Table of Contents
By Bob Hill
Six new poets from Appalachia — all girls and young women — arrived at the recent Kentucky Book Festival at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington in various parts shy, talkative, nervous and excited about their first poems appearing in the book, “A Pencil Grows in Kentucky.”
Some were still in grade school, the others in middle and high school. They took a seat among about 150 adult writers in a large, open room filled with books, book talk, hope, fear and enduring literary aspirations. The usual stuff.
Each young poet was seated in turn next to their mentor and book creator, Jacqueline Jane Hamilton, 70, a retired Eastern Kentucky University English teacher for whom her students use the more affectionate label “Mizz JJ.” An Ohio native, she has a broad writing background, including journalism, community relations at the Dallas Fire Department, a Rotary International Journalism Fellowship in England, an MFA in nonfiction writing and a doctorate in higher education.
Hamilton’s life has now mostly come down to one thing. Giving back to the alphabet. Creating and preserving writing and poetry from the Kentucky mountains by helping foster a new generation of poets. Her claim, offered on the back page of the book, goes, “Women of Appalachia Kentucky — young and old — can reimagine the world with pencil and paper.”
“I would love to expand this work,” said Hamilton, “and feature more women writers and activists from around Kentucky and Appalachia. I started in my home county of Clark and moved east. I got three libraries, a school and a museum that jumped on the chance to help.”
Along with her teaching and writing she has created and performed portrayals of Boston journalist and social reformer Alice Lloyd, who co-founded Alice Lloyd College in Pippa Passes in Knott County, in 1923, and Louisville novelist and detective writer Sue Grafton. There’s the non-profit Why We Write Inc. she helped create for the book sales and fundraising. Add the “Inkspire Camps” for other young writers, scheduled for June and July in Lexington and Winchester. With “Revolutionary Girl Dreaming” in-school workshops coming in the spring to honor the nation’s 250th birthday.
Bringing it all home, she used as her teaching role models the life stories of seven Appalachian heroines: Cora Wilson Stewart, Effie Waller Smith, Jean Bell Thomas, Ollie “Widow” Combs, Harriette Arnow, Verna Mae Stone and Jean Ritchie. Each story was read to the students as part of a larger program, “Appalachia Girl Dreaming,” to find and inspire young female student writers to continue the women’s tradition. All part of her book, “A Pencil Grows in Kentucky,” a title inspired by the classic “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” — a metaphorical analogy of survival, growth and eventual success from an often-difficult environment. Read New York city streets or Appalachian hills.
Hamilton was also inspired by a 2014 collection of autobiographical poetry titled “Brown Girl Dreaming” by Jacqueline Woodson, poetry she saw as a strong mentoring text for young students. Seeking further homegrown inspiration, the first page of Hamilton’s book is a poem from Kentucky legend Wendell Berry, “How to be a Poet.” Who else to talk poetry? Its message to all writers goes:
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.
Hamilton had somewhat similar thoughts:
“Í wrote the book because I was frustrated by so many students thinking that writing was horrible, boring, difficult, not worthwhile. Kids telling me they don’t need to learn because AI will do it, like a calculator does math.
“I am a firm believer that reading and writing poetry can help write all sorts of things, so I wanted to focus on teaching about poetry which allows students to use unusual moves as compared to sentences in academic writing. Then I had a belief that if these folks saw their work in print — in an actual beautiful book — they would be encouraged to keep writing.”
Pushing ahead, she received an $18,000 grant from Steele-Reese Foundation, a charitable trust with deep roots in Appalachia. That led to inexpensive, weekly workshops where each young participant received a copy of “Brown Girl Dreaming,” art supplies and six to eight hours of personal instruction. Add singing, fun skits and two copies of “A Pencil Grows” in Kentucky.
The workshops were focused on Hamilton’s three foundations of writing: listening, landscape and language. It stressed poetic listening to the landscape — often a missing link in good writing — along with its visual cues. Her editing includes changing an old baseball metaphor, “Three strikes and you’re out,” to “Three strikes and you’re in,” giving each student three chances at editing her poem to make it better. Then add a few more strikes if required.
As a result, several hundred poems by 70 young students from Bath, Boyd, Carter, Clark, Fleming, Montgomery and Rowan counties made their way into “A Pencil Grows in Kentucky.” With a half-dozen of those young poets sitting next to Mizz JJ at the Kentucky Book Festival. Signing the pages on which their poetry appeared as the book buyers — and proud parents — stopped by. Certifying them as Published Authors. Part of Kentucky’s finest book festival. An opportunity so many writers of any age never get.
