Up Bear Creek / 21feb26013 / Poetry & Writers on the Western Slope

Cally Conan-Davies performing, David Mason listening

David performing at Cortez Library

DAVE MASON … Colorado’s accomplished Poet Laureate and his dynamic Aussie wife, Cally Conan-Davies, were the featured readers at a well-attended poetry reading at the Cortez Library last week. Montezuma County residents turned out in force to hear the duo alternate readings as they inspired the crowd with personal vignettes, narrative delights, lyric love poems and playful interactions … Kudos to librarian Kathy Berg for once again making Cortez a magnet for poetry performance in the Four Corners.

ERICA OLSEN … In attendance at the reading and the potluck reception for the poets afterwards was emerging Four Corners writer, Erica Olsen. Her first book is newly out from Torrey House Press, Recapture & Other Stories … As author Kevin Canty explains, “Erica Olsen gives us the dream life of the Southwest in this striking collection, a landscape told in language as spare and pungent and exacting as the desert itself. A swift and lovely debut from a writer of real gifts.”

Erica Olsen

ERIKA MOSS GORDON … Speaking of new writers, this intriguing Ridgway poet with a similar first name has a great website, “unlearning through poetry”, and is coming out with a chapbook soon, Of Eyes and Iris … Watch for it.

Erika Moss Gordon