Poetry News

Affrilachian Poets in Small Press Month

By Travis Nichols

A group of African-American poets living in the Appalachian region, the soi-disant Affrilachian Poets, have taken to the road this month to give readings and put on workshops throughout Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia.
“Part of the trip is to interact and learn from each other,” Frank X. Walker, the tour organizer, told the Charleston Gazette, “part to explore the region.”

Walker is the editor of Pluck!, the journal of Affrilachian arts and culture (which featured a nice photo of the Wave Books Poetry Bus on the cover of its first issue. Foreshadowing!).
According to a 2006 profile in the Lexington Herald-Leader, Walker and other UK poets organized the Affrilachian Poets in Lexington in 1991, in an effort to claim a place for African-American writers in the Appilachian region, which had a history of being represented as a “monoculture” rather than a region of diversity.
The group has put on readings and events in and around Lexington (and the rest of the region) for the past two decades, recounted in detail on the AP website .
The full itinerary of the AP Bus tour can be found here .

2009-03-06

Posted in Group Blog, Poetry News on Friday, March 6th, 2009 by Travis Nichols.