucker cap on , lugs a passel of cd’s downstairs because the guys next door at CD Central told him Sami might be interested (he runs an eBay account too).

So Sami’s not really interested but offers to look up the worth of some of the albums on eBay.

And then the guy leans heavily on the one of the main display cases in the center of the store, hovering near the free condoms and lube Sami keeps there cause ya know, safe sex and all.

A fairly flaming brother, previously hovering over the disco and techno vinyl notices the condoms too.

So there they are.

Says Pappy Van Winkle over there, “‘ey, these free?”

“Yeah,” Sami replies.

“Wow,” Pappy marvels, “How many kin I ‘ave?”

“Take as many as you like!”

“Well, then–” and proceeds to grab a fistful of condoms.

“Oh, and ya got lube, too?”

Sami, “You need a bag for that?”

“Sure if you got one.”

Enter Flaming Man, “Ooooo I coulda used me some of these when I wuz gettin’ it last week!”

Sami, still upbeat, “Oh, that’s a little too much information, man.”

“Yeah,” agrees Pappy, “‘ey you ever been to Japan to get some of them freaky girls man?  They’re a lot freakier than the ones over here.” A few more tubes of lube just for good measure. Keep in mind, this guy looks like he could use a dorsal fin from behind.

Enter a couple of adolescent boys, one of which is Asian.

“‘Ey!” Pappy cries, gesturing towards one of the cd’s he’s brought in, “I bet that boy rit thur can translate some of them Japanese symbols and thangs on the case!”

Bless that little boy’s heart, “Um, excuse me sir, I am not Japanese. I am Korean.” And follows his buddy around looking for a Beatles record.

“Aw,” Pappy is impressed, “Nice boy. Even called me ‘sir,’” before Pappy finally notices me and asking if I was getting all the good stuff out of the record section (I did have like a stack of fifty records on either side of me).

Between that and the eighteen year old kid who came in and basically demanded that Sami refer to his beats as ‘songs,’ and that he was not a beatmaker but a ‘producer,’ despite the boom-chick-boom-chick-I-coulda-made-this-on-my-cell-phone simplicity of his arrangments, it was just another day in Affrilachia.

Danville, Ky., native Mr. Walker, an artist, arts administrator and activist, looked up the definition of “Appalachian” in his dictionary. He read that Appalachians are “white residents of the mountainous regions of Appalachia” and, says Mr. Walker, “I knew I could never be part of the great body of Appalachian literature, since I didn’t fit the definition.” Then he asked himself what the face of Appalachia was. He saw many commonalities. Appalachians of Kentucky share a heritage of tobacco, horses and bourbon, of love for land and family. They share the concerns that come with everything that is living and dying. But there are differences, too: in political views, urban Appalachian experiences, in a strong awareness of spirituality.

So Mr. Walker created a word that is more relevant to the Appalachian experience today. What began as a word has become a literary movement filled with powerful voices, whether their writing is personal or political.
—Jackie Demaline, “‘Affrilachian‘ writers to congregate here,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, September 26, 2002

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I thought that this introduction I came across on Wordspy when looking for a way to introduce Affrilachia officially to the blogging world, might be a good preface to what’s going to happen in this blog. Essentially, the Appalachian region, stretching from the southern East coast all the way to New York State, is home to plenty of black folks. And almost as many artists, artisans, and poets. The full roster of Affrilachian Poets can be found at www.affrilachianpoets.com. 

As a second generation Affrilachian Poet (AP), I’ve been inducted into a family of artists of color who all have at least a toe hold in Appalachia.  We’re connected through our experiences here.  While the AP’s were founded in Kentucky, our network is widespread with our folk representing both coasts, the South, and internationally. Members have started presses, a literary magazine, and an online literary journal including, Blacoetry Press, Pluck! Magazine, and Torch.  Many of us are award winning, have terminal degrees, tour, teach, and publish regularly. We’re anthologized, write novels, and books of poetry and perform one-woman shows around the country. We’re the best kept secret many people in our region have yet to hear of, even though the group has been around for well over a decade.

This blog isn’t supposed to speak for all of us, although other Affrilachians are welcome to contribute.  Primarily, this is my experience living and working in Kentucky and from time to time, there will be links to what others are doing ’round these parts.  While this preface was a little formal, hopefully you’ll see that the struggle here isn’t all dire and dim.  We have a good time here in Affrilachia along with our fair share of struggle like anywhere else.  And given the recent election, where our country is finding that there is still so much unresolved between black people and white people, I want to do my part with what I do best: writing. 

Because it’s easy to forget, “Some of the Bluegrass is Black.” — Frank X Walker, Affrilachia
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