“How many poets does it take to change a light bulb?”
The telling quip and rhetorical joke from Lie Ford, a senior English major from Knoxville, Tennessee, references the poet’s experience from the Dark Skies writing excursions led by Ansel Elkins, visiting assistant professor of Creative Writing at Berea.
Elkins, who joins acclaimed novelist Silas House as a creative writing teacher at Berea, has always found poetry to be a way of understanding her world. A poet whose 2015 collection “Blue Yodel” won the prestigious Yale Series of Younger Poets competition, Elkins was raised in Talladega County, near Cheaha Mountain, one of Alabama’s highest points. Her work draws heavily on her upbringing in the rural South, influenced by her experiences as the daughter of two journalists.
“My father was a photojournalist, and I’d often travel with him on assignments,” Elkins explained. “That’s how I came to see Alabama, through river baptisms, mules grinding sugar cane and the people he captured with his camera.”
One of the unique aspects of Elkins’ approach to poetry is her interest in the night sky. As a young girl in rural Alabama, she spent her nights under dark skies, an experience she found difficult to replicate as she moved to larger cities.
“In Greensboro (North Carolina), I couldn’t see the stars,” she recalled. “It’s a spiritual loss. And it wasn’t until I read ‘The Darkness Manifesto’ that I understood it. Light pollution is something we can change with a simple flick of a switch.”
Elkins’ exploration of the night sky has led her to teach students at Berea College about its significance, not only as a source of creative inspiration but also as a topic of ecological concern. She regularly takes her students on immersive writing excursions. A recent trip took her class to an International Dark Sky Park in Tennessee, where the group hiked miles to a remote location, free from the distractions of electricity or cell phone service.
“We lay beneath the stars and saw the Milky Way. It was magical,” she said.
This experience was not just about poetry, but also about reconnecting with the natural world, which Elkins feels is essential for her students to understand the beauty and loss associated with modern life’s disconnect from nature.
“There were enough stars to startle anyone into a poetry frenzy,” Lie ’25 remembered from the excursion. “Learning about the issue of increasingly disappearing dark skies has exposed me to what I had been missing without knowing it. The stars are not gone, just obscured by manmade lights.”
Elkins takes her students beyond the classroom in other ways. During a course on poetry and eco-justice, she led them on a full moon hike through Lily Cornett Woods in eastern Kentucky, where they experienced the sounds of spring peepers in an old-growth forest.
“It was such an incredible experience,” she said. “The volume of the frogs was so intense, I had to cover my ears.”
These field trips, she explained, offer students not just a break from traditional classroom settings but a chance to see how the world of nature and the creative world overlap.
Her approach to mentoring is deeply rooted in her personal experiences as a student and as a writer. Elkins grew up in a single-parent household, and she vividly remembers the isolation she felt when she attended college.
“I was a poor kid from Alabama surrounded by wealth,” she said. “I felt alienated and ashamed, and I struggled with things like not having enough to eat. It made me really angry.”
At Berea College, Elkins has found a community of scholars who deeply value mentorship and open discussion.
What I love about Berea is the genuine conversations we have about socioeconomic issues. It’s something I never experienced at other institutions. At Berea, we really talk about what it means to come from different backgrounds, and that openness is something that makes this place special.
Lie ’25
“What I love about Berea is the genuine conversations we have about socioeconomic issues,” she said. “It’s something I never experienced at other institutions. At Berea, we really talk about what it means to come from different backgrounds, and that openness is something that makes this place special.”
Her commitment to her students is evident, not only in her classroom but also in the supportive relationships she builds with them. With a class size typically capped at 12 students, Elkins can provide the personal mentorship that is essential to her teaching style.
“I expect a lot out of my students,” she said. “We read a lot, and they really bring their A-game.”
High expectations have already produced tangible results. Berea College poets took three of the five awards in the 2023 Flo Gault Poetry Prize, an annual competition for Kentucky undergraduates.
“These students are incredibly talented,” Elkins said. “I know that one day, we’ll be reading their work in print.”
Note on Stars
I. Six AM ripe with dark
I’m racing to catch
the sun before
it breaches the mountain
The stars are bleeding
their wordless chord
to Earth
II. The Milky Way in the dew-
dropped hours before
predawn / Earth wet with
night’s afterbirth
Up the mountain I kicked
at the dark afraid of the way
it touched me and blued
my figure
III. Backyard bonfire / Sparks
on tips of sticks / The stars
watching us burn the body
of an oak into warmth
There’s a crackling in the
woods and I want to look
the beast in the eye
What is fear of the dark
but the fear of what makes
a home in it
By Lie Ford '25
