© 2025 WUKY
background_fid.jpg
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Poetry collection "Kingfisher Blues" situates addiction and recovery within the natural world

Kingfisher Blues, by Erik Reece
University Press of Kentucky
Kingfisher Blues, by Erik Reece

Erik Reece is an author, poet, and environmental advocate. In 2006, he wrote the nonfiction work Lost Mountain, A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness, which exposed the devastation of mountaintop removal mining. In 2009, he wrote An American Gospel: On Family, History, and The Kingdom of God, exploring faith, family, and the wisdom of saints from the American canon, like Thomas Jefferson and Walt Whitman. His latest poetry collection, Kingfisher Blues, draws on both streams, alongside reflections on addiction and recovery.

Interview transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Clay Wallace, WUKY

Kingfisher Blues navigates the intersections of addiction, recovery, and self-discovery. What inspired you to approach these themes through poetry rather than prose?

Erik Reece, Author of Kingfisher Blues

I think I started writing these when I was working through a twelve-step program, and they were part of that process. You have to do a lot of writing when you're working the steps and, at some point, I just decided to start writing it as poetry for some reason.

When I think about prose and recovery, I think about recovery memoirs, and that's not what this is. You know, like I said, I was really near the beginning of it all when I was writing a lot of these poems. And so the poetry was a way of working through it for me. I would be out on my back deck at midnight writing these poems, you know, at a time where otherwise I just would have been drunk, honestly. But I just had all these open, sober hours after I stopped drinking, and I filled it with writing poetry.

Clay

So if someone reads through this book, are they reading through these poems in the order that you wrote them?

Erik

Not in the order that I wrote them, but in the order of my progress. So it's divided into two sections. The first section is what we in AA call a drunk-a-log, which is kind of like how bad it got. The second section is moving into sobriety, into recovery, trying to repair damage, get on with your life.

Clay

Was there any particular poem in Kingfisher Blues that was especially challenging or cathartic to write?

Erik

There were. The ones about my wife were really challenging to write. I think they're challenging for her to read. I put her through some pretty dark times, and it was painful to go back to that in writing, but it was also good in the way that when I look back at it, and when I start thinking, you know, maybe I could have a couple of drinks, I go back and look at how bad it got. I'm reminded: no, I can't risk going back to that place.

Clay

Kingfisher Blues has been praised for its "raw wit and unfiltered honesty." How do you decide how much of yourself to reveal in your work?

Erik

It's very raw. It's very naked. I've never exposed myself this way, and I didn't intend to starting out. These were really just poems that I wrote as a way of working through some things, but they accumulated, and then Silas House asked if he could see them. One thing led to another, and they ended up in a book.

Clay

The work is full of references to philosophers and writers as companions. There's Sappho, there's Billie Holiday, Richard Hugo, Marcus Aurelius, the Shakers... but also there are these unnamed dead friends. You seem to draw from this communion of saints across time. How do these figures become present in your work?

Erik

Reading has always been incredibly important to me. There were people I read in recovery that were really important to me, that helped with the recovery. So, I'm kind of a loner. I've got a poem called "Loner" in the book. But I've never thought of myself as being lonely, because I always had these companions from the world of literature and philosophy. That's just how I've always approached writing; I'm just trying to make this little contribution to this legacy that's come before me.

In terms of people in the book that have passed, there are people that I'd like to make amends to that I can't, because they're no longer with us, so you have to make what's called a graveside amends. I've done that, and one of my ways of doing that was through the writing.

Clay

You also introduce portions of the environment and locations as companions. When do you look at the environment and ascribe setting to it versus when you ascribe personhood to it, if that makes sense?

Erik

I try not to ever ascribe personhood to it, because it's not a person: it's something much larger than that. In a way, I'm trying to let my own person, my own fragile ego, sort of disappear into something larger, if that makes sense. For me, that thing is the natural world. I don't really have any traditional ideas about religion and spirituality.

In recovery communities, when we talk about "higher powers", we all have our own idea of what that is. For me, that usually manifests in the natural world.

Clay

When you were writing about these places that you talk about in Kingfisher Blues - because there's portions where you're at a river in Kentucky, at a riverside wedding, and there's a portion where you're out in the mountains, out in the West - where were you writing those from?

Erik

Literally, where was I writing them from?

Clay

Physically present, but also how were you approaching that place, maybe in the memory of it?

Erik

Some of the places were kind of bittersweet, because I was married beside the creek where I live now. Something that was a happy memory turned into something much more complicated.

