Eat your words

What's reading a poem to Traci Brimhall? She says a fourth grader once put it best: it's cracking an egg and hearing a neigh.

"A poem is an egg with a horse inside it," said Brimhall, professor in the Department of English and Kansas poet laureate. "It's something small with a really big surprise inside — something you weren't expecting."

 

Through her work, Brimhall builds bridges between unlikely connections, encouraging curiosity and connection. Her newest project, "Eat Your Words: A Kansas Poetry Cookbook," does just this, bringing together 20 Kansas poets and 20 Kansas chefs to create a reading experience worth savoring.

The pairing of recipes and prose in her cookbook also offers a different, equally important lens on food in Kansas, inviting readers to reflect on the large divide between the food production in the rolling prairie and food insecurity among its residents.

 

"Kansas is one of the top food producers in the nation, but we also experience medium-average food insecurity," Brimhall said. "I wanted to put the state's rich agricultural roots in conversation with the literary arts and connect how we find physical nourishment from food with the emotional nourishment of poems. Kansas produces a lot of food, but poetry also grows here."

Offering words to chew on, Brimhall and her co-authors show how we provide for one another in more ways than one, from shared meals to shared words.