Mode of Program Participation
Performances and Arts
Participation Type
Performance
Presentation #1 Title
Onward, Appalachia: poetic investigations
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Onward, Appalachia is a multitude; my manuscript contains several lenses and voices that intermingle and overlap and converse, much like the kudzu vine that found its way into eastern Kentucky—it is impossible to trace the beginnings and endings of one shoot. It braids, it curls, it kaleidoscopes. Birthed from my reverence of Kentucky and a refusal to ignore injustice, the Appalachian region has served as my poetic muse for quite some time. Ultimately, this is a work hoping to simultaneously educate readers about a ravenous coal industry, its detrimental effects on land and communities, while holding space for softness—we are not constructed to contain such catastrophes; there must be a time of reconciliation. Employing documentary poetics, I have attempted to understand, deconstruct, and reclaim the environmental, socio-economic, and cultural impacts of mountaintop removal, as well as share narratives learned through research and interviews, and ask the questions: how did we get here and how do we proceed? This work hopes to serve as a simultaneous preservation of land yet untouched, and a reclamation for the land that has been and once was. This text hopes to be a testament to those like Judy Bonds, Gurney Norman, Wendell Berry—these modern day heroes who spent their lives chasing men like Don Blankenship off their land; and a cheer for those holding their ground today, tomorrow, and the day after. This work is to the whispers of stones and the resilience of moss. Onward.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Jaclyn Hawkins is a writer of landscapes. She received her MFA in Writing and Poetics from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, where she currently resides. Native Kentuckian, she daydreams of the maternal Appalachian Mountains and believes poetry will save the world.
Onward, Appalachia: poetic investigations
Onward, Appalachia is a multitude; my manuscript contains several lenses and voices that intermingle and overlap and converse, much like the kudzu vine that found its way into eastern Kentucky—it is impossible to trace the beginnings and endings of one shoot. It braids, it curls, it kaleidoscopes. Birthed from my reverence of Kentucky and a refusal to ignore injustice, the Appalachian region has served as my poetic muse for quite some time. Ultimately, this is a work hoping to simultaneously educate readers about a ravenous coal industry, its detrimental effects on land and communities, while holding space for softness—we are not constructed to contain such catastrophes; there must be a time of reconciliation. Employing documentary poetics, I have attempted to understand, deconstruct, and reclaim the environmental, socio-economic, and cultural impacts of mountaintop removal, as well as share narratives learned through research and interviews, and ask the questions: how did we get here and how do we proceed? This work hopes to serve as a simultaneous preservation of land yet untouched, and a reclamation for the land that has been and once was. This text hopes to be a testament to those like Judy Bonds, Gurney Norman, Wendell Berry—these modern day heroes who spent their lives chasing men like Don Blankenship off their land; and a cheer for those holding their ground today, tomorrow, and the day after. This work is to the whispers of stones and the resilience of moss. Onward.
