Origin Stories

George Ella Lyon, Kentucky writer and the state’s 2015-2016 Poet Laureate, was inspired by fellow writer Jo Carson’s Stories I Ain’t Told Nobody Yet (who I learned lived just down the road from Boone in Johnson City until her death in 2011), to join with writer and activist Julie Landsman and create an online community centered around the phrase, “I Am From.” People have submitted poems from all around the world. More about George Ella’s “Where I’m From” here and link to the project website here.

Filmmaker, author, poet, activist, and all-around cool person Alyson Shelton was inspired by George Ella’s project to develop her own “Where I’m From,” series, inviting fellow poets and writers to come on Instagram Live with her and read the poems they’ve created from a prompt that reads a little like a “Mad Libs for Writers.” (The prompt was created by a friend of George Ella’s.)

In addition to the reading, you can enjoying listening in on a conversation as well, about writing and about the process of creating the free-form poem that Alyson calls #micromemoir.

I’ve sat and wept listening to writer friends’ stories of heartbreaks and joys detailed in their gorgeous poems. I’ll have the honor of being Alyson’s guest and reading my own “Where I’m From” poem around mid-December. I’ll keep you posted on that.

The prompt Alyson uses is designed to lead one into sense memory, for one to slow down and focus and notice the tiniest details in our own long story, and after all, aren’t our lives made up of these small moments?

I’m from the way my mother’s small, elegant hand touched my forehead to see if I had a fever. I’m from my father’s blue eyes peering at me over his half-glasses as he rattled the pages of his Wall Street Journal. I’m from warm, just-picked red raspberries, the juice staining my hand. I’m from the sharp slice of a January wind as I flew down a snow-covered hill on a plastic lunch tray.

Go here to listen to George Ella Lyon as Alyson’s guest on an Instagram Live. Alyson’s “Where I’m From” episodes are archived here on YouTube, 55 of them so far.

I’d love, love, love it if you shared a few lines of your own remembrances here in the comments. I’d be honored to hear your #micromemoirs, even the smallest snippets, and I think it would be fun to catch glimpses of each other’s origin stories.