From her home in a renovated country church, nestled beside a humble graveyard, Kathleen Driskell writes to understand who she is and where she’s going.
Gov. Andy Beshear appointed Driskell the 2025-2026 Kentucky Poet Laureate this spring. The award-winning poet is chair of Spalding University’s Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Creative and Professional Writing. Her work has appeared in various publications, including the New Yorker, the Appalachian Review and Verse Daily.
During her term as Poet Laureate, Driskell said she will serve as an ambassador for the literary arts in the Commonwealth.
“I’m called upon to advocate for other writers,” she said in a recent interview. “It’s a wonderful honor. I want to show people that a literary life is possible in many forms. Writing is important to help us understand who we are and where we’re going.”
Driskell has taught at Spalding — founded by the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth in 1814 — for three decades.
“One of the wonderful things about writing is it helps us walk in the shoes of other people. I teach that it’s through our differences that we find commonality. Reading about someone who’s different helps me understand we share a common humanity. Writing and reading do this in a way that nothing else does,” said Driskell.
She finds inspiration in nature, in her life now and in her childhood, she said. Driskell, who said she comes from a family of women storytellers, recalls visiting her grandmother’s house in Appalachia as a child. The stories she heard, while hiding under the dinner table as the women talked, still inspire her writing today, she said.
Driskell and her husband live in a country church that pre-dates the Civil War. Her kitchen window overlooks a graveyard that has fueled her imagination, she noted. Her book “Next Door to the Dead: Poems,” published in 2015, imagines who the people lying in those forgotten graves could have been, she said.
Driskell believes that writing and reading — along with imagination and creativity — are more necessary now than ever.
‘Our imagination and ability to be creative are always where I glimpse the divine. The power of imagination is astonishing. It’s a sacred thing, imagination and creativity. What a divine thing to understand where you are in the world, but to imagine other ways of being? It feels hopeful. We see the world and the mess we’re in, and we hope and make change that’s meaningful.’
— Kathleen Driskell
While technology causes individuals to take in information in bits and pieces, reading and writing help sustain the thinking process, she said. A piece of literature has a beginning, middle and an end, she said, adding, “It’s a journey you go on.”
Writing and reading can also put individuals in touch with the sacred, she said.
“Our imagination and ability to be creative are always where I glimpse the divine,” she said. “The power of imagination is astonishing. It’s a sacred thing, imagination and creativity. What a divine thing to understand where you are in the world, but to imagine other ways of being? It feels hopeful. We see the world and the mess we’re in, and we hope and make change that’s meaningful.”
Driskell said she wants people to know that writing isn’t a luxury, because at the heart of writing is reflection on what it means to be human and what it means to be connected to others.
“Even if someone takes out a notebook on the deck, what you’re collecting are your thoughts and your way of being in the world,” she said. “The one thing every piece of literature has in common is the characters, people. Every piece is examining what it means to be a human being.”
As the Kentucky Poet Laureate, Driskell said there are various things she wants to do. She wants to share her work in high schools and talk to students and teachers about what it means to live a writer’s life.
Driskell hopes to create awareness about how many “wonderful writers there are, of all colors and shapes,” in the Commonwealth, she said.
And she’s planning a series of “walk and write” events in various Kentucky parks. The “walk and write” events will invite writers of all levels to go for a walk in nature, then return to a spot and write, she said. Driskell sees a link between walking and increased creativity; she experiences it in her work and wants to help others do the same, she said.
Driskell has written six poetry collections. Her latest, “Goat-Footed Gods,” includes “Poem for Grown Children,” which was inspired by her children and written in the pandemic as she reflected on her mortality, she said.
She was inducted as poet laureate on April 21 during the Kentucky Arts Council’s annual Kentucky Writer’s Day celebration.
The Kentucky General Assembly established the position of Kentucky Poet Laureate in 1926, according to the Kentucky Arts Council’s website. Nominees for the position must have a long association with the Commonwealth and have a critically acclaimed published body of work that is informed by living in Kentucky, the website said.
