“Creekwater Mansions” by Ian Hall

Reviewed by Elizabeth McConnell

Appalachia is a region of great complexity and rich history. It offers no simple explanation, definition, or identity. Everywhere layers. On any car, bus, train or trail, one encounters remarkable horizons of mineral layer on top of mineral layer. The rich, stained and vibrant history of this region creates a source of pride, strength, bedrock, but there is also humbling, a mourning for all that has been picked away, for all that has crumbled, for all that cannot be undone. Ian Hall’s Creekwater Mansions (Eastover Press 2026), cracks open the fissures of complex relationships; exposing course tenacity and sharp grit while also brushing and wrapping the reader in the hearts and the wiry tendernesses of the collection’s characters, landforms, pit stops and porches every stop along the way.

Hall invites and welcomes the reader through a mastery of language and dialect and dialog. A generous pouring of colloquial verse immediately seizes the reader, compelling them to listen, pay attention, trust the speaker’s voice.

From “Blue Yodel for Back When”

“Out of the hinterlands

of memory comes my uncle, the Kentucky draughtsman. Pincered

between his thumb & ringfinger, a mouthwash cup of Scotch

cut with Pepto-Bismol. He is nursing this, telling whoppers”

Creekwater Mansions brings together an unexpected collage of images and memories, inspiring in the reader an intense bought-in focus, the way one might with furrowed intensity, lean-in close to hear the parched words of a beloved elder’s voice, softened and failing from effects wrought by hard labor and hard living. Each poem is a conversation which may never be repeated, so none are to be missed. Each word is a word to by rolled and formed in mouth and tasted a bit before being spoken.

Hall conveys the harsh and unpretty aspects of experience with unapologetic honesty, but also with a rich compassion that enhances the sincerity of the poetry. In the poem “Bellyaching,” the speaker’s father is met along the outhouse path. The poem begins with a description of the unbecoming universal nature of unwelcomed intestinal situations but ends with tenderness and a shared experience beyond the experiences of the outhouse.

From “Bellyaching”

“This outhouse

where I’m holed up

with the drizzling shits –“

and later in the poem:

“We pass without words

just hands steepled in prayer

on our paunches

pregnant with regret.”

 Many of the poems in the collection such as, “The Selected Works of Judas Iscariot” and “Psalm to be Spoken in a Hill’s Ribcage, Where the Heart Ought Be” are written long-lined, with enjambed stanzas that create a musicality and rhythmic fluidity that reminds one of the turnings of water through a creek, or even the stages of a lifetime. These poems are both visually engaging on the page as well as a Class V river trip to be read out loud.

From “The Selected Works of Judas Iscariot”

“Finally, her first: a boy

named Judas Iscariot Jacobs. Word was, his father gave the name

 

to let him know from the nounce that he had sin enough on the pearly

ledgers to never get anywhere

near square”

At other times in the collection, Hall turns to shorter forms, splashing the reader with quick quips of wit with fantastic poems like “Injury to Insult” which leave one with a chuckle and grin.

Humor is an essential vein running through the collection. Not only is it welcoming and fresh, but also gently guides the reader to the soft spots and shared experiences among our often-gritty surroundings.

From “We Were put on the Earth to Fart Around”:

“I’ll concede that

every day is a gift, but why

does it have to be a pair of socks?”

 Creekwater Mansions goes to the deep places, with revelations, regrets, praises and wisdoms revealing themselves through story. These poems leave the reader feeling both shaken and sated in the way that only the best of stories can accomplish.

Ian Hall

Ian Hall was born and reared in the coalfields of Southeastern Kentucky. He holds an MFA in Poetry 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 a finalist for the X.J. Kennedy Prize, the Tennessee Williams Festival Poetry Contest, and the Kentucky State Poetry Society’s Grand Prix Contest. His work is featured in numerous publications, including Narrative, Mississippi Review, The Journal, and American Literary Review. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida.