Kentucky Poet Laureate Kathleen Driskell will be in Hopkinsville for a reading at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 29, at the public library.
A writing workshop, led by Eric Morris, will follow Driskell’s reading. Morris will focus the workshop on Driskell’s poetry.
Gov. Andy Beshear appointed Driskell in April 2025 to serve as the state poet laureate. A professor of creative writing and chair of the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University in Louisville, Driskell is the author of six poetry collections.
“Goat-Footed Gods,” published by Carnegie Mellon UP,” is her latest work. Other collections include “Blue Etiquette: Poems,” a finalist for the Weatherford Award, “Next Door to the Dead,” which won the Judy Gaines Young Book Award, and “Seed Across Snow,” a Poetry Foundation national bestseller.
Poems and essays by Driskell have been published in The New Yorker, Rattle, River Teeth, Appalachian Review, The Southern Review, Shenandoah and other magazines.
Driskell, an Oldham County native, has said her writing is deeply rooted in Kentucky.
“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,” Driskell said at the time of her appointment as poet laureate. “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.”
Morris, who will lead the writing workshop following Driskell’s reading, is an employee of the public library and a graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with a Bachelor of Arts in English. Their work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Stanchion, Vagabond City, Room and By the Glass. In addition, essays by Morris can be found on Substack.
