NEXT DOOR TO THE DEAD: POEMS by Kathleen Driskell is Available Now

Most people avoid thinking about death. Modern sensibilities, hospitals and nursing home, and funerary practices tend to keep it at arm's length. Poet Kathleen Driskell, however, found herself irresistibly contemplating life, death, grief, and loss when she and her family moved into a disused church in Louisville, Kentucky. Next to their new home was a cemetery tenanted with one hundred twelve residents whose stories and secrets simply could not stay buried.

Through the poet's imagination, the lives and afterlives of the deceased and their people come into vivid focus in her new collection, Next Door to the Dead: Poems. Driskell's speaker imagines that she might borrow a cup of sugar from "long-lived" Mrs. Luck, for instance, since she must have been "fortunate enough / to grab something sweet to take with her into the grave" in 1898. In "Death of the Civil War Infantryman, Mill Springs, Kentucky," the speaker dives into the persona of a soldier who weaves visions of the cemetery with the experiences of his final moments and the memory of a girl from his past.

The living are not forgotten in this thought-provoking collection, and there are numerous poems about mourners, the people who maintain the grounds, the nighttime parties of trespassing teens, and even the "dark congregation" of birds that perches ominously on headstones. Driskell also considers other notable members of the local dead who aren't lucky enough to have her as a neighbor. One of the most memorable verses is written from the point of view of Tchaenhotep, an Egyptian mummy doomed to spend eternity on display in a local science museum. Forsaken and frustrated, she seeks to teach the hordes of school children who come to visit her something important about immortality.

Next Door to the Dead also contemplates a famous Kentucky couple buried in a style worthy of the ancient Pharaohs-Colonel Harlan Sanders and his wife, Claudia. The "Epitaph" for the former reads: "Above him now, his tomb noble / as a king's ziggurat. Oh, fried chicken / laureate, Oyzmandias's demesne / was no more significant." The mogul's spouse gets a different treatment in "At Harland Sanders's Grave": "'and his wife, / Claudia,' / the inscription reads / at the squat base / as if they'd said, / fuck it, let's just / throw her bones / into this old bucket."

While Driskell gives voice to those silenced in the graves, she also reflects on its possible impact in her own life. In "Infant Daughter, Marcus 2 Years Old, Myra 8 Days," the narrator shares how her children "threaten / to blow apart my heart so utterly." The past, the present, the real, and the imagined all converge as Driskell explores the border between the living and the dead in this satisfying collection. Composed with both surprising humor and riveting profundity, her poems compel us to examine our own mortality, as well as how we impact the finite lives of those around us.

Driskell will be doing a number of readings and book signings in the region, including:

· Saturday, August 22, 4pm, The Morris Book Shop, 882 E. High Street, Lexington

· Thursday, August 27, 7pm, Joseph-Beth Booksellers, 161 Lexington Green Circle, Lexington

· Saturday, August 29, 10am-3pm, A Gathering of Authors, Paul Sawyier Public Library, 319 Wapping Street, Frankfort

· Friday and Saturday, September 11-12, Kentucky Women Writer's Conference, Lexington (ticked events only)

· Wednesday, October 14, 7pm, Malaprop's Bookstore, 55 Haywood Street, Ashville, NC

· Thursday, Oct. 15, 7pm, University of North Carolina at Greensboro Faculty Center

· Saturday, Nov. 14, 9am-4pm, Kentucky Book Fair, Frankfort Convention Center, Frankfort

Kathleen Driskell is associate editor of the Louisville Review and professor of creative writing at Spalding University, where she also helps direct the low-residency MFA in Writing program. She is the author of numerous books and collections, including Laughing Sickness and Seed across Snow.

Next Door to the Dead: Poems

Kathleen Driskell

Publication Date: August 21, 2015 ♦ $19.95 paper, ISBN: 978-0-8131-6572-1 ♦ ebook available

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