Spalding University professor Kathleen Driskell puts the old adage “write what you know” to work in her new book of poems, which is written about her next-door neighbors. Driskell writes, “I say ‘next door’ as if/it’s a place I might call upon for a needed egg/or a length of green thread.” But, what’s next door is the Mt. Zion Cemetery, and when Driskell calls upon her neighbors, as she frequently does, it’s for more existential and less mundane concerns. As she imagines the lives of her dead-and-buried neighbors, she probes issues of mortality and the figurative path between her home and theirs. Driskell will be reading from “Next Door to the Dead” — a thoroughly engaging and surprisingly accessible book of poetry — Thursday at Carmichael’s.