Hamilton’s help doesn’t end there:
“I also want my young women poets to not think of their time with Appalachia Girl Dreaming as a one and done experience. I have sprinkled Love Notes to participants throughout the book. Encouraging notes are a powerful tool that teachers and families should use more often.”
She followed that advice in her book with a Japanese proverb: “One kind word can warm three winter months.”
The poems in the book are living examples of the success of Hamilton, and so many others involved in the various projects. Some poems are surprising in their depth. A few offered a little humor. Many focused on home, family, gardens, the weather, the moment. Other young poets wrote of the mountains rising above them, the shelter offered, the being there with them.
Wandering through the poems in a 240-page book, you find certain sentences, even phrases, that work, each one offering a thought, a smile, a memory, even a warning.
“To be silent is to be ignored.”
“I am from those moments across time.”
“Fabric woven gently like time’s old cloth.”
“So when you find what’s real, keep it close.”
“I sleep in a purple room with teal bed covers.”
“Disappear is just a word.”
Then, the longer pieces of their poems offer a larger time and place.:
Arsema Haset Smith-Mensah, a 12th-grader from Boyd County writes in “My Claim:”
People see me,
And, yes, see my father.
I have his nose and last name.
But when I look in a mirror
I see coily hair and a toothy grin.
I know I am my mother’s daughter.
Ella Kaufer, ninth grader from Rowan County wrote “Baked.”
Mountains hold the stories
of footprints stirred into the dirt –
of people who
chopped its trees,
lived in its caverns,
rested in its shade.
The mountains hold the stories
of those who have traveled
and have baked their steps
Into earth’s very foundation.
Emma Keck, a sixth-grader from Boyd County wrote a love letter to her mother in “Mom.”
You held me inside for nine months
Now I’m growing older.
I try to help and wonder –
Is it enough?
I don’t want you to hold sadness inside
While you still take care of me
I just hope you know –
You mean everything to me.
Grayce Newcome, a Boyd County 12th-grader, wrote of “The Wooden Porch Swing,’ and wanting to sit on it with “Papa” after a long day of work, the family arguing over who will join him.
somehow our little bodies
all fit together like
a porch puzzle,
as we sit
on the wooden swing
with Papa.
H. Wyleigh Osborne of Clark County writes of being “composed of white, drooping dandelions like the ones her Granny kept on her sink, not thinking them weeds.” She finishes:
My very own recipe
For my very own being
A cup of dandelions
A teaspoon of adventures
A pinch of outdoors
My beautiful composition
For I am a weed no more.
Paige E. Tak, a sixth-grader from Boyd County, put some alliteration to work talking about “Ed’s Expertise.”
Ed eagerly edits
Edgar’s excessively edited
essay while eating endless
edamame and exotic entrees.
L.B. Joey, a Carter County eighth-grader, surrenders to the task while vanquishing it in “Writing.”
Writing doesn’t
Come easily to me.
Writing doesn’t
flow like a river to a lake
Writing forces me to focus —
But sometimes
The words still slip away.
Justice Shirey, a fifth-grader from Bath County, writes in “How to Dream” of wanting to go to Princeton, to study law, to become “The Defender” who helps people recover from their mistakes:
Their life is
Not a mistake. …Their life is
Something to hold on to.
Something to be learned.
Something to teach their children
so they don’t go through the
same pain
their family faced.
Makinzie Coleman, a Clark County 10th-grader, heard silence.
The emptiness speaks
inside the home
The ghosts asking to
be left alone.
The poem “My Heart is in The Hills” by Clark County sixth-grader Raelynn C. Atwood helps bring “A Pencil Grows” in Kentucky home:
The feeling of the earth beneath my feet,
Her warm embrace among fields so sweet.
Blue skies, dirt paths
The pines, the breeze
The sun dancing softly
Through whispering trees
I long to lose my cares where wild creeks roam
Where rivers sing and the hills call me home.
Kyndall McKnight, a seventh-grader in Boyd County, touches all the bases with “More.”
Appalachia
More than mountains.
More than hillbillies.
Rooted
More than music.
More than land.
Home
More than acceptance.
More than comfort.
We are one and other.
Hamilton said all the initial $18,000 grant has been used, with sales from her book being used to fund more poetry classes. She is seeking more sponsors as students participate in the workshops for free. Meanwhile, she has received another $18,000 grant from the Steele-Reese Foundation to teach pilot classes in listening — that often missing ingredient in life — at Baker Middle School in Clark County.
“I think I can keep this going,” she said, “as long as my health holds up.”
Hamilton can be reached by email at [email protected]
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Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: [email protected].
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Previously Published on kentuckylantern with Creative Commons License
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