PtP Ep 19 Jones edit 1 === Carrie: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Prompt to 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 LeTonia Jones. LeTonia Jones is a Kentuckian who has used the alchemy of arts and activism for over 25 years. She's led public arts campaigns and projects to center the lived experiences of marginalized people. Her purpose is to stir emotions, facilitate space for insight, and move individuals and communities toward greater acts of care and love. In 2007, she collaborated with author and award-winning playwright Eve [00:01:00] Ensler to pilot a two week Arts and Activism festival and campaign to end violence against Women and girls in Kentucky. In 2009, she co-created a writing group for incarcerated women called Tail Project. In 2020, latonya co-founded Bloodroot Ink a writing collective for BIPOC womyn. Black Girl at the Intersection is Jones' debut book and introduces her as a poet who believes acts of witnessing and of being witnessed are revolutionary. Welcome, LeTonia. LeTonia: Hi. Hi. Thank you so much. It's so good to be here. Carrie: Well, thank you for joining us. We're glad to have you. So I read on, I think the Carnegie Center website that you graduated from, their author academy. Is that true? LeTonia: Indeed? Yes, indeed. That was in 2020. I was 2020- 2021. Carrie: Okay. So do [00:02:00] you wanna tell us a little bit about what that is like? LeTonia: Oh, it was an amazing experience, I feel like. In many regards, the Carnegie Center actually raised me as a, as a poet. I went in just to take a couple of ca classes with a journal, and you know, all these years later, a collection of poetry comes out of that. And so being in that academy positioned me with my mentor who also became my editor and my publisher, Katerina Stoykova with Accents Publishing. And so it gifted me just tremendous, tremendous help education and I think it was the push that really let me know I could put my words out in the world a a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a beautiful program. It's a beautiful, Carrie: and Katerina has been a guest on Prompt to Page before. Mm-hmm. So if you anyone hasn't listened to that, definitely go check it out. It's one of my favorites. She has great advice. [00:03:00] Mm-hmm. And so now in addition to publishing your own book, you're also leading some writing groups through the Carnegie Center. Mm-hmm. Correct? LeTonia: Yes. My co-facilitator and co-founder of Bloodroot Ink is Tanya Torp. And so we started in, also in August of 2020, a writing circle, just looking for places for black, brown, and indigenous women to be able to tell our stories. And not feel like we had to get offered disclosures and just write together. And so we began that, started writing together and it's been going for three years now. Carrie: Wow, that's great. LeTonia: Almost three years. We do an annual retreat. I think we've worked with probably maybe 70 or 80 BIPOC women. Carrie: Mm-hmm. That's wonderful. LeTonia: In, in Lexington. And we have a couple of people who drop in from out of state. So it's been, it's been beautiful. Carrie: And probably initially you were meeting [00:04:00] online? LeTonia: We've stayed online. Carrie: You've stayed online. LeTonia: Once we realized, once people started to hear about it from outside of the state, we thought, well, what a wonderful way to continue the circle and to do it virtually so that we could have a bit of a larger reach. We didn't know it would have that kind of appeal. But, but yeah, it's been beautiful and it's, you know, it's women who didn't know that they could write but wanted to find out. Maybe they just journal. Maybe they were an artist in another medium. Mm-hmm. And two writers who are published who, who join us, we have authors, much like your podcast who come in and do a craft workshop with us. So Crystal Wilkinson has been with us. Mm-hmm. New York Times reporter, Nikita Stewart has been with us and so we've been trying to encourage BIPOC women to tell their stories . To get things on the record.. And now, you know, our biggest push is pushing, encouraging us [00:05:00] to also publish. We have some, we have some wonderful storytellers. Saturday mornings from 10 until noon, and we do it cyclically. They're, I would say they've become the holiest time that I, I spend. In that space. Yes. And then I also teach I'm an editor. I'm the members editor at an online platform called Embodied Philosophy. . So we are a school of contemplative study, contemplative practices, mind body studies, yoga philosophy. And I also teach something called contemplative writing for, for the platform. Mm-hmm. And so mindfulness has definitely become part of, of my writing process, and being able to facilitate that in writers and non-writers has been a beautiful experience. Carrie: So how do you, how do you make mindfulness part of your writing practice? What does that mean for you? LeTonia: It means sitting, breathing.