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.
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Carrie: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Prompt 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. Our guest today is Elizabeth Beck.
B. Elizabeth Beck is a poet who writes fiction. Dancing on the Page is her fifth poetry collection. Accents Publishing will publish Swan Songs, her debut collection of short stories, in 2025. Mama Tried won the American Book Fest Prize for Poetry. She was a finalist in the Kentucky State Poetry Society Grand Prix Prize and has been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize.
Elizabeth is a recipient of the Kentucky Foundation for Women grant. Her work appears in journals and anthologies [00:01:00] including Poetica Magazine, Appalachian Review, Limestone Blue, and Harvard Education Press. Elizabeth founded two poetry series, Teen Howl and Poetry at the Table, in Lexington, Kentucky.
Welcome, Elizabeth. Thanks for joining us.
Elizabeth: Thank you, Carrie. I'm so happy to be here today on this snowy day
to talk all things about poetry today.
Carrie: Absolutely. It's a good cozy day for that. The first line of your bio is that you're a poet who writes fiction, so I'm just curious about that distinction and why poetry comes first in your bio.
Elizabeth: Oh, yeah, that's a good question. I began my writing career by writing poetry and didn't start evolving into writing prose until after I had published , a few collections of poetry and , I find that the disciplines , both in the [00:02:00] generative stage and in the editorial stage and all parts of it are rather different.
But I do approach my prose as a poet, meaning I'm still very interested in the lyricism, the cadence, the rhythm of the word on the page and approach kind of the chapters as if they are stanzas. So, from that perspective, I think that, that's why I, you know, distinguish the fact that I am a poet who writes fiction.
I haven't really written too much creative non fiction for public consumption. That's more of my private pages in my journal. So, that's kind of why I described that, but my heart and soul belong to the poetry world, especially having founded Teen Howl in 2011. And, I have to, I just have to brag for a minute.
When Jay McCoy and I originally ran Teen Howl for five years at the old Morris Books here in Lexington, Hunter Nelson and Jessica Taylor were 15, [00:03:00] 16 year old poets who came to our stage. So after our hiatus, when we knew we wanted to reconvene, we felt it was really important to have a younger leadership.
So that the kids could relate to the leaders. So it's been my joy and delight in the past, almost three years now, watching Hunter and Jessica take the helm of the Teen Howl Poets. And I'm mentoring young people, mentoring children. And it's just, that's been the work I'm probably most proud of.
Carrie: Yeah, well that is something to be proud of.
And you were also were a public school teacher, correct? So mentoring students has been a long part of your career.
Elizabeth: Yes, I started my career in teaching in Cincinnati Public in the late 90s and loved it and resumed my career here in Lexington in Fayette County Public School and just officially retired a few years ago to focus [00:04:00] primarily on my community service work and my writing.
So, I love it, but I, I'm still a teacher at heart, and that's where my heart and soul is.
Carrie: Absolutely. And I should also mention that we did have Jay McCoy on the podcast in a previous episode, and he's also your co host for Poetry at the Table.
Elizabeth: He is, Jay and I joined forces, linked arms in our endeavor with Teen Howl when he was managing Morris books, and, you know, he's a phenomenal writer and amazing teacher.
He's also a professor. So, as I said, when Hunter and Jessica kind of really took over Teen Howl, it freed me and Jay up. And last November to start Poetry at the Table, which, you know, the kids are still invited there, but it's more geared for the adult. And, we've really had such a joy, watching this next program grow.
And of course, Jessica and Hunter come often [00:05:00] to Poetry at the Table and, they share their words because they don't have an opportunity to share their words at the Teen Howl stage now. We really turn it over to the children, so. It's been a really cool symbiotic thing. We also schedule both programs to run Wednesday, Thursday.
