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WMMT Public Affairs & PodcastsWeekly conversations about what matters to the pe Author: WMMT/Appalshop
Weekly conversations about what matters to the people of Central Appalachia. Broadcast from WMMT the 24-hour voice of mountain peoples music, culture, and social issues. WMMT provides broadcast space for creative expression, community involvement, and discussion of public policy to benefit coalfield communities and the Appalachian region as a whole. Find us online at http://wmmt.org! Language: en Genres: Society & Culture Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Mountain Talk: A Poetry Reading from Wendell Berry; Plus, Traditional Weaving + Fiddle-making
Thursday, 23 April, 2026
Given that Letcher County, Ky.—our home county here at WMMT—contains the headwaters of three different rivers, including the North Fork of the Kentucky River, there are an awful lot of Kentuckians downstream from us. And as it turns out, one of them just so happens to be an internationally-renowned—and deeply beloved—Kentucky writer, poet, novelist, essayist, farmer, and activist: the great Wendell Berry. Since the 1960’s, Wendell has lived, written, and worked the land on a farm on the banks of the Kentucky River in Henry County, Ky. And back in August of 1984, Wendell made the trip into Whitesburg for a poetry reading here at Appalshop that was all about the Kentucky River: its landscapes, its people, and how it connects us across the state— how we are all upstream & downstream from each other. In honor of National Poetry Month, we’re thrilled to be able to begin this edition of Mountain Talk with a special treat: a set of clips from this very reading. (Our thanks to the Appalshop Archive for preserving the reading and making it available; to hear more of Wendell’s reading that day for yourself, head to www.appalshoparchive.org and search for “Wendell Berry.”) Then, later in the show, we hear about two longstanding, by-hand craftmaking traditions here in Appalachia. Via two installments of the Rural Remix podcast (from the Center for Rural Strategies), we hear first about Appalachian weaving in North Carolina, and then about fiddle-making in Tennessee. (MUSIC in this show includes selections from: John McCutcheon, from the June Appal Records release “The Wind That Shakes the Barley”; Andrew Boarman, from the June Appal Records release “Mountain State Music”; and Don Bikoff, from the Free Music Archive. PHOTO credit: Guy Mendes.)
