Up Bear Creek / 7feb26013 / Poetry Ascendant after Imbolc

LAUREATE ON TOUR … As my two years as the Western Slope’s first poet laureate will come to an end with the Third Annual Karen Chamberlain Poetry Festival in Carbondale next month, I’m delighted to take a poetry tour with my friend and rising national poetry star from Grand Junction, Wendy Videlock … We’ve been invited by the state poet laureate David Mason to come to Colorado College in Colorado Springs where he teaches, and give a campus performance of our work. We’re both excited to do that tonight, Feb. 7th … As it happens, I also have a guest lecture slot in Dr. Patricia Limerick’s Center for the New West class at the University of Colorado at Boulder this same day. It will be my third year coming to speak to her history students on Western Slope politics from a Green perspective (not at county expense). It’s a chance to dip a toe in the academic world that once intrigued me so as a student at San Francisco State College (now university). And apparently the students, as least, find it intriguing … Then Friday, Feb. 8^th, Wendy and I will join Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer of Placerville and Danny Rosen of Fruita for a poetry performance in Salida’s Steamplant at 7 p.m. Legendary North Beach poet Jack Mueller of Log Hill Village, whose new book Boxwork is about to be published by Lithic Press, will be performed in absentia. The show’s called Birds of a Feather, and references a poetry festival called Sparrows that happened for many years in Salida … And in case you missed it this week, the Talking Gourds Poetry Club meets on the first Tuesday of every month at Arroyo’s here in Telluride. Rosemerry and I are hosts, and we try to pick themes and favorite writers to read, and encourage others to do so as well. It’s free and open to the public, not just for poets.