Filed under: 2025 Advent Tree, Uncategorized | Tags: advent 2025, Art of the Day, Diamine Ink, Hindman Settlement School, poetry, Writing
It may have the face of love
but sorrow thinks only
of itself, wails in the dark
where it must learn to sleep.
-from Changeling by Jane Hicks
Last year, Fireside Industries published Jane Hick’s remarkable poetry collection The Safety of Small Things, one of my favorite books of 2024. I read it all at once and have dipped back into it again and again. It is such good company. It lends me courage. The book speaks of her journey through cancer, of grief and fear and of the small mercies that can lead you through. I have been lucky to attend workshops and retreats with her at Hindman Settlement School- wise, grounded, funny and focused, Jane raises the energy of every room. Poet in the house, I remember to breathe.
Also floodkin, here is lovely poem of hers in the digital anthology of Troublesome Rising. https://hindman.org/fireside/titles/troublesome-rising/troublesome-rising-digital-anthology/poetry-jane-hicks/
and some wonderful poems in Cutleaf, a pretty fabulous online journal. I hope you will read them.https://cutleafjournal.com/authors/jane-hicks
My Advent Tree this year is dedicated to my writer friends and teachers. I am so grateful for all the light you shine in the darkness.
Filed under: 2025 Advent Tree | Tags: advent 2025, Art of the Day, Hindman Settlement School, poetry
Grief: love without a house
in which to sleep and eat
-from April Ten by Clayton Spencer
When I think of Clayton, I see us standing together on the footbridge across Troublesome Creek watching the muskrat come and go from its lodge on the little grass island in the middle of Troublesome. We stood a long time, mostly silent, bearing witness to the wonder of it. His work is like that- a quiet, steady witness to wonder.
This line is from a poem in his first chapbook Concerning the Service, recipient of the Beyond Words Poetry Chapbook Awards 2024.
Clayton will be living at the Hindman Settlement School soon as their Youth Literary Arts Coordinator. Oh, this makes my heart happy.
My Advent Tree this year is dedicated to my writer friends and teachers. I am so grateful for all the light you shine in the darkness.
Filed under: 2025 Advent Tree | Tags: advent 2025, Art of the Day, Diamine, Hindman Settlement School, Inkvent Calendar, poetry, Writing
The blossoms lengthened
to prickle-skinned shafts,
butter and egg yolk yellow,
peeping from under broad fronds, jungle leaves,
looking like they belonged in the outskirts of Manila,
where he ordered a wife once.From Heirlooms by Erin Miller Reid
Erin always brings gifts to lay on the little dining room table at Stuckey, one of the houses at the Hindman Settlement School in Knott County Kentucky, a chosen home for so many people since 1902. Writers gather there at the annual Appalachian Writer Workshop and several weekend retreats through the year. We work during the day and stay up late at night sharing gifts, swapping stories and catching up, and yes, partying.. When Erin opens her mouth to share a story, those who know her perk up their ears, waiting for the moment it turns south, because it always does only you don’t know where or how. Then boom! There it goes, and we howl or cover our ears. Don’t ask about examining rooms or the elephant that was hung for murder in Kingsport, Tennessee.
I love Erin and her generosity and her south turns. She writes poems and short stories and has a novel coming out in the Fall of 2026 that I can’t wait to get my hands on. Party on Dr. Reid.
Erin is also Flood kin, here’s some of her flood writing:
Here is where you can find out about her novel: https://www.kentuckypress.com/9781985904781/but-for-fortune/
A lovely shade of pink from Diamine. I thought it would be paler, the way it looks in the bottle.
My Advent Tree this year is dedicated to my writer friends and teachers. I am so grateful for all the light you shine in the darkness.
Filed under: 2025 Advent Tree | Tags: advent 2025, Diamine Inks, Hindman Settlement School, Inkvent Calendar, poetry, Writing
At the garden
sugar snaps wait
for me to pick-
each perfect pea
inside the pods
an assurance
I can keep.
-Patsy Kisner from her poem ‘After Death’
Oh Patsy, I breathe easier when I’m around you. We recognize something about each other, maybe it’s the way we hold grief in our bodies. We see it and don’t need to talk about it but can with ease if we want. For years now we have been friends, flood kin and roommates at the Appalachian Writers Workshops and retreats at Hindman. You and I and Angie Mimms will lie on our beds and laugh like girls at summer camp, lightening the load we each of us carry. Thank you for that ease. Thank you for that understanding.
