Poet laureate Walker speaks with CSM students
Frank X. Walker holds roundtable discussion with students, reads from works
Poetry is about saying more with less, molding words like clay, said Frank X. Walker, former Kentucky Poet Laureate.
“That’s what poetry does, it takes this big thing and shrinks it; poetry is about economy,” Walker said. “If you’re a good poet, you can shape your words on the page to have the same impact as a theatrical performance.”
Walker spoke to College of Southern Maryland students about his life and work Friday afternoon before giving a reading of his work that evening.
Walker took part in a roundtable discussion at CSM as part of the college’s Spring 2017 Connections Literary Series, which seeks to bring a diverse array of talent to the campus, said Neal Dwyer, CSM language and literature professor.
Dwyer said one of his goals is to reach out to individuals who may think poetry or literature is boring, or not for them.
“A lot of the students who come into our class think literature is boring,” Dwyer said. “Through the series, what we’re hoping to do is change people’s perspectives of literature, of poetry, and of writers, by bringing people like Frank X. here to meet with [students].”
Dwyer said the experience was aimed at providing students with a close up and personal discussion with writers.
“How often do you get to meet the poet of the work you’re reading in class?” Dwyer said.
Growing up poor in Danville, Kentucky, Walker said books became a solace for him, a way of escaping to other places he couldn’t visit.
“I would say that books gave me a sense of the familiar,” Walker said. “Books and reading connected me to school, connected me to an outlet to a world that was denied to me; I could travel, because of books, I could go to outer space, go to the bottom of the sea, go to other countries, read about other languages and different people, travel among the stars.”
Walker attended the University of Kentucky on an engineering scholarship but changed his major to pursue his passion for literature.
“It was the only thing that made me feel so alive,” Walker said.
Walker has written several books of poetry, including works of “historical poetry” — much like historical fiction, Walker seeks to tell a story in a historical setting around historical events.
One of Walker’s works, “Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers,” is a collection of poems from the points of view of people surrounding the assassination of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, including Evers’ widow, his brother, his assassin and his assassin’s spouses.
“I’m writing about a story, a story that you already know how it ends, but I’m trying to fill in the blanks around the story and add to the emotional things that end up left out of the story,” Walker said.
Walker said he researched the work by reading hours of court transcripts, visiting the courthouse and driving around the roads where the event took place.
“I can’t start writing until I feel I’ve researched enough,” Walker said. “Enough to inhabit a person’s skin in what feels like an authentic way, or so much research that I can hear their voices in my head, I can imagine what that person would say in particular circumstances.”
Walker said there is a difference between what he does and what historians do.
“They’re bound by what they can corroborate through research. Poets get to include that, but then take a leap, and speculate, and imagine what makes sense to us,” Walker said.
Dwyer said one of the things he likes most about Walker’s work is how he focuses on the often-overlooked individuals surrounding historical events.
“What I love so much about Frank X.’s work is that he gives voice to the voiceless, he breathes life into people’s stories whose stories haven’t been heard,” Dwyer said.
Walker also coined the phrase “Affrilachia” to describe the African American history and culture of the Appalachian region, something which had previously been overlooked by historians and media.
“Most of what mass media gives and covers as Appalachia is not just a stereotype, it’s a caricature of the region as unlettered, uneducated, poor, meth-infested and devoid of color, then and now. Most of what you see or hear about the region erases people of color, which is just a lie when you look at the history of the region,” Walker said. “So part of what I do with the word Affrilachia, which is actually in the dictionary now, the Oxford American Dictionary, is to challenge people’s notions, concept and definition of the region and help them see it in a different way.”
Walker said he hoped students came away with, “A sense of how human poets are, how much a part of the real world we are, how much that world affects our work, and our choices. Many of them are on the cusp of deciding if they want to write or not and I hope I clarified for them that pushed them towards writing or reading more, or whatever they feel passionate about, to pursue it, and not wait for somebody else to do it for them.”