[00:06:00] You know, the, this takes us into the prompt that I was actually going to, to talk to you about. I don't wanna, I don't wanna jump too far ahead, but it's, it, it's anything that will put me into my, into my body. And then being able to inquire of the body and just writing it out on the page. Just letting it go. Mm-hmm. And in that, I find. I find stories, I find poems. But yeah, it's about being able to catch, catch my breath, and slow down. And so, especially with contemplative writing, it's about being intentional. So I'm going on an intentional dig. There's some piece of information that I know lies in this vessel. Mm-hmm. And so I use mindfulness breathing meditation to guided meditation to try to pull those, pull those nuggets of wisdom outta here. Carrie: Sure. Well, it sounds like this would be a good segue into your writing prompt, so if you wanna go ahead and talk about that. LeTonia: When I, when I was thinking about the this interview [00:07:00] and the prompt, I, I have two one is, was given, it was actually given as advice from my very, my teacher, Letha Kendrick at the Carnegie Center. Mm-hmm. I took a po, my first poetry class, formal class was here with her and she gave us the prompt and made the statement, write the image you see, and follow that image with another word and another word. And so that I took that prompt and actually turned it into a poem in my collection, which is called Prompt. And so that just that, I love that, I love that she offered us that because it was a, a gateway into all the senses. So I'm capturing the image, but I'm also able to smell it, taste it, you know, if I sit with it long enough and following that until, you know, there's nothing left to say about it. And that has prompted some, some beautiful work. It's actually one of [00:08:00] my favorites. And then my other, my other favorite prompt is simply the body, like I was mentioning. And so that's spending time going into the body from the feet through a guided meditation, through breath, and it's coming to the body with a question. We're so disembodied. We've been socialized to be every place, but where our body is, our heads are all over the place. And so, you know, this gives us an opportunity to ask questions of the wisdom inside the body. So, for instance, if I were going to write about fear, if maybe that was something I was thinking about or it was an emotion that was coming up around something, I would go through the, the guided meditation and then I would ask where this fear is located in the body as I'm going through the meditation. And it will show up. It literally will tell you where it is. And then I have a [00:09:00] conversation with that body part. So it comes out and it gives all kinds of, all kinds of beautiful poetry, actually. A few of my poems have come from, from the, the body and the contemplative writing. So, yeah, I love write the image you see, follow that with another word until there are no more words. And then the other one would be to go to the body. I find the body to be so wise. It was just in 2020 that I started recognizing, and it seemed like the universe was pointing me toward people who were doing embodiment work. I knew for me, in my own healing, I felt like I was at a place where I needed to become embodied. And with the, with the pandemic, with the protest, racial protest and injustice, I, I, my body did not feel safe. And so to be invited inside of it was just life changing and life altering. Mm-hmm. And so I've tried to tie that into the writing that I do and the ways [00:10:00] that I teach. Carrie: Yeah. And it kind of sound, I mean, you mentioned revolutionary acts in your bio and it, it sounds revolutionary to me too, to, to anchor your words in your body. I think so many people think of writing as just this thing in your head. LeTonia: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Carrie: But if it's good writing, hopefully the reader will also feel it in their body as well. LeTonia: Mm-hmm. When I'm teaching the contemplative writing, Uh, workshops, circles, we also share with one another. We break into groups they share in a small group and then come back before the larger group. That gets people enough courage to read what they've written. And when I tell you the resonance in the room I've listened to people all over the the world write about body image. And what we feel here in the United States is very much [00:11:00] like what's felt in South Africa, you know? And so it, it, it does become a connective tissue . When we can be in our bodies and our, and our bodies want to be with other bodies. Mm-hmm. You know our, our neurobiology requires it. Our neurosystems ask for each other. And so I find that this, this writing is able to accomplish that, is able to, to connect people from body to body, even if it's through a screen. Mm-hmm. Carrie: Yeah. Wow. LeTonia: Mm-hmm. I've also done, I've done some DEI work in the last couple of years and I've been there's a workshop, a writing workshop that I do, and I use the same body prompt. Mm-hmm. And it's around decolonization of mindfulness, a friend of mine owns a yoga studio, and so I teach as part of their mindfulness practice. And we even used that, you know, I led folks through their body and then we talked about where do, where do your biases or [00:12:00] experiences with racism lie. And that's whether in a white body or in a black body or in a brown body. And you would find, you know, people were talking about, oh, there's a pain in their you know, calf. I, I did the exercise myself and found, I have a little, uh, scar on my knee from a girl when I was in Girl Scouts. She stabbed me with a mechanical pencil, but, and it was, and it was about race, but I did not know that that