On July 28, 2023, my wife Candice & I spent a long, rewarding day in Huntington, West Virginia, part of which I wrote about in this earlier blog post regarding our visit to the Huntington Museum of Art. But our primary reason for visiting Huntington was to attend a joint book signing and reading by two of our friends at Cicada Books on 14th Street West. The two friends are Edwina "Eddy" Pendarvis and Kirk Judd who have both been very active in the West Virginia literary scene for many years. Both are excellent poets and Eddy has also produced several excellent works of nonfiction both in the field of Appalachian Studies and in her professional academic career in the field of education. I have known Eddy for about 6 years and known about Kirk and his work for probably forty years although we had never met face to face before this reading. Kirk and I had both participated in an online reading to promote the posthumous book "Milky Way Accent" by Bob Snyder, one of my early mentors and one of the best poets West Virginia has ever produced. We have maintained an intermittent Facebook communication pattern ever since but this was our first meeting.
Kirk and his wife, Eddy, Candice and I all arrived at the book store about an hour early for the reading and were able to converse awhile before others arrived for the event. We talked about a wide ranging series of topics as most people do in such settings and at least hit the high spots concerning Appalachian Literature, poetry in general, the art museum, and God only knows what else which is the very kind of conversation which I enjoy. The reading had a very sizeable attendance by the standards of such events in small venues and the room was soon filled with a wide variety of aficionados of literature. We were able to meet and talk briefly with several others whom we had never known, most of whom were friends of either Eddy or Kirk and his wife.
The reading began with Eddy reading some from both her historical body of poetic works and some short selections from her new nonfiction book "Another World: Ballet Lessons from Appalachia" which is available from the Jesse Stuart Foundation in Ashland, Kentucky. Although I can't say that I knew this book in its embryonic stage, I had been aware of it in a limited way as Eddy had worked on the manuscript and had eagerly anticipated its arrival in the world since I have enjoyed literally every word of Eddy's work I have ever read. "Another World..." is based on interviews which Eddy completed with 24 women who took childhood ballet lessons in Appalachia and discusses various aspects of ballet and how it affected the lives of these women. I am certain that the book is and will forever be a thorn in the sides of those perpetual detractors of Appalachia who live under the misconception that this is a region without both culture and cultured people. It is an unusual topic for an Appalachian book and I admit that I have never seen another book about ballet in Appalachia. Like myself, you may find this to be your introduction to the topic within the region. I must say that this makes me justifiably proud as does any other occasion when I see those detractors set back on their heels. But I must also say that for several years I had been aware that the father of the actor Richard Thomas, of "The Waltons" television fame, grew up to become a New York ballet dancer during his childhood in nearby Paintsville, Kentucky. I will report more fully on the book after I have completed reading it.
Eddy's poetry reading was and always has been a fulfilling experience. Her imagery is crisp, both human and humane, and always reflective of her highly productive life as a successful Appalachian woman, professor, poet, and educator. She read a limited number of her fine poems and both Candice and I thoroughly enjoyed hearing her once again.
Kirk Judd's reading was somewhat longer than Eddy and came, in part, from a new book of poetry which he coauthored with three of his long term female poet friends, Susanna Connelly Holstein, Cheryl Denise, and Sherrell Runnion Wigal. He says that the four of them frequently take a shared writing period together at a cabin retreat in West Virginia. The book, "Porch Poems" and its title reflect their long lived practice of sitting, talking, and writing poetry on the very porch which is pictured on the cover of the book which is available from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. Kirk has a wonderful reading style which is as much performance as it is some more tame form of "reading poetry". Both his vocal style and poetic rhythms are geared and polished over years of writing and reading in public to function best in this environment. His work is the product of a lifetime of honing, fine tuning, and perfecting a style and a body of work which is best suited to such a delivery technique. I have seen other lesser poets attempt to utilize such a delivery and rarely seen it succeed. With Kirk Judd, the writer, the poetry, the delivery, and the pleasure therefrom are melded into exactly what such a style should be. Kirk often performs his reading with the accompaniment of an old time fiddler and his earlier book, "My People Was Music", was published in its original edition with an accompanying CD of such an accompanied reading of some of the poetry. The current second edition of that book is published with a computer code on the cover so the purchaser can access the recorded versions online.
