‘Where I’m From’ poetry project deadline is March 7

Poems can be submitted online

FRANKFORT, Ky. (Feb. 15, 2016) — The deadline for submitting poems to the Kentucky Arts Council’s “Where I’m From: A Poetry of Place” is March 7. In addition to written poems, video and audio interpretations of poems will be accepted via online hosting platforms like YouTube and SoundCloud.

In 1993, Kentucky poet George Ella Lyon wrote her now internationally acclaimed poem “Where I’m From”:

“I am from clothespins,
from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride.
I am from the dirt under the back porch.”

Those words and the proceeding stanzas tell the story of Lyon’s Harlan County upbringing. The Kentucky Poet Laureate is encouraging residents from each of the state’s 120 counties to use her poem as a model to tell their own stories via the Kentucky Arts Council’s project titled “Where I’m From: A Poetry of Place.”

“This project is about connecting to your own voice,” Lyon said. “We need to demonstrate that art speaks from every county in Kentucky, that poetry speaks from every county in Kentucky. It’s alive and well, and needs to be nourished.”

People interested in participating in the “Where I’m From” project can do so by emailing their county contact. If there is no contact listed for your county or you are interested in being the county contact, email Tamara Coffey, individual artist director, at [email protected].

“We are shooting for 100 percent participation in this statewide project. For us to have the opportunity to showcase work from each Kentucky county on Kentucky Writers’ Day in 2016 would be an outstanding way to celebrate the arts council’s 50th anniversary,” said Lori Meadows, arts council executive director. “I encourage all Kentuckians to look within yourselves and your communities and find something that inspires you to express your pride of place.”