Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place

This 2012 poetry collection was inspired by author and activist hooks’s upbringing in rural Kentucky. In an interview with another of my Kentucky favorites, Silas House, hooks once said she wrote Appalachian Elegy because she “want[ed] people to really hear an African American voice claiming Kentucky and claiming belonging.” She wrote this collection after coming back home to Kentucky after a thirty-year absence. With a strong sense of place, the poems explore creation, lamentation, the historical Kentucky landscape, climate change, marginalization, and the ways identity can change over time.