story was there until I prompted it. And then I look, and, I mean, I've had this scar ever since I was like eight years old. And it's, and it wanted to tell a little story and it, and the story, the, the poem, you know, I'll probably rework it and it may appear in the world at some point. Carrie: Mm-hmm. Well, I hope so. It sounds like it definitely wants to be told. And I, I know you've also done some work with incarcerated women mm-hmm through the Swallow Tale Project. Possibly other groups. Mm-hmm. Have you done this type of prompt [00:13:00] with people who are incarcerated? I LeTonia: just, I haven't done this. I've done guided meditations with, with people who were incarcerated. When we were doing the Swallow Tale Project, the purpose of that was to go into jails and correctional facilities that house women, both state and local, and to write with them. And so inside of the, the book, and it's probably in a few places. I don't, I mean, I don't, I have some copies of it. But the, the purpose of it was to fill that with their stories. And to publish the prompts that we used in process of those groups. And then we created the book. And so we did things from where, where I'm from we did, we used prompts about you know, dumpster diving. There were prompts about etiquette. What would be the etiquette? What would you tell someone who was coming in? And, and that was tied to some historical ways that [00:14:00] you, you have to navigate society if you are marginalized. Mm-hmm. You know, how, what are the ways that keep you safe? So we had them writing about their experiences through that, and so that, that book was filled with prompts. Mm-hmm. You know, the I could, I could talk about prompts all day. Like literally it is the thing that, you know, and that's the, the way that our writing circle, the BIPOC women's writing circle. Mm-hmm. The way that that works is that we, we build a beautiful container. We check in with one another, and my role in co-facilitation of that is to listen. And so I will just hear a phrase from what someone has said, and then we, we write from that. So my collection of poetry really is prompted, Hmm. Many of the, the poems have come from writing in community having some wonderful, wonderful mentors. And some, you know, beautiful examples of of other work. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So the [00:15:00] prompt is important. Carrie: Well, that's good. Glad you're here today. LeTonia: Yes. Carrie: So do you have any advice that you'd like to give to writers? LeTonia: Oftentimes, well, I would say for me, I was the last one to really accept that I was a writer. I hung out with writers, you know, I was a fan. I would go to poetry readings and you know, get things signed and kind of blush and shrink. I would put on events where I might read something, but it was because it was the event, you know, I was terrified to to really call myself a writer and definitely terrified to call myself a poet because poetry is the thing that has helped me in my healing journey. Mm-hmm. And so I was also afraid to, to put it out in the world. And what if, you know, I lose that tool, you know, what if it becomes a [00:16:00] job? What if it becomes, you know, all these things. And so the advice I think that I would give on the other side of this is the sooner you claim it, that it is true about you, the, the better it is for all of us. You know, our words are, our words are medicine, and we never know when we have just the medicine that somebody else needs. And we might think actually it's for them, but typically that is the wisdom that we hold and it's for ourselves, so. So just trust, you know, when you know it, you know it and you can say it even though you're terrified. Even though you're terrified. And then, you know, and be around other writers. Because what I found is everybody is scared. That made, and that made me, that made me feel so much better. Carrie: And I think it's not even, it's not just the beginners who are scared. Mm-hmm. Even people who have been writing for a long time have those, you know, if it's something new you're still a [00:17:00] little bit afraid to show it, show it to the rest of the world. LeTonia: Yeah. That's what we've been able to glean from each one of our guests who has come into the circle to to offer us their experience and lead us through a craft. And it was just so affirming, you know, it was like our whole group got to take this big exhale, you know, and like, and oh, we can do this, you know. So just, just remember that these words that we've been gifted with are not only ours to keep, you know, they're, they're to share. That's, I think that's how we make the world a better, a better place. So don't be scared to write. Writer's write, is what I was told. So if you're writing, you are a writer. Carrie: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, LeTonia. That was I loved that take on the prompt. It's different than, you know, some of the, some of the writers we've had on before. But also shares a lot of [00:18:00] similarities with other writers too, so. Mm-hmm. And so we appreciate you being here. LeTonia: Yeah. Thank you so much. I, this is just a joy. Thank you. Carrie: Thank you for listening to Prompt to Page. To learn more about the Jessamine County Public Library, 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.