Award-winning Kentucky writer Kathleen Driskell will be the state’s next poet laureate.
The Louisville poet, essayist and educator’s appointment was announced during a press conference Thursday by Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who called her “a guiding voice” for writers in the state through her poetry and passion for teaching.
The Oldham County native said that her writing has “deep Kentucky roots” and that she cherishes writing’s power to “deepen our own ability to practice compassion” and illustrate what she called “evidence of the divine.”
“When we activate our imaginations, we are activating our capacity to love ourselves and to love one another. We create a world that demonstrates our shared humanity is strengthened through paradoxically writing about the differences among us,” she said. “Writing has given me a life I could never have imagined as a working class kid growing up in the farmlands and tobacco fields of Oldham County – and that was before Oldham County was cool.”
Driskell has authored six collections of poetry, including “Goat-Footed Gods,” “Blue Etiquette: Poems,” “Next Door to the Dead” and “Seed Across Snow.” She currently chairs the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University, where she also serves as a professor of creative writing.
“All genres of art are important, but there’s something particularly humane about the work writers bring us,” she said. “Language and creativity at the end are largely qualities that make us human.”
During her career, Driskell has won the Appalachian Review’s Denny C. Plattner Award in Creative Nonfiction and been named the recipient of grants from the Kentucky Arts Council and the Kentucky Foundation for Women among other honors.
The Kentucky Poet Laureate is selected for a two-year term after a public nomination process coordinated by the Kentucky Arts Council.
During Thursday’s press conference, Driskell emphasized the talent of Kentucky’s writers.
“Here in the Commonwealth, writing is flourishing in a way that can rival any other state in America,” she said. “Writers and readers are working every day across the state to support and amplify what it means to be a Kentuckian in all our shapes and colors. The world of Kentucky letters is as various as our state’s landscapes and beautifully diverse Kentuckians who populate those hills, hollers, glades, plateaus and prairie.”
Driskell will be officially inducted as poet laureate on April 24 as a part of the state’s celebration of Kentucky Writers Day at the Capitol. The ceremony will feature readings from Driskell, outgoing Kentucky Poet Laureate Silas House and 2024 Kentucky Youth Poet Laureate Maria Faisal, who is currently a junior at Northern Kentucky University, as well as several former poets laureate.
House became the first openly gay Kentucky Poet Laureate when he was inducted in 2023 by Beshear. He’s authored several articles and novels, including “Clay’s Quilt,” “A Parchment of Leaves” and “Lark Ascending.”
During the Thursday press conference, House reflected on his term as poet laureate and highlighted programs that he helped to spearhead during his term, including a freely accessible creative writing curriculum, a podcast on the craft of writing and literary workshops held at state parks across Kentucky.
“This work has made my love for the state only deepen,” House said. “My number one goal has always been to make more people aware of how rich our literature is here in Kentucky, and to make writing instruction more accessible.”
Driskell hopes to continue House’s commitment to helping the state’s writers better their craft and connect them with valuable resources to continue the state’s “long and meaningful” literary tradition.
“I might say I’ve been lucky, but for the realization that every good thing that has happened to me has happened through a connection with another writer willing to share what they knew,” she said. “I want to pay that forward and bring all those teachers with me in spirit during my poet laureateship.”
This story is republished with permission from WKMS. Read the original.