I love your poetry- lean, spare, and right to the heart of mystery. I want Everyone to read it.
Everyone, this is Patsy Kisner. Her most recent book is Until the Surface Breaks. She has another collection coming out soon and I hope I get to do the cover art.
Please find her books here:
Filed under: 2025 Advent Tree, Uncategorized | Tags: advent 2025, Appalachia, Art of the Day, Diamine Ink, Hindman Settlement School, Inkvent Calendar, Robert Gipe, Writing
Surely the boy that would love them puppies and kittens was still in there somewhere. If only I hadn’t killed him with the good skillet.
- Robert Gipe from Pop
Every time I read or listen to a Jack Tale, I only picture Jack one way- as Robert Gipe. Writer, teacher, artist, activist, organizer, theater maker, Robert has spent his life speaking truth to power. The way he tells it, Truth sneaks in the back door or cracked window in the form of a joke, a story, a drawing, a play. It catches you up in it until the disguise is thrown off and you cannot deny the vision of what he is fighting for- respect, dignity and safety for the people of Appalachia. He gives voice to the voiceless.
At Hindman, Robert is Master of the Introduction, King of the Porch, the voice of the Brier in the annual reading of Jim Wayne Miller’s Brier Sermon, and Inventor of the Grippo’s Salad. He is a friend to all, the one you want beside you in a fight. I am honored to know him.
This line is from the third of his trilogy of illustrated novels: Trampoline, Weedeater & Pop. Read them. Really, just do it.
His website is excellent for all things RG:
My Advent Tree this year is dedicated to my writer friends and teachers. I am so grateful for all the light you shine in the darkness.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Art of the Day, Hindman Settlement School, LGBTQ, Teacher of the year, Writing
“Depends. You ever consider switching to Marlboro?”
-Willie Carver
I’m grateful to have met Willie Carver a couple of years ago. I first learned of him through Twitter, back when it was Twitter and I was still on it. I knew him first as the Kentucky Teacher of the Year who was driven from his school by the hatefulness unleashed on him and his students. Then his book came out “Gay Poems for Red States” and I knew I wanted to meet him. Like so many others, he was drawn to Hindman and that is where we met. We’ve attended workshops together and I’ve come to his retreats and taken his classes. He is, indeed, a master educator. I’ve been blessed to get him to come to my school as a speaker. My students loved him, as I knew they would. Hilarious, brilliant, uncompromising, he is a lighthouse for those seeking the safety of justice, acceptance and love.
This line is from “Gas Station” a short story published in the Winter 2024 issue of Untelling: Literary and Arts magazine. Gay Poems for Red States has won a boatload of well-earned awards. I’m really looking forward to his novel coming out in the spring: Tore All to Pieces.
Please learn more about him and the good trouble he is always getting into:
https://www.kentuckypress.com/9781985903708/tore-all-to-pieces/
My Advent Tree this year is dedicated to my writer friends and teachers. I am so grateful for all the light you shine in the darkness.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: advent 2025, Art of the Day, Flood, Hindman Settlement School, Ink, Writing
“The silence after was nothing like the silence before.”
-Chelyen Davis
This line is from “Wellness Check” a chilling short story published in the 2024 winter issue of Untelling. Its ending has stuck with me a long time. That devastating silence. I met Chelyen at Hindman years ago. I don’t even know how many workshops and retreats we have attended together. Lord, the stories we’ve told and listened to late in the night on the porch or in the living room of Stuckey. We lived through that unimaginable flood there in 2022 when Troublesome Creek rose 21 feet in just a few hours in the middle of the night sweeping lives and trees and cars and homes away. It changed us all. Shared disaster turns acquaintances into kin.
Chelyen is a former journalist and speech writer for the governor of Virginia. Her work has been published in Appachian Review, Still: The Journal and The Botter Southerner, among other places. You can read three of the poems she wrote about the flood in Melissa Helton’s gorgeous anthology Troublesome Rising:
My Advent Tree this year is dedicated to my writer friends and teachers. I am so grateful for all the light you shine in the darkness.
