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$13.99The Story
This debut collection of poems by Ian Hall illuminates daily life for a family and community in eastern Kentucky, all the while singing with verbal delights.
Creekwater Mansions documents the intimacy of duress. A son puffs cigarette smoke down his grandad's throat because the old man is too feeble to draw breath; retired draft horses learn to dance; the land manager's hired muscle flaunts an axe-handle; a grieving family uses a coffin as a card table; schoolboys siphon gin out of shag carpet just to catch a high. These are the variations of affection and kinship, so informed by and inextricable from the macabre tedium that abides in the back pews, dialysis clinics, and County-Line Liquors of daily life in Eastern Kentucky.
While these poems are frequently ordered around grisly attitudes and occurrences, moods of indolent provincialism, and the evermore-contagious disease of despair, these are at their core love poems. Hall writes, "Those are my people. I want nothing more than to esteem them and to show outsiders that even gruesomely human moments stripped of any decoration still have the heft and horsepower to be transcendent."
Author: Ian Hall
Publisher: Eastover Press
Published: 04/14/2026
Pages: 140
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.43lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.33d
ISBN: 9781958094662
Review Citation(s):
PW Booklife Reviews 03/30/2026
About the Author
Hall, Ian: - Ian Hall was born and reared in the coalfields of Southeastern Kentucky. He holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and he is currently a PhD candidate in English at Florida State University. He appeared on Narrative Magazine's '30 Below 30' list, and he was named a finalist for the X.J. Kennedy Prize, the Tennessee Williams Festival Poetry Contest, and the Kentucky State Poetry Society's Grand Prix Contest. His work is featured in numerous publications, including Narrative, Mississippi Review, The Journal, and American Literary Review. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida.
Description
This debut collection of poems by Ian Hall illuminates daily life for a family and community in eastern Kentucky, all the while singing with verbal delights.
Creekwater Mansions documents the intimacy of duress. A son puffs cigarette smoke down his grandad's throat because the old man is too feeble to draw breath; retired draft horses learn to dance; the land manager's hired muscle flaunts an axe-handle; a grieving family uses a coffin as a card table; schoolboys siphon gin out of shag carpet just to catch a high. These are the variations of affection and kinship, so informed by and inextricable from the macabre tedium that abides in the back pews, dialysis clinics, and County-Line Liquors of daily life in Eastern Kentucky.
While these poems are frequently ordered around grisly attitudes and occurrences, moods of indolent provincialism, and the evermore-contagious disease of despair, these are at their core love poems. Hall writes, "Those are my people. I want nothing more than to esteem them and to show outsiders that even gruesomely human moments stripped of any decoration still have the heft and horsepower to be transcendent."
Author: Ian Hall
Publisher: Eastover Press
Published: 04/14/2026
Pages: 140
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.43lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.33d
ISBN: 9781958094662
Review Citation(s):
PW Booklife Reviews 03/30/2026
About the Author
Hall, Ian: - Ian Hall was born and reared in the coalfields of Southeastern Kentucky. He holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and he is currently a PhD candidate in English at Florida State University. He appeared on Narrative Magazine's '30 Below 30' list, and he was named a finalist for the X.J. Kennedy Prize, the Tennessee Williams Festival Poetry Contest, and the Kentucky State Poetry Society's Grand Prix Contest. His work is featured in numerous publications, including Narrative, Mississippi Review, The Journal, and American Literary Review. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida.
