A timely and whole-hearted poetry collection by acclaimed author and Poet Laureate of Kentucky Silas House, including the poem read at Governor Andy Beshear’s 2023 inauguration. Silas House is known throughout the South as a quintessential person of letters—a novelist, music journalist, environmental activist, and columnist—and now Poet Laureate of Kentucky. His first full-length collection of poetry blends his Appalachian upbringing with his ongoing relation to the natural world. Poems of praise for community and the collective appear alongside others tinged with nostalgia and grief when House keenly observes the loss of rural America as he once knew it. Returning to his touchstone subjects, Silas recalls wild places, echoes stories from a lingering and living past, and explores an abiding connection to family, friends, and fellow artists.
Author
Silas House is the nationally bestselling author of six novels—Clay's Quilt, 2001; A Parchment of Leaves, 2003; The Coal Tattoo, 2005; Eli the Good, 2009; Same Sun Here (co-authored with Neela Vaswani) 2012; Southernmost (2018), as well as a book of creative nonfiction, Something's Rising, co-authored with Jason Howard, 2009; and three plays. His work frequently appears in The Atlantic, The New York Times, and Salon. He is former commentator for NPR's "All Things Considered". His writing has appeared in recently in Time, Ecotone, Oxford American, Garden and Gun, and many other publications. House serves on the fiction faculty at the Spalding School of Writing and as the National Endowment for the Humanities Chair at Berea College. As a music writer House has worked with artists such as Kacey Musgraves, Jason Isbell, Lee Ann Womack, Kris Kristofferson, Lucinda Williams, The Judds, Jim James, and many others. House is the recipient of three honorary doctorates and is the winner of the Nautilus Award, an EB White Award, the Storylines Prize from the New York Public Library/NAV Foundation, the Appalachian Book of the Year, and many other honors.
