Creekwater Mansions

by 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.”

140 pages, Paperback

First published April 14, 2026

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Quilted.reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of those short reads that will stay with you. It’s a collection of poems centered around life in Eastern Kentucky, showing both the roughness and tenderness of everyday people and the ways love can still exist inside grief, poverty, addiction, and survival. This hit home due to my great grandfather being from Kentucky and living in the south in genreal you can relate. The imagery is raw at times, but it never feels cruel or exploitative it feels deeply human.What really got me was how personal and grounded it all feels. Even the hardest moments have this quiet beauty to them and you can tell the author genuinely loves and respects the people he’s writing about. It’s the kind of book that reminds you poetry doesn’t have to be complicated to move us.Definitely add this to your TBR if you want something short but powerful. It’s memorable especially for us southerners/ Appalachians.

[Holly Slick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of poems about growing up and living in eastern Kentucky. It's both funny and sad at the same time and has some very clever lines. "between the slop-giddy hogs & sporting dogs." Like a lot of southern writers he writes about the Civil War. There's a poem in here about the battle of Middle Creek in Kentucky back in 1862 where the Union soldiers defeated the Confederates. He has a very unusual way of describing someone robbing his mother's childhood home, saying that the robber "disemboweled" it of its copper wire. His mother was so friendly though, she gave him money to buy food and the robber rewired the home! He also writes of people attending a state fair getting drunk on schnapps but then getting so sick from the fair food they throw up from a bridge onto the people below. He compares the toughness of country folk to the softness of city folk, but it just sounds like bragging. This is definitely a good, funny read.