Associate professor of English Frank X. Walker was recently honored as the recipient of the 2014 Honor Book for Poetry for his "Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers: Poems."
Frank X Walker is a founding member of the Affrilachian Poets, a professor at UK, and Kentucky's Poet Laureate. He has published six volumes of poetry, the most recent of which (Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers) won a NAACP Image Award. Here, he shares poems from a new collection he is currently working on.
English Professor and Kentucky Poet Laureate Frank X Walker introduces us to the history and origins of Affrilachia while also fast-forwarding to it’s present-day development in Kentucky’s first Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture known asPluck!. In this podcast, Walker discusses the importance of Affrilachia in further opening the doors of Appalachia’s cultural and racial diversity and how Pluck! plays its own role in continuing this exploration. For more information about Affrilachian poets, please head to http://www.affrilachianpoets.org/.
In honor of Black History Month, the UK SAB is hosting "Pluck! Featuring the Affrilachian Poets," at 7 p.m. tonight, Thursday, Feb. 6, in the William T. Young Library auditorium.
English professor and current Kentucky Poet Laureate Frank X Walker appeared on Katerina Stoykova-Klemer's radio show called "Accents: a radio show for literature, art, and culture" on UK’s student-run radio station in August of 2013. The show aired on WRFL 88.1 FM. Together they delved into excerpts from his recent work, Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers.