For our second episode, we spoke to Kentucky Poet Laureate Crystal Wilkinson. Crystal shares a writing prompt that inspired an essay in her book "Perfect Black." She explains how you can adapt the prompt for fiction or poetry and offers tips to help you generate your best writing.
Show Notes
About Our GuestKentucky Poet Laureate Crystal WilkinsonCrystal Wilkinson is the award-winning author of Perfect Black, The Birds of Opulence, Water Street, and Blackberries, Blackberries. She is the recipient of a 2021 O. Henry Prize, a 2020 USA Artists Fellowship, and a 2016 Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence. Nominated for the John Dos Passos Award, the Orange Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, she has received recognition from the Yaddo Foundation, Hedgebrook, The Vermont Studio Center for the Arts, and others.
Her short stories, poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including most recently in The Kenyon Review, STORY, Agni Literary Journal, Emergence, Oxford American and Southern Cultures. She currently teaches at the University of Kentucky, where she is Associate Professor of English in the MFA in Creative Writing Program.
Listen to the podcast for the complete description of Crystal's prompt.
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A JCPL librarian interviews published writers about their favorite writing prompts—exercises that can help inspire, focus, and improve your creative writing. Whether you’re a beginner or a pro, a novelist, essayist, or poet, you’ll find ideas and advice to motivate you to keep writing. A partnership with the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning.
Prompt to Page Ep. 2
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Carrie Green: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Prompt to Page podcast, a partnership between the Jessamine County Public Library and the Carnegie center for Literacy and Learning. I'm your host, librarian and poet, Carrie Green. Each episode, we interview a published writer who shares their favorite writing prompt, submit your response to the prompt for a chance to have it read on a future episode of the podcast.
Our guest today is crystal Wilkinson, Kentucky's Poet Laureate. Wilkinson is the award-winning author of Perfect Black, The Birds of Opulence Water Street and Blackberries Blackberries. She is the recipient of a 2021 O Henry prize, a 2020 USA artists fellowship and a 2016 Ernest J Gaines prize for literary excellence.
Nominated for the John Dos Passos award, the Orange [00:01:00] prize and the Hurston Wright Legacy Award, she has received recognition from the Yaddo foundation, Hedgebrook, the Vermont Studio Center for the Arts and others. Her short stories, poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including most recently in the Kenyon Review Story Agni literary journal Emergence
Oxford American and Southern Cultures. Her fourth book Perfect Black was published by University Press of Kentucky in August, 2021. She currently teaches at the University of Kentucky where she is associate professor of English in the MFA in creative writing program. Welcome Crystal. We're so honored to have you on Prompt to Page.
Crystal Wilkinson: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Carrie Green: So I know that you have had a long relationship with, um, our partner, the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning, um, and worked [00:02:00] there as an assistant director as well have community spaces like the Carnegie Center and public libraries been important to you as a writer.
Oh,
Crystal Wilkinson: absolutely. Um, you know, libraries have been important since the very beginning. Uh, that was my very first job in high school was to work in a library. Yeah. And it was also my first job in college was to work in a library. So, um, very important it's uh, as a former bookstore owner, like anywhere that houses, books, and any sort of house of learning
um, I've always loved, in course I have fond memories and, uh, still consider the Carnegie Center home. So absolutely yes. Wrote many of my, many of my books. Um, the beginnings of my books while I was at the Carnegie Center and beginnings of my stories in, in my libraries.
Carrie Green: Now, what role, if any, do writing prompts play in [00:03:00] your writing process and
has that changed over time?
Crystal Wilkinson: Um, I'm a big advocate of writing prompts. Um, I have you can't, uh, see them. I know that this is, uh, an audio version of this, but if you could see where I'm sitting now, there are two large bookshelves and I would say maybe a quarter of the books are about writing they're craft books that include
prompts. Um, so for many, many years I've read prompts, I've used them. Uh, even when I'm in the middle of something where I think I know I'm going, um, I will stop sometimes and use a writing prompt. So I think they can be good. They they're good for both, uh, beginning writers and they're good for advanced writers, I think to help you sort of dig in deeper or to help you sort of look at something in a slant way.
