Horsepower – Artwork Inspired by the Poetry of Joy Priest

In partnership with award-winning poet Joy Priest, LexArts presents Kentucky-based visual artists who were inspired by encountered truths of Horsepower, resonated with them and transcribed them from page to canvas. 

Joy Priest’s “Horsepower” overflows with visuals. Her poetry collection transports the audience through time, space, family, identity, and the complex fabric of Louisville’s culture and despairing racial dynamics. Priest conveys these themes through muscle cars, horses, dichotomies of skin, chain-link fences, tires peeling down interstates, bees, the curled flowers of dying spiders, the invisible lines of Louisville, and many more compelling descriptions that engage the senses. 

Horsepower is bold in content, presenting poem after poem of vivid imagery that grips the imagination. In “Pegasus,” Priest writes,

When you release your wings 

They swing wide as a gate 

& the air lifts the snakes from my shoulders.