Ian Hall
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 love poems—unsparing and spun of daily life in Eastern Kentucky. 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.”
Ian Hall was born and reared in the coalfields of Southeastern Kentucky. He holds an MFA 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 the winner of the 2025 Princemere Poetry Prize, as well as the co-winner of the Kentucky State Poetry Society’s 2025 Grand Prix Contest, and the runner-up of the 2025 Vivian Shipley Poetry Award. He was named a finalist for the 2024 X.J. Kennedy Prize, the 2024 Tennessee Williams Poetry Prize, and the 2025 Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize. His work is featured in numerous publications, including Narrative, Mississippi Review, The Journal, and American Literary Review. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida.
