“They Seeded Themselves”

They seeded themselves 
close enough to see each other 
bent low in the field, pulling weeds 
dispensing verbal insecticide 
—Frank X Walker, “Canning Memories”

Frank X Walker has a third eye. The elders would probably say he was born with a caul or the gift of second sight. His is the ability to see other poets and storytellers as they move through the world, unaware of their gifts. These writers muddle through in search of kindred spirits; Frank sees them, these writers rooted in place and generations, these writers who innately understand the way land and place nourish memory and how the ancestors show up in these stories again and again. Frank understands how a place can inform stories.

Frank saw me. He saw Crystal Wilkinson, Gerald L. Coleman. He saw Ricardo Nazario y Colón. He saw Mitchell L. H. Douglass. He saw Shanna L. Smith. In 1992, he saw all of us: Black writers in search of a community in Lexington, Kentucky. Frank and I were graduate students at the University of Kentucky, but some of the others were undergraduates, some were writing press releases for the mayor’s office. Some were selling used cars. Some were budding philosophers, but Frank saw a generation of Black writers searching for our true selves, our true voices.

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Cultural Center at UK was the center of our world. Every Monday night from 6 to 8 pm, we young Black writers shared and critiqued poems, plays, fiction, even song lyrics. We vibed, and we rhymed off the dome. We cried over frustrations and rejections. We got mad at each other. We jammed ourselves into service elevators and turned off the power so we could recite our ditties and jubilees to one another. Sometimes there were five of us, and sometimes two sharing that small space. We gave each other daps and snaps then turned the power back on and returned to class or work. We shared Nikki Giovanni and Gayl Jones, passing Corregidora around like a sacred text. We wrote. And Frank made sure we were beholden to each other: bonded to place and people. He encouraged our pure agency. We organized open mics and shared calls for writing from everywhere. “Here, this may be good for you,” we said. When Frank looked across the workshop table and said, “What did you bring to share?” his fellow poets knew they needed to be present by sharing new work and paying close attention to the work of their fellow writers.

Frank is a proud Kentuckian who recognized our gifts even before we did. Along with the grand conjure woman, Nikky Finney (a visiting professor at UK at the time), he reached beyond his gauzy veil and midwifed the Affrilachian Poets. This word, Affrilachian, did not exist before. He named us: African and Appalachian. He knew who we were:

the word Affrilachia
was not intended to take lives
was not intended to destroy families
or divide communities
... it existed to make visible
to create a sense of place
that had not existed
for us
for any unwealthy common
people of color
now claiming the dirt
they were born in
—From “Sara Yevo” by Frank X Walker
 

Thanks to these Affrilachian gatherings, Nikky Finney birthed her classic, Rice (1995). I wrote my first collection, Tougaloo Blues (2003), and Frank wrote his first collection, Affrilachia (2000). Crystal Wilkinson conjured her first collection of short stories, Blackberries, Blackberries (2000), here, too.

If you were there in those sacred workshops he would say, “You are a writer.” He sees what you do when you are alone with words because he does it too. See this man with the third eye? See him sit back and let his eye work. See him claim you.