Filed under: 2025 Advent Tree | Tags: advent, Art of the Day, Faith, Hindman Settlement School, Hope, Ink, LGBTQ, Writing
My Advent Tree this year is dedicated to my writer friends and teachers. I am so grateful for all the light you shine in the darkness.
In the end, I decided I would never again be the scared boy in my story.
-Jonathan Corcoran
I did not know Jon or his work until I found myself in his creative nonfiction workshop at the Hindman Settlement School in the summer of 2024. His memoir No Son of Mine had just been released. I was nervous about my work that summer- I’d had a horrible year of being sicker longer than I ever experienced. I was exhausted, depressed, my resistance was very low and I just could not get well that year. That week was magical, the first time the sun came out for me in a long time. Jon is a fantastic teacher- kind, insightful and inspiring. He makes everyone feel welcome and listened to, you just want to hang out with him. His one-on-one conference with me was one of the most healing things I’ve experienced. I am profoundly grateful for his encouragement and understand, and his insight into what I might do with my disjointed creative life. His memoir is very powerful, and very important for those who experience the devastating alienation from their families because of their sexual orientation. And it is important for others to come to some understanding of just how devastating that is. His short story collection Rope Swing is a delight. He has just finished a novel that I am looking forward to very much.
https://jonathancorcoranwrites.com/
Filed under: 2025 Advent Tree | Tags: advent, Advent Season, Art of the Day, Faith, Hindman Settlement School, Hope, Ink, poetry, Writing
The year began with nothing but dread and did not disappoint. Each day has brought fresh blows. So much of what I believed about my country and the people in it has been washed away. So many harmed, in danger, belittled and silenced. I have felt hopeless and powerless. In the spring of 2025, my 24 year old daughter suffered a cryptogenic stroke, suddenly unable to feel anything on her entire right side, unable to find words or use them. She and I live alone together. I was able to get her to the ER at 5:30 am on a Monday morning, marking the beginning of many weeks in the hospital followed by months in rehab. She is doing well now, still in recovery, trying to regain what she has lost. Maybe she will. She has come a long way. It has been a challenge keeping my head above water in this constant inundation. Knowing that I am not alone in this does help. It also hurts too.
Reading and writing and making art have been so important this year. My communities have been even more important- my family, friends, the school and church where I work, and my writing community. Lord I am rich in a writing community. Being with them in workshops and retreats, reading their words when I am alone, sharing my words with them for advice- all of this has been a lifeboat for me. This year’s advent calendar is a celebration of them. Each day is a line or two from their work coupled with the ink of the day from the delicious Inkvent calendar I splurged on from Diamine Ink. I make an ornament with these words and hang them on my Advent Tree. I will make a post each day about their work and share where you might find more. I have so many writing friends and acquaintances that I will not be able to highlight them all in one Advent season, which grieves me. All of us are connected through the Hindman Settlement School. It is where we met, where we meet, where we teach each other and share our work. What a blessing.
Advent is my favorite time of year, a time to contemplate the darkness and the returning of the light. It is a hopeful time. Hope is what I need. Gratitude is what I have. Thank you friends for all your work and the light you bring into the world.
December 1 Celestial Skies
The terrible stars sometimes fall,
Annie Woodford
but we are asleep in the valley,
we are asleep in each other’s arms.
These lines are from the poem “Wilkes County Posada” by Annie Woodford. This poem gutted me when I read it last month in her most recent collection “Peasant” published by Pulley Press. It’s an astonishing portrait of what our immigrant neighbors are enduring, people we depend on in so many ways that we are completely ignorant of. People we vilify, imprison and deport without dignity or due process. It is absolutely the perfect beginning to the Advent season. I got the book from her when I saw her at the Appalachian Writers Workshop at Hindman Settlement School this summer. Annie is a poet from North Carolina who is quiet, unassuming and very modest. When you open her books, fierce love leaps off the page and roots you to our earth. I could not put it down. She has an excellent website where you can find out more about her and her work. “Peasant” is my favorite poetry collection of the year so far, and the year is almost over…
https://www.anniewoodfordpoet.com/
https://www.pulleypress.com/peasant
The Fox at Dawn 