When Crystal Wilkinson was named Kentucky poet laureate last March, her first book of poetry hadn’t even been published. But the writer and University of Kentucky associate professor had already achieved wide acclaim for her books. Her 2016 novel “The Birds of Opulence,” which traces the lives of multiple generations of Black women in a southern town, won the Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence. Her short story “Endangered Species: Case 47401” won an O. Henry Award earlier this year.
Now her poetry collection “Perfect Black,” described as a memoir in verse, is drawing rave reviews from The New York Times Book Review, MS magazine, and others. Wilkinson says she hopes the poems help Black girls see the perfection they naturally possess. She says it took her years to become comfortable in her own skin and upbringing.
“As a fat, Black rural girl in an all-white area, I always thought perfection was something outside myself,” says Wilkinson. “I hope that there’s a young girl somewhere who’s 12 or 13 or even younger that can see that title, read the poems, and be confident in herself.”
From Shy Farm Kid to College Professor
Although born in suburban Cincinnati, Wilkinson was raised in rural Casey County, where her family has lived for generations. Her grandfather was a tobacco farmer, and his dedication to the crop inspired an ode to the plant in “Perfect Black.”
I cannot see you any other way but as a farmer’s finest crop.
You are a Kentucky tiller’s livelihood.
You were school clothes in August, the turkey at Thanksgiving, Christmas with all the trimmings…
Just like family, you were coddled, cuddled, coaxed into making him proud
Spread out for miles, you were the only pretty thing he knew.
When I think of you at the edge of winter, I see you brown, wrinkled, just like granddaddy’s skin.
But the tranquility of rural life was countered by the fact that the Wilkinsons lived in a majority white county on the western fringe of Appalachia. Only two African-American families lived in that area, and Wilkinson says nearly all the Black people she knew as a child were relatives. Even now, she says she won’t let the racism she saw growing up effect how she thinks about her home area.
“My family’s lived on that land in that same county since slavery… and so I figure it’s mine as much as it is anyone else’s,” says Wilkinson. “So I’m going to claim it, I’m going to reclaim it, and I’m going to love it, and a few people making racist remarks are not going to take it away from me.”
Despite the challenges, Wilkinson’s grandparents encouraged her to write and to dream. But the youngster suffered from extreme shyness. When her grandmother told Wilkinson’s high school counselor that the child loved to write, the counselor encouraged her to study journalism. Wilkinson says she was too shy to reject the recommendation.
That’s how she found herself at Eastern Kentucky University in the journalism program. But on her first assignment, she couldn’t bring herself to conduct the required interview. Instead, she says she made up the conversation that appeared in her story. When she admitted to her professor what she had done, Wilkinson says her first grade went from an A to a F.
“I was way too shy to be a journalist,” she says. “I probably should’ve majored in English to begin with.”
Wilkinson persevered through her shyness and the occasional panic attack during speech classes to complete her journalism degree. She went on to earn a MFA in creative writing from Spalding University in Louisville. She also became a founding member of the Affrilachian Poet movement, along with Frank X Walker and long-time friend Nikky Finney.
“Nikky was the only one who was an accomplished writer already,” says Wilkinson. “The rest of us we’re trying to figure out who we wanted to be.”
Being a professor provides yet another connection for Wilkinson to her grandmother, who aspired to be a teacher but wasn’t allowed to pursue the training. She says she’s able to connect with students who are shy by sharing her own story of being a shy child who has gone on to achieve her dreams. She also says she loves getting to see her students grow as writers.
“You can actually physically see it in the person, in their body, in their face when the lightbulb goes off, and you see the shift from unknowning to knowing,” she says. “There’s no limitations to ambition, no matter what you think stops you.”
Next Up, a Culinary Memoir
Wilkinson continues to keep journals she fills with ideas and fragments that, over months and sometimes years, may become a poem or a short story.
“There’s a germ or seed of an idea and I write part of it down and I’ll come to it every so often and add a little bit more, take something away, or I’ll say it’s still not working,” she says
“Perfect Black” came together during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic as Wilkinson completed the poems and her partner, Ronald Davis, crafted the illustrations for the book.
“The images create this conversation sometimes with themselves and sometimes with the words,” she says.
A new partnership is ahead for Wilkinson’s next book. She will work with renowned cookbook editor Francis Lam, the host of public radio’s The Splendid Table, on a culinary memoir titled “Praise Song for the Kitchen Ghosts.” It is scheduled for release in August 2023 by Penguin Random House.
“It is tracing my ancestry beginning with Aggy of Color, who was born in 1795 as an enslaved child in Virginia, and who was brought to Kentucky with her owners in 1808,” she says. “From her came the rest of my family.”
Beyond her own writing, Wilkinson says she loves to read a range of writers, including Michael Ondaatje, author of “The English Patient,” Toni Morrison, and the Lexington-based writer Gayl Jones. Wilkinson says she is drawn to Jones’ work because in it she can hear her own accent and read about Bluegrass locales she knows.