Carrie Green: I know that you write several different genres, um, fiction and poetry, and non-fiction as well. Does your use of writing prompts vary by genre or is it pretty consistent?
Crystal Wilkinson: They do. I think that there's a wonderful book called the Practice of Poetry that I go back to again and again for, for poetry prompts.
Um, but some of the prompts that I've invented myself, which is going to be the one that I'm going to talk to, uh, talk to you about most today, um, can be used for all genres. I think some are more suited for fiction. Yeah, I think that there are some prompts that will cross genres, and then there are other prompts that are pretty specific to, um, to the genre that they were sort of invented for.
Carrie Green: And do you have any tips [00:05:00] for writers that maybe are new to prompts beginning writers?
Crystal Wilkinson: I think it's important to sort of, um, dedicate yourself to a particular amount of time. Uh, with the prompt, um, I mean, some prompts are longer and have, um, you know, moving parts and pieces. The one that I'm going to do is, is sort of has three parts to it that you sort of repeat.
Um, but even if it's a general, uh, short prompt, I, the commitment to the page I think is important. So I'll always tell, uh, beginning writers to set a timer. You know, set a timer for at least 10 minutes, uh, or, you know, sort of read the prompt over and sort of think about how long will it take me and give yourself at least 10 minutes, even if you're going to really write quickly.
Carrie Green: And does that kind of, um, [00:06:00] take the pressure off for, for the writer?
Crystal Wilkinson: I think it takes a certain kind of pressure off, uh, and gives you a certain kind of freedom, but it also puts pressure on you, uh, not to sort of be in thinker pose while you're doing this prompt, but to sort of dive into it. Um, and I think it also helps you to think about that, um, than it is.
You know, you're not necessarily writing the poem or the story or the essay you're trying to, um, sort of follow the flow of an idea. So I think it frees you up a little bit to sort of set a timer and just say, you know, go and try to enter the prompt and not to put too much pressure on yourself. Uh, if you wander away from the exact perimeters of the prompt, that's okay too.
Carrie Green: All right. Well, I'd love to hear your prompt.
Crystal Wilkinson: [00:07:00] Yeah. So this is my favorite prompt, um, to do, and I still do it and I assign it to students all the time and it's actually, um, a nonfiction prompt is how it sort of started. Uh, but I also use it, uh, for poetry and I use it for fiction and it's, um, sort of a braided essay.
Or lyric essay prompt and a lyric essay is an essay that uses, um, three or more strands or, or topics as a, as a structural concept. And, um, the fragments are re repeated, which makes it, um, braided. So the first step it's three, three steps, and the first step is to make a list. And so you would number your, your paper number, your pages
1 to 3 and the three, um, sort of strands of the braid are the following. So the first one is a [00:08:00] childhood memory between the ages of six and 10 years old. The second one is, um, a current event. Like in the news or recent social event, like a birthday or family reunion or anniversary. Um, and the third one is a detailed description of the natural world.
So bodies of water that know you or a park or farm, or even a place that you've never seen. So you've got your childhood memory, the current or recent social event, and you've got the detailed description of the natural world. And then you'll just try your hand at writing one section on the memory followed by one section on the current event, uh, or social event, and then followed by a detailed description of your chosen part of the natural world.
Um, and then you do three sets of those. So if you were writing poetry, you would do like a [00:09:00] stanza on the childhood memory, a stanza up on the current event and the stanza on the. The natural world. If you were leaning more toward, um, an essay or a short story, then you would give yourself more room, like maybe do three paragraphs on the memory, three paragraphs on the event, three paragraphs on the description.
And then you repeat those sets. So you come back to the memory, you come back to the current event, you come back to the description and sort of continue each of the threads until, um, until they're complete. And so what I love about this, you know, what happens is that, uh, you're sort of conscious brain, uh, sort of attaches to your unconscious brain.
