Mabel M. Kuykendall Papers

Mabel M. Kuykendall (Mabel McKinney Weir) was born near Athens, TX in 1906. She was a poet as well as an advocate for other poets. Mabel received a degree in English from Texas Women's University in Denton, TX. She was a prolific writer, mostly of poetry, but also of short stories and plays. The Poetry Society of Texas was the first to publish one of her poems. She also co-edited the anthologies, Poetry out Where the West Begins: A Collection of Poems by Fort Worth Authors (1949)and Divert the Interim (1940), with her long-time friend and fellow poet Grace Ross.Together, she and Grace published and edited Quicksilver, a quarterly poetry magazine, for nearly 15 years in Fort Worth, TX, in which they represented many renowned poets such as Walter R. Adams, Margaret Lewis Albanese, William D. Barney, Sue Abbott Boyd, Charles Bukowski, Lucille Coleman, Judson Crews, Raymond Currier, August Derleth, Charles Farber, Lisa Grenelle, Antoni Gronowicz, Herman Hesse, K. Raeburn Miller, Alden A. Nowlan, David Russell, Edward Storey, Lucia Trent and many others.

Mabel served as the president of the Fort Worth Poetry Society for about 5 years in the late 1940's. She was also the head of the Fort Worth chapter of the Texas Council for the Promotion of Poetry during which time she petitioned the mayor of Fort Worth for a signed proclamation to recognize an official day of poetry. A copy of the signed proclamation is included in this collection. She promoted poetry on the radio as well, spending four years broadcasting the programs "Local Color" and "The Poet's Tabloid" on Fort Worth's KFJZ. In 1961, Mabel and her husband James moved to Taos, NM where she wrote a weekly column in The Taos News, called Adobe Diggings, for three years. Mabel died in Taos in 1994.