Our question was, "how do you get people to watch poetry on television?" We encountered a good deal of skepticism that poetry belonged on television, but we think Coal Black Voices represents at least one answer to that question. Let the documentary be poetry, and let the poets do what they do best, read and discuss their work in the context of their social and artistic experiences.

Forget trying in some way to illustrate the language with media images; the work of poetic language is to create its images in your mind not in media. That insight informs this work. The elements of Coal Black Voices are "heightened speech': Spoken memory and experience, poetry read aloud, and written text joined sparingly with photos.

It is worth noting technically that Coal Black Voices was produced almost entirely with digital media. The process of making this documentary has given us a glimpse of the potential of digital media to help us bring wider more diverse cultural experiences to television.

We invite you to enjoy the remarkable poetry we are honored to share in this documentary and want to thank KET and the Affrilachian writers for trusting us to find an answer to the above question.