David Kirby (poet)

David Kirby (born 1944) is an American poet and the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University (FSU).

Kirby was raised in "the rural south"[1] by a polyglot "medievalist college professor" father[2] with an obsessive passion for the works of Chaucer[3] and a "farm-girl" mother[4] turned elementary school teacher[3] who "taught him how to shoot her single-shot .22 and paid him ten cents for every cottonmouth moccasin he knocked off" in aid of protecting the horses and sheep[4] on their family's 10-acre property in Louisiana.

[3] Since that time, he has taught literature courses and run poetry workshops for Florida State University's English department.

[3] Kirby has published more than 20 books, including multiple poetry collections, a handful of volumes of literary criticism, and biographies of Herman Melville and Little Richard.

Hamby has described the atmosphere of their household as akin to "an ongoing workshop," with each partner continuously encouraging and inspiring the other's writerly endeavors as well as periodically providing constructive criticism on works in progress.