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: 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.
The Fox at Dawn 