Home Arts Former Kentucky Poet Laureate James Baker Hall dies

Former Kentucky Poet Laureate James Baker Hall dies

Former Kentucky Poet Laureate James Baker Hall has died.

Hall’s contemporaries and friends include Wendell Berry, Ed McClanahan, current Kentucky Poet Laureate Gurney Norman and Bobbie Ann Mason.

Four of them, Hall, McClanahan, Norman, and Berry, went from UK on to Wallace Stegner fellowships at Stanford.

McClanahan described his friend as “a spokesman for Kentucky writing.”

Best known for his presence in creative writing classrooms at UK, Hall also received an NEA fellowship in poetry, and was widely published as a poet, novelist, and photographer.

His wife Mary Ann Taylor Hall is a novelist and short story writer.

Memorial details will be announced as they become available.

[image, Kentucky Arts Council]