So that, when we have regional poets that we invite, for example, we had the U. S. Beat Poet Laureate, John Burroughs, come from Cleveland, he was able to feature at both series, and I have to admit that the adult features have, have really enjoyed reading for the children and hearing their words and and that's kind of been like a huge glimmer for them in their lives So it's it's exciting for us and you know It's a great opportunity for the kids to to meet adult poets in our community and regionally. Sometimes they don't have opportunity to do that in the classroom.
So this is a nice supplement to the wonderful education they're already receiving
Carrie: [00:06:00] Right. Yeah, that's a great way to continue that partnership as well. And for listeners who maybe are not familiar with Poetry at the Table, could you explain, you know, how they can get involved with it?
Elizabeth: Oh, absolutely. It's free and open to the public.
It's always the first Wednesday of the month, every month. We start at 6 PM strict, like, very strict timing because we are graced with 25 open mic readers. We really only have room for 20. So we always advise everybody to get there before 530 to be able to sign up for the open mic list because it does fill up fast.
We bring in two poets to feature. So, on December 4th at 6 p. m. at Kenwick Table, we are featuring Linnell Edwards and Libby Falk Jones. [00:07:00] And that's a very exciting lineup for us. And so, kind of the format is that, you know, I get up and MC and I invite, you know, about half of the open mic readers, one poem, three minute minimum, but anything goes.
You can, you can really go ahead and bring whatever you like. You don't have to be published. It's a great place to air your poems so you can hear any kind of mistakes or wonky areas. The audience is extremely supportive and loving and kind. We are absolutely amazed that our dream came true so quickly.
We wanted everyone to build community. We didn't know it would happen so fast. And to see everyone supporting each other and congratulating each other on publications has just been the time of our lives. So it's the first Wednesday of the month, every month at Kenwick Table on Owsley and it's from six until 7 30 PM.
No, 6 to 8 p. m. We have, we have it until 8 p. m. Two, two fast and [00:08:00] furious hours of poetry with two, two feature poets.
Carrie: Okay, great. Well, let's maybe switch to talking about your work. A lot of your writing, both fiction and poetry, is inspired by music, including your most recent book of poetry. So can you talk a little bit about the way music prompts your writing?
Elizabeth: Absolutely. I specialize in ekphrastic response poetry and fiction because of the years that I served Fayette County teaching arts and humanities. So I have a BA in English literature with a minor in Fine Arts. And when I first moved to Lexington and was looking for an English high school, English teaching position, Arts and Humanities was the 1st year
it was a tested area. So the principles jumped on the Fine Arts thing and said, hey, can you teach us arts and humanities? We don't have a curriculum. We don't really have. We just know it's a tested area. You know, sky's the [00:09:00] limits do what you want. Well, Carrie, it was the best thing I could have ever done for my.
academic career, my teaching career, my writing career, I literally went back to the Paleolithic Neolithic time period with my great big Janssen art history book from undergrad and a Western Civ book. This is, you know, before the age of all of the digital access that we have today. I'm sure it would have been much easier if I had had that.
But, in order to teach, I had to go back and study, and I found in the process how accessible ekphrastic prompts are. So, the idea of ekphrasis is basically responding to a form of art, and it doesn't have to be limited to visual art. So, because I am such an avid fan of music, it was naturalistic then for me to turn my attention and actually all of my collections of poetry weave music because music is an integral part of my existence.
I am a fan [00:10:00] of a band called the Grateful Dead and also another band called Phish. And , both of those bands have really inspired my writing. And so to be able to respond to them, I've never written about the bands as people. For example, the Summer Tour Trilogy is about a young man named Sam who's 17 years old and he's reconciling his grief and loss of his mother and he meets up with a group of kids who love the band Phish.
Sam's never even heard of Phish, but I set the novel where he goes on tour with these kids. Authentically Summer Tour 2019 with the setlists included. And it was really an opportunity for me to kind of romanticize the culture that's around the jam band scene because there's a lot of misperceptions that, you know, it's just a bunch of druggie people, you know, spacing out, when in all actuality there's a very rich [00:11:00] literary history to both bands.
And I make Sam completely clueless about the band so that anybody who picks up a copy of Summer Tour will feel confident reading it because they don't have to feel stupid. Sam will make all the mistakes for you And you get to learn about you know, all the aspects. So for example when I was writing some of my earlier books.
I didn't know that Robert Hunter who was, the lyricist for the Grateful Dead was a direct descendant of Robert Burns and, you know, to learn, you know, these little things that weave through and then, of course, Peter Connors wrote Growing Up Dead. And he's the editor and chief publisher of Boa Editions.
So, you know, he straddles between the jam band scene and the literary world. And I find, you know, particularly as of late in the evolution of where Phish is going now that they've been together for [00:12:00] 40 years, that there is more of an openness and reception to being able to write what I consider to be literary fiction in a jam band world.
Carrie: Mm hmm. Yeah. I'm just trying to, there's a lot to think about.
With all of that, but yeah, that's really interesting about being a descendant of Robert Burns, and the literary aspects that and there's also, I mean, both of those bands really foster community, and so it's interesting that that is also a passion of yours in writing.
Elizabeth: It is, and that stems from primarily what I write about is overcoming trauma. So one of the tools I use in order to overcome trauma is music, is connecting to music, going to see music, listening to the music in the house, whether I'm painting, whether I'm writing, whether I'm cooking, there's always music in the background, and for having complex PTSD, it's just a [00:13:00] tool that I've naturalistically, been drawn to.
So I'm very excited, though, about my collection of short stories that Accents is publishing called Swan Songs. It's thirteen stories about women and how they interpret the world through music. And this time I went way beyond the jam band world. So I decided on one particular artist to kind of revolve that story around.
And I included in this one, Dolly Parton, Tina Turner. Then I have one devoted to jazz. So it has a lot of Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Coltrane, and I really stretched, so that, you know, it wasn't just within one genre of music, like I show in Dancing on the Page with my poems, my history with music goes back to listening to classical music in my home, to being in the jazz band in middle school and high school.
Playing an instrument, learning [00:14:00] to djembe drum and practicing with Trip Bratton and, you know, really connecting with folk music, rock and roll, classical music. I'm a huge jazz aficionado and that's kind of what got me into Phish. I, at first, I was a Deadhead. I had no interest in that grindy boy band whatsoever in the 90s and then when I understood how jazz oriented they were, then I started to take note and pay attention.
Really the only band that's touring right now that's truly still extemporaneous music. And they'll start with, you know, a particular song. Some of them are called you know, jam opportunity songs or, you know, point two jams or they have different labels and all these things around it. But I mean, Carrie, we have an academic conference now called the Phish Studies Conference at Oregon State University in Corvallis, and I had the privilege of being tapped to be the first feature poet at the Phish Studies Conference, [00:15:00] and the Grateful Dead Studies Conference has been going on for 20 years, so
it's exciting, and it was really cool to sit in these panels and see it
a guy who teaches stats, applying his knowledge to Phish, , a lot of studies around Judaism because Phish is considered a Jewish band, there was, oh, there was a, a, a drama professor who applied all of the different roles in the drama world to Phish and how that all related. So I was just fascinated with all of the different academic facets that came into play, all revolving around one band.
Carrie: So if you were going to give an ekphrastic related prompt to our listeners, how would you tell them if they haven't tried ekphrasis before? And we have had past guests who've talked about ekphrastic writing, but how would you get them to start and to [00:16:00] try it?
Elizabeth: Yes. Well, I would ask the writer to choose a painting or a piece of art, any type of art, that just appeals to them.
And with the advent of technology that we have today, it's so easy and accessible. So, say you're scrolling through and you find a painting and you're like, oh, I love this painting. Okay, so now you open up your journal or your computer, however you compose, and what I would recommend is to start talking to the painting.
Start asking questions about the painting. Start describing the painting and maybe even start creating a little narrative about the painting. Now, once you've completed that first step, what I then teach is the power of doing the research once you do the research behind the painting, then you're going to find your writing is going to come to life.