Cause you think these are three absolutely different things. They're not connected, but somewhere around the third pass, they start overlapping [00:10:00] like your memory. That's something deep seated in you sort of takes over and they start folding in, uh, really beautifully. And it works for everybody. You know, people who, um, are beginning writers and people who are more seasoned writers.
It's a prompt that I love and I come back to it time and time again,
Carrie Green: Are there any writers, um, that you think might be good? Examples of people were looking for examples of that
There's a wonderful
Crystal Wilkinson: essay that you can find on online. It's a short braided essay by, um, Marsha Marsha, Aldrich A L D R I C H. And I think you can, you can find it.
And I think it's called on, um, at A Time for Planting and she sort of breeds in, um, her [00:11:00] sister-in-law's cancer, a fountain on the campus that she works. And, um, when. And maybe there's something else that I'm missing. Uh, but that's a wonderful one. And you know, my own essay that I did called a Dig If You Will the Picture, uh, which is an essay that I wrote, uh, for Oxford American, uh, about prince, um, also
use, you know, at least in the beginning I was using this exercise. Um, and so then what happens, you know, after you do the exercise, the exercise is the exercise, and then you sort of pull your piece away from the exercise and, and look at what it needs. So, uh, some parts of the exercise that wasn't working for, you may sort of float away.
Uh, you may put something else in its place, or you may just end up with two strands of a braid and not three. [00:12:00] So not only is doing the exercise interesting I think seeing what you have after you do it is also interesting. Um, and, and figure out where the cohesive parts are in sort of what to put together.
Carrie Green: So you don't want to, um, just rely on it. You want to see where the exercise will take you and not just, um, rely on the exercise.
Crystal Wilkinson: Yeah. Yeah. I think you don't have to be sort of wedded to it, you know? Um, who was it? I think it was, I'm trying to think of a James Baldwin who said, um, you don't get the story you want, you get the story, you get.
So I think that, uh, even though you start out with a particular intention in a writing exercise, it might take you somewhere else and you have to be willing to sort of lean into that too. Oh. And it just came to me. Uh, the Marie, uh, [00:13:00] Maria Aldrich's essay is called A Good Day for Planting Root Crops.
Carrie Green: Okay, great.
And
Crystal Wilkinson: it was originally published in Brevity. So it's a real, it's short, it's a short braided essay and it's really beautiful. Yeah.
Carrie Green: Well, thanks for those examples. Do you have any final tips or, or writing advice that you'd like to give
Crystal Wilkinson: um, I mean, I think around prompts, um, the only way that they really work is that if you free yourself up to play by, even if you're working on a project and it's really hard and you're working on your novel and you can't get any further or you're working on your short story or you're working on your poem or.
Your essay or whatever you're working on that I think prompts give you, um, a sort of, um, freedom to play in, in sort of activator, reactivate the imagination.
Carrie Green: Yeah. I, I, I [00:14:00] like that word play because that sort of helps. Well, I think for me, it helps take the pressure off and you know, that, that you should be having fun and, um, just trying things out.
Thank you so much, crystal, for sharing your great prompt. We're so happy to have you here on prompt to page. And, um, we can't wait to see what, uh, people deal with that prompt.
Crystal Wilkinson: Yeah, I'll be listening back in. I, I, I love the idea that people come back with pieces and you read them later. So
Carrie Green: thanks for listening to the Prompt to Page podcast, to submit your responses to Crystal's prompt, visit us at jesspublib.org/prompt-to-page. We also welcome you to join the adjustment county public libraries, [00:15:00] prompt to page writing group, which we'll meet on zoom on Tuesday, October 26th at 6:00 PM.
Register on our website to learn more about the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning. Visit Carnegiecenterlex.org. Our music is byArchipelago, an all instrumental musical collaboration between three Lexington based university professors and musicians from all across the American south. Find out more about Archipelago: Songs from Quarantine volumes one and two at the links on our podcast website.
