Kenneth Irby collection

Kenneth Lee Irby was born in Bowie, Texas, November 18, 1936. He was the second son of Addison Craft Irby, a doctor, and Dora Elizabeth "Betsy" (née East) Irby, a nurse. When a young child, Irby's family moved to Fort Scott, Kansas. In high school, Irby showed interest in photography and photographed many scenes around high school, his home, and Fort Scott. He graduated from Fort Scott High School in 1954 and afterwards attended the University of Kansas (KU) as a Summerfield Scholar. Irby would later graduate from KU with a bachelor of arts degree with distinction in History in 1958. During his time at KU, Irby was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society and was a member of the Quill Club literary organization, publishing poems in Quill Club and Quill from 1954-1956.

Irby continued his education at Harvard University where he earned a master of arts degree in Regional Studies-East Asia in 1960. That same year, Irby was drafted into the army and served at the Nevada Test Site; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Johnston Island. During his service, Irby witnessed the detonation of a W49 thermonuclear warhead 250 miles overhead, from the deck of an aircraft carrier. Upon completing active duty in 1962, Irby began working towards a doctorate degree in History and Far Eastern Languages at Harvard University but ultimately did not complete his studies.

After moving in quick succession to Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1963 and then San Francisco, California in 1964, Irby took some time to earn a Master of Library Science (MLS) at the University of California-Berkeley, a vibrant site of counterculture and poetry. In 1965 Irby was compelled to resign from the Army Reserves after being cited for "homosexual tendencies." Irby completed his MLS degree in 1968. Upon graduation, Irby worked as a duplicating machine operator for the Institute of Traffic and Transportation Engineering at UCLA-Berkeley until 1971. From there, Irby worked as a lecturer and then assistant professor at Tufts University from 1971-1973. Irby then served as a visiting professor at Copenhagen University from 1973-1974 under a Fulbright travel grant. Afterwards, Irby returned to Tufts University and continued teaching as an assistant professor until 1975. Irby returned to Fort Scott, Kansas in 1977 to help his mother, Betsy Irby, move to Lawrence, Kansas. Starting in 1985, Irby began working as a lecturer in the Department of English at KU before eventually becoming an associate professor in 1997 and then a full professor in 2012. Irby taught at KU until his health no longer permitted.

Early in his career, Irby forged literary relationships and friendships with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Edward Dorn, Robert Creeley, among other writers and publishers associated with the New American Poetry scene. Throughout his career, Irby maintained literary ties to Lawrence and Kansas. Irby started his literary career writing book reviews for Kulchur in 1963 and published "The Roadrunner Poem" with Placitas, New Mexico's Duende Press and "The Oregon Trail" broadside with Lawrence, Kansas's Dialogue Press in 1964. The following year, Irby published the Kansas-New Mexico chapbook in Dialogue Press and Movements/Sequences with Duende Press.

Irby's literary career continued having published The Flower of Having Passed Through Paradise in a Dream: Poems, 1967 with Matter Press located at Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Relation: Poems, 1965-1966 was published by Black Sparrow Press in Los Angeles, California in 1970. He also published several books and chapbooks with Lawrence’s Tansy Press, including To Max Douglas (1971, 1974), For the Snow Queen (1976), Catalpa (1977), and Call Steps: Plains, Camps, Stations, Consistories (1992, Station Hill Press and Tansy Press). Later in his career, Irby published Studies: Cuts, Shots, Takes: A Notebook Sequence August-September 1999 (2001) with Lawrence’s First Intensity Press. Later, North Atlantic Books press published his 672-page collected poems The Intent On: Collected Poems 1962-2006 in 2009.

Irby's poems have been published in a wide range of important poetry journals, including Wild Dog, Io, Caterpillar, Chicago Review, Ploughshares, Vort, Poetry Review (London), Text, The Paris Review, Conjunctions, Notus, First Intensity, Sulfur, No: A Journal of the Arts, and more.

Published over a 50 year span, Irby's poetry is varied and often references geography; landscapes; personal names of friends and colleagues; and of plants, places, and objects. Such references and details blend with a conversational, though not straight-forwardly narrative, tone. Formally, his works reflect his interest in Charles Olson’s Projective Verse and the experimentation associated with the New American Poetry movement.

Irby's poems have been twice recognized by The Gertrude Stein Awards in Innovative American Poetry, appearing in their anthologies, and in 2010, Irby was co-recipient of the Shelley Memorial Award (shared with fellow poet with Eileen Myles), awarded by the Poetry Society of America. In receiving that award, he joined the ranks of past recipients such as Marianne Moore, e. e. cummings, Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Lyn Hejinian.

In November 2011, in celebration of Irby’s 75th birthday, KU commemorated Irby’s career as a poet with "The Eberhardt Colloquium in Honor of the Writing of Kenneth Irby." Both national and local scholars and poets examined Irby’s life and work through lectures celebrating his contribution to American Literature. Speakers included Ben Friedlander, Joseph Harrington, Lyn Hejinian, Pierre Joris, and Denise Low (a former Kansas Poet Laureate whose papers are also held at the Spencer Research Library). The day concluded with a poetry reading by Irby.

Kenneth Irby died in 2015 in Lawrence, Kansas.