I'm a very place-based writer, and that's just always who I've been. But I think, again, when I embarked on this journey into sobriety, I had just... You just realize you have a lot of time on your hands that you used to fill with booze. I took up fly fishing as just a way to fill those hours, and that led me out West.

When I was doing my environmental writing, when I was writing about strip mining, I always thought of the Mississippi River as this kind of barrier that I didn't cross. I always thought of myself as an Eastern writer, an Appalachian writer, and lately, I've decided that that was just a silly, arbitrary border to set for myself. So, my fishing took me out West, and that was just a very healing place for me. I mean, when you get out under the stars in Montana, it's very big and you're very small. And that really became an important place to me.

I had a therapist who said, "When you're in a tough spot, in your mind, think about a place you can go." For me, it was the Flathead River in Montana, and so that figures into the book.

Clay

You teach writing at the University of Kentucky. I noticed that your work succeeds at being universal and relatable while also being very specific and very individual. I've never been "married down beside Clear Creek on a flat slab of limestone", but I can feel the spirit of place in your writing. How do you talk to your students about translating a personal experience into something that feels accessible to anyone?

Erik

That's a great question. It goes back to one of my mentors, Wendell Berry, who... He doesn't really even use the word "environment" because it's so abstract. He talks about a particular place, and I've really tried to adopt that in my own writing. I try to get my students to do that, too.

We're not trying to save the environment. We're trying to save this particular stream or this particular mountain or this particular meadow. And I think the more specific you can be, the more universal it does seem.

When I wrote Lost Mountain, I was just writing about one mountain, but I was, in a way, writing about every mountain.

Clay

As a teacher, are there ways that you see your students presenting work that's very individual, but that has understanding in it that reaches people who might not [have that experience]...? Is that something that you feel like you need to teach, or do people come knowing about that kind of universality?

Erik

It varies from student to student. Some have an innate sense of it, and others, you try to give them prompts and ways of thinking that get them to.

I always tell my students to try to make a move from observation to insight. You start with observing the particular, and then you let that lead you organically to some kind of, hopefully, universal insight.

Clay

What were you reading and listening to as you were creating Kingfisher Blues?

Erik

I was reading a lot of recovery literature. There's a great book by Leslie Jamison called The Recovering. That book was important to me. There's a great anthology edited by the poet in Louisville, Jeffrey Skinner, called Last Call. That was really important to me.

I needed to find that community. I have a really important community, my AA home group, that are people I talk with, and I'm around them three times a week. But I also wanted to find this literary community that I could belong to as well, so that was great, just diving into that literature.

The poet laureate Ada Limon has a poem about how one day her stepfather just quit drinking, and he would just come home, and he'd sit in the backyard, and he'd stare out, or he'd read, and there was this blue heron that they would see every day on their way to school. She wrote a poem about it, and things like that helped me a lot.

In terms of the music I was listening to, it's kind of the reverse of that. I was listening just to a lot of the alt country and traditional country music, like Merle Haggard's Misery in Gin, just dark, dark songs about drinking. That song goes: 'Memories and drinks don't mix too well. Jukebox records don't play those wedding bells. I'm looking at the world through the bottom of a glass, and all I can see is a man who's fading fast.'

That was important to me, because I was a man fading fast. To hear Merle Haggard sing about that, I needed to be reminded of that.

Clay

If someone struggling with addiction were to pick up this book, what would you hope that they would find?

Erik

A friend. Someone who's been through it. Somebody who's honest about it. One of the great things about recovery communities is - we say this all the time - is nothing really helps except one drunk talking to another drunk, because nobody else understands the way our brains work. To everybody else, it's just insanity. And to us, it's insanity! But it's an insanity we understand. That would be the main thing I would want somebody to find.

Clay

What was it like to work with the University Press of Kentucky?

Erik

It was really great. I think the book looks better than any other book I've published. Just picking it up, looking at the cover, looking at the type, I think they did a really beautiful job. And, you know, they took a chance on a book of poems, which not many people will do these days, so it was a great experience.

Clay

Where else can people connect with you and your work?

Erik

Well, I'm not online. I try to stay away from screens as much as possible. So the best way to connect with my work is to go to a local bookstore and buy one of my books.

Clay

Consider listeners of this interview to be your students. Do you have any parting tips or thoughts that you'd like to share?

Erik

Trust your own voice. You know, just trust your story. I think even though I've been incredibly influenced by all these other writers who've come before me, I think one thing you notice is like, even if you are trying to imitate, say, Wendell Berry, it'll ultimately come out sounding like you. You just need to trust that voice. You know, give yourself a sense of authorship or be your own authority. I think that that's important.

Trust the story and tell the story as specifically as you can and just let whatever universal truth there is grow out of that particularity.