So, for example, I [00:17:00] have an ekphrastic poem that responds to a Miro painting. Well, that's great and it's lovely, but then once I started researching, I found out he was so poor one winter, he made a deal with the local gardener guy, that was selling, he ate radishes for an entire winter because he couldn't afford food, and you know, when I say in the poem that he belches radishes, you know, when you're using your olfactory sense, in writing, it's the one that triggers memory.
It's a very visceral kind of response and it started to bring that poem to life. And then I found out that Kandinsky was struggling with one of his compositions. And, he got frustrated and he went out for a walk. Well, while he was gone, the maid knocked the canvas on the ground, and when she put it back up on the easel, she did it sideways.
And he came back and saw it [00:18:00] and found out, well, ha, now it makes complete sense. These little details about the artist's writing, or the artist's creative process, or the artist lives, or any of those kind of things are going to bring the writing, your ekphrastic response to a different level. So, I mean, it's fine to just, you know, respond to whatever you like.
Turn on a piece of music you really like and just start writing. I do a lot of that, like the first stream of consciousness, flow. But then when you want to kind of, take it where you're editing it and you're polishing it and you're taking it to the next level. That's where and I just love to research. I mean we talked about that at the very beginning. Like that was the best thing that happened to me was teaching arts and humanities opportunity to research. And I think when you have you know details From the particular artist, it's going to bring your work to life in that way.
And if there's so you could probably write five or six different things about one piece of art. If you approach it from there and then think about the [00:19:00] possibilities of that, you know, you can change structurally. I want it to be ghazal or sonnets or what have you, you know, whatever haikus or what have you, so you can make those kind of decisions.
I want it to be told in first person. I want it to be in third person. You know, you have all these rich opportunities to make decisions. I kind of see writing both with prose and poetry as, for me, first I, lay it, lay in what I consider the bones. And then I go back and layer in the blood and the tissue and the muscle and kind of wake the writing up.
But I try not to censor or edit while I'm generating. I just let that flow. And then, of course, that's what workshop is all about, and open mics. I'm going to an open mic tonight to read a poem because I don't read at either of my poetry series. So I'm going to attend everybody else's and support them, and it gives me a chance as a working writer to hear my work.
That's where [00:20:00] we hear our mistakes, everybody. Go, go read your poems aloud. You'll be amazed what you hear.
Carrie: And even just, you know, before you get to the open mic, reading it out loud to yourself or, you know, a passage from your fiction as, you know, fiction writers can learn from hearing their own words spoken, too. I mean, that's an important part of, I think, my process.
Elizabeth: But there's something, it's just so weird that you have, for me, I have to have, it's not enough to even have my dogs.
You know, I always heard like, you know, I teach my students, you know, okay, before you give the speech, you know, line up your stuffed animals and practice in front of them. But there's something about, you know, actually reading it to another person that for some reason you really do at least for me I catch a lot more or maybe that's just my tendency.
I think our brains tell our eyes what we want to see, and it's not necessarily always there, which is, you know, the power of a good editor of course. I don't [00:21:00] know what I would do without Jay McCoy. He's my beta reader. He reads all of my drafts first. And he is, he has no problem telling me what problems I have with my writing, which is great because, you know, we love each other and we support each other.
But, you know, and I'll always say, if I'm in a workshop, look, my feelings are not at stake here. Give it to me. I'm strong. I really want to see a better piece of work than my ego at play. Who cares about that, you know?
Carrie: Sure. Yeah, that's a great way. That's a great way of approaching it and I think, like you said, the ego just tends to get in the way and you get defensive and you have to learn, I think, how to how to accept criticism.
Elizabeth: When I first started going to Poezia, it was so hard for me to understand that, you know, you make, what, 10 or 15 copies of one poem, and you pass it out in the workshop, and then you keep your mouth shut. You don't even read your own poem. Somebody else reads it. And then you have to stay completely quiet and Katerina [00:22:00] Stoykova, my first real writing teacher with Richard Taylor, you know, they, they both are very, very strict about if you have to explain your poem, then you failed your job as a poet.
So during workshop, you don't have the luxury to say well, What I meant to say was, you know, you really have to be quiet and what is what you intended then what's received And that's part of the the triangle of aesthetics that I teach in my ekphrastic writing workshops is that there's a distance between the artist's intention and the art itself, and then there's another distance between the art itself and the audience's interpretation, because each person who walks into that gallery or opens that book comes with their own set of experiences, their own education, and, you know, I'll say to the kids, You know, sometimes you can't ask the artist, what did you mean?
For example, why can't we ask Vincent van Gogh? Well, [00:23:00] what did you mean by this painting? And then, you know, I'll tease them and say, because he's dead. He's dead. I tell you, he is dead. You know, I mean, if we go back and we read his letters to Theo, his brother, we'll glean a lot of information, which I did a deep, dive into that for painted daydreams, because it's pretty much a love letter to Vincent van Gogh, the first artist I connected with as a child.
But other than that, you know, being cognizant, which, you know, is, is really exciting. I didn't realize when we started Poetry at the Table, how wonderful it is to have these grown adults, some, some of whom are my age or older than me. Actually looking to me and looking to the audience for approval and for support, and you know, it's no different than the children and I didn't know that it's so gratifying to be able to provide that kind of encouragement and support.
I find that, you know, these [00:24:00] communities, because the nature of writing is incredibly solitary and we spend an enormous amount of time by ourselves, because we have to, how else do the words get written, right? Going and making sure that you are actively engaged in a community is really, I think, the salvation to your sanity and to your work.
Your work is going to improve.
Carrie: Yeah, absolutely. That is great advice. Do you have any final tips that you'd like to give our listeners?
Elizabeth: I think that particularly right now, in this time of uncertainty about the future, that seems very personal to many of us. I don't know. That this particular election season was much more personal for me, I think, following in the advice and and words of Ada Limon, who is advising us to stay focused on the small, meaning focused on our own [00:25:00]
universe, what we can control. So I went crazy and wallpapered of my dining room. And if you know anything about wallpaper,
Carrie: And I have to say, yeah, it was beautiful. And those, light switches or light sockets, those were impressive.
Elizabeth: Thank you, Sis. And it was exciting. I learned a new skill. I looked, I looked it up and learned something new.
And I was laughing while I was doing it. I said to my husband, I'll bet you my foundation's teacher at DAAP was wallpapering when she taught us how to use an X Acto knife because,
you know, she taught us to slant your blade so that the white part from in behind doesn't come peeking out.
And I learned that at 18, and here I am, you know, all these years later, um, practicing these skills.
And yeah, it feels good. So if I can get up and write one poem, you know, maybe get one art project done, a load of [00:26:00] laundry, a walk with my dogs, you know, really focusing in on the present. And of course, that leads me back to Phish, who, my favorite anthem right now is called Everything's Right. And, what he's, what Trey Anastasio says is, "focus on today.
You'll find a way, happiness is how rooted in the now." And, you know, his, his rhymes are horrible, but he's a brilliant thinker. And I'm really trying to focus on the now right now, Carrie. Having this time with you this morning, being able to talk about poetry is the world to me. This was the highlight of my day today.
Carrie: Oh, well, I'm so glad and mine too, so I'm glad we could share that together and with our listeners. Thank you for joining us.
Thank you for listening to Prompt to Page. To learn more about the Jessamine County Public Library, [00:27:00] visit jesspublib.org. Find the Carnegie Center for Literacy and learning at carnegiecenterlex.org. Our music is by Archipelago an all instrumental musical collaboration between three Lexington based university professors.
Find out more about Archipelago: Songs from Quarantine Volumes One and Two at the links on our podcast website.