W.Va. poet laureate Irene McKinney dies at 72 | Washington Examiner

Irene McKinney, who served as the state's poet laureate for 18 years, has died. She was 72.

Talbott Funeral Home in Belington said in a release that McKinney died of cancer Saturday at her family's farm in Barbour County.

McKinney was appointed by Gov. Gaston Caperton in January 1994. She saw the poet laureate's job as being a promoter of a new group of emerging writers and students.

"I don't feel our writers have the exposure they should, so I've worked hard to make all those people better known," she said in a 1995 interview.

McKinney was the director of the creative writing program at West Virginia Wesleyan College. She also taught at the University of Utah, the University of California at Santa Cruz, Western Washington University and Hamilton College.

McKinney published her first book of poems, "The Girl with the Stone in Her Lap," in 1976. Other collections include "The Wasps at the Blue Hexagon" (1984), "Quick Fire and Slow Fire" (1988), "Six O'Clock Mine Report" (1989), "Vivid Companion" (2004) and "Unthinkable: Selected Poems 1976-2004" (2009).

The National Endowment for the Arts honored McKinney with a fellowship, and National Public Radio's Garrison Keillor has featured her poems on "The Writer's Almanac."

Services are scheduled for 11 a.m. Wednesday at Talbott Funeral Home.

McKinney's death was first reported by The Charleston Gazette (http://bit.ly/xCxSc1).

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Information from: The Charleston Gazette, http://www.wvgazette.com

Source: http://washingtonexaminer.com/entertainment/2012/02/wva-poet-laureate-irene-mckinney-dies-72/2172526

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