Where We’re From

What writer doesn’t, at some point, suffer from the fear that they have nothing meaningful to say? Beginning writers in particular wrestle with the notion that they don’t have anything special enough to write about, when the truth is that everything is special enough to write about, especially the seemingly mundane events that make up our unique lives. 

Everything is special enough to write about, especially the seemingly mundane events that make up our unique lives. 

As a creative writing teacher, I have found that one of the best ways to counter this fear is with a prompt based on George Ella Lyon’s poem “Where I’m From.” According to Lyon, this poem was inspired by the work of Tennessee playwright and poet Jo Carson in Stories I Ain’t Told Nobody Yet, a collection of “found stories” Carson had gathered from listening to the voices of the people in her community in the places where she found them: “A grocery store line. A beauty shop. The emergency room. A neighbor across her clothesline to another neighbor.” Lyon decided to draw up a list that mined her own roots and history, writing it out longhand in a composition notebook. That list eventually became the poem “Where I’m From.” But Lyon kept making lists. “The process was too rich and too much fun to give up after only one poem,” she says. When Lyon decided to share the exercise with other writers, “it immediately took off,” she says. In the years since, this writing prompt has become a staple of creative writing classes across the country and around the world. 

The simple structure of the poem—a list of events, people, things, and moments that make up Lyon’s identity—is a form even beginning writers can make sense of. The poem is short and relatively easy to read, but it offers a master class in the use of detail as Lyon lists element after element drawn from her rural Appalachian childhood. 

When I introduce the poem to my students, I make sure we take time to identify these details and discuss what makes them effective in depicting Lyon’s origins. I invite the students to think about the things Lyon includes in her poem—the names, plants, religious experiences, and family history—and to consider what their own versions of these would be. Students reminisce about things like the foods and toys and significant places they remember from their own childhoods. From these lists, we begin to craft poems in the style of George Ella Lyon. 

Semester after semester, my students produce powerful recollections of their own personal histories. In two decades of teaching, “Where I’m From” poems have become one of the student-generated texts I most look forward to reading. 

Despite coming from the same mountain county, my students noticed the uniqueness of their own stories.

One group of these poems (and the students who produced them) are particularly special to me. In the early 2010s, I taught creative writing at Hibriten High School, nestled in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, near Boone. My students were absolutely enamored both with George Ella Lyon’s poem and the work they produced as a result of reading it. Despite coming from the same mountain county, my students noticed the uniqueness of their own stories. Cultural and ethnic differences, geography, socioeconomic status, race, and gender all impacted the stories these students had to tell. Consequently, the details they chose and the perspectives reflected in their poetry differed greatly, even among students who lived only a few miles apart. The wealth of experiences was fascinating. 

As a group, we decided to expand our exploration of personal history and writing. What if we looked at the stories of our whole school community? What if we sought to create a document that made a statement about where Hibriten, collectively, was from? How many perspectives could we gather and curate into a publication? These questions were the seeds of the project we created, a project that flowered in beautiful, unexpected ways. 

To start, we talked about how to share George Ella Lyon’s poem with others, and how to lead other students through the same writing process we had used to create our “Where I’m From” poems. Armed with ideas and enthusiasm, my students reached out to other teachers and asked if they would be willing to undertake this writing exercise with their students. We were floored by the responses. Students and teachers from many classes and disciplines expressed their eagerness to participate in writing their own “Where I’m From” poems. 

In groups of twos and threes, our students popped into classrooms throughout the school to share George Ella Lyon’s poem and to guide students through creating their own works. We even visited a biology class where the teacher invited us to work with her students as part of a unit on botany. The students in that class studied Lyon’s poem with a particular eye toward the plant life and natural elements incorporated, then drafted their own botanical “Where I’m From” poems. 

Most folks are eager to tell their stories; they’re just waiting on listeners who will welcome their words. 

Teachers, too, wrote poems, full of details about childhoods in places from Charleston to New York City. We received “Where I’m From” poems from district administrators and school board members. Our school’s art department helped us find illustrations that would enhance the writing we received. We discovered that most folks are eager to tell their stories; they’re just waiting on listeners who will welcome their words. 

The result of all our work was Where We’re From, a special issue of the school’s literary magazine that celebrated the rich, diverse roots of our school community. Our students collected and curated the poems included, and selected art to pair with the writing. They used word processing programs and Adobe InDesign to lay out a document that showcased the work. Every aspect of the project was student-led and student-managed—the guest teaching, the collecting and organizing of responses, and the computer graphics and copyediting labor required to create the magazine itself. The magazines were printed in-house by students in our graphic design and printing program. They were distributed to each contributor and were available for pickup at several locations throughout our campus. We even sent a copy of the finished product to George Ella Lyon herself, who graciously granted us permission to reprint “Where I’m From” at the beginning of our magazine. 

Not only did my students find their own voices, but they also helped uplift and celebrate the writing of others. Students across grade and academic levels were represented. Teachers and district administrators were featured. The collection of poems truly tells the story of the Hibriten High School community. In poems that portray our roots in everything from farms and furniture factories to Xboxes and immigration, our voices speak clearly and honestly from the pages. 

On her website, Georgia Ella Lyon explains that this is the magic of the “Where I’m From” writing prompt—it shows us that everyone has something meaningful to say. “Remember, you are the expert on you. No one else sees the world as you do; no one else has your material to draw on. You don’t have to know where to begin. Just start. Let it flow. Trust the work to find its own form.”

In doing this, my students learned that these mountains they call home can mean different things to different people, and that every story, regardless of how seemingly mundane, deserves to be celebrated. 

Where I’m From
By Kady Braswell

I am from sunshine and oranges, 
with Frisbees in the air, 
and chameleons on the patio.
From cloud animals, 
and Popsicle beards, 
pudding cups, 
and soccer balls. 
I am from early morning birthday parties, 
and food fights after dinner;
mashed potatoes still found even after clean up. 
I am from camp, my home away from home, 
the Winkles, and goofy names. 
From Girl Scout cookies and Boy Scout popcorn;
we pretty much supplied the total revenue. 
I am from tye-dye,
the memories swirling together, 
and paintball wars in the backyard. 
I am from the Air Force, 
just a military brat who is more than used to first days. 
I am from her and him, 
she and he, 
you and me, 
carefully molded together to create what I call, 
Kady Margaret. 

Where I’m From
By Kelly White Arnold and Students

I am from the uneven brickwork of Fort Macon,
from Coppertone and cotton gins.
I am from the blueberries from the backyard bush,
summer afternoons and purple rimmed mouths. 
I am from squash plants and
the smell of tobacco packhouses
rocking chairs and front porches
men climbing telephone poles in the summer sun.

I’m from fried cornbread and romance novels,
          from Joan Carol and Stewball.
I’m from “over yonder”
          and “go play outside”
I’m from hand-me-down Sunday dresses
          listening for Mama in the choir
          and the Blessing of the Fleet. 

I’m from Beirut and Spring Hope,
tabbouleh and collard greens.
From a fishing boat on the banks of the Alligator River
the cancer that took three lives. 

I’m from water in a pumphouse well
clean and cool and tasting of iron.
I’m from deep still well water,
a place to come back to,
to dip your cup, to water your soul.

Featured photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich.