CRESTONE Poetry Festival
OCTOBER 17-20 | 2024
2024 Poets, Wayfinders & Workshop Leaders
Wayfinders
This year, Crestone Poetry Festival is delighted to welcome and honor some of the fine poets who have helped to create and animate the poetry community in our region. We’ll be featuring these
poets during our evening readings (Friday October 18 and Saturday October 19) at Poemfest this
year. Not only have these poets given us many fine words and performances over the years, they
have also given generously to the creative lives of others in their work on behalf of poetry and
community. We think of them as Wayfinders because they have found a way to live meaningful lives both as poets and as activists on behalf of poetry in their work as editors and publishers, teachers and mentors, event creators and community facilitators. We welcome them to this year’s Poemfest with gratitude and appreciation for showing us how poetry invites us into deeper ways of being, seeing, and bearing witness.
Wayfinder
Three weeks after landing in Colorado in 2005 Barbara Ford joined KHEN, the Salida community radio station. In May 2006 she inaugurated “Poets and Minstrels,” which continues to air live on Thursdays from 5-6 pm. Barbara reads the work of poets from everywhere, past and present over the air, and has occasional guests who read their own work and that of others. She worked on the 2007 Sparrows Poetry Festival in Salida as one of the principal organizers with Laurie James, Lawton Eddy, and Jude Janett. From fall 2006 until summer 2008 Barbara co-produced the Arts @ the Library program in Salida. Regional artists and writers were invited to give free presentations to the community which centered on their style of working, materials used, chosen themes, and areas of study. In 2016 Barbara started a free monthly poetry reading series at a local café that evolved into Poetry Live @ the Paquette, held at the Steamplant Event Center. In addition to inviting poets from across Colorado to be featured, each event showcased a local poet and provided an open mic segment. She also organized poetry workshops given by many fine poets in our region. Barbara hung up her organizer’s beret at the end of 2023, and vigorously applauds at poetry events produced by anyone else.
Wayfinder
Poetry has been the driving force for Art Goodtimes since he left the seminary 50 some years ago. In San Francisco he was a member of the Union of Street Poets and was part of the Cloud House poetry collective meeting weekly and doing readings and demonstrations all over the Bay Area. In the 1980ss he was the Arts Council Director in Telluride where he began to bring poets to town and pay them to read. He also began publishing and reading all over Colorado and New Mexico. For five years he hosted a poetry and music show on KOTO radio in Telluride called "Afoot with Visions.” For several years in the 2000s he collaborated with several groups to host the Telluride Literary Arts Festival and helped create the annual Karen Chamberlain lifetime achievement in Colorado poetry award, now in its 11th year. When he was a county commissioner (1996-2016), he started a San Miguel County Poet Laureate program that continues to this day. As Talking Gourds program director, he continues to administer programs including a monthly Bardic Trails zoom series with the Telluride library and two live monthly reading series: Stories & Poems in Norwood and another in Naturita, both in collaboration with local libraries. He has performed all over the state for the past 40+ years, and has been a featured reader at many poetry gatherings and poetry festivals including Sparrows, the Chamberlain Poetry Festival, Trinidad and Crestone. He started the annual MycoLicious MycoLuscious MycoLogical Poetry Show at the Sheridan Opera House a half-dozen years ago during the Telluride Mushroom Festival. He has been poetry editor of Twin Peaks, Earth First Journal, Telluride Times, San Miguel Journal. Wild Earth, Mountain Gazette, and currently Fungi and the online Sage Green Journal. He has a number of books in and out of print, his most recent being Dancing On Edge from Lithic Press in Fruita.
Wayfinder
Judyth Hill is a grateful DharmaSeed of poet Robert Bly, Deep Ecologist Dolores LaChapelle, Jane Cooper, Jack Mueller, storyteller Gioia Timpanelli, and so many more! In her poetry life, she has served as a teacher from pre-K to death and as Poet-in-Residence in schools and prisons. She has developed and sustained teen poetry programs and served as mentor at conferences, festivals, in museums, on mountains...along rivers. She has worked with all ages, writing poems with 2-year-olds on felt boards—(I always wanted little children to meet a poet, so they could know, “o, that is what I am” for themselves!!!)—as well as scribing for elders and getting their work published. She serves as Managing Editor for Wild Rising Press and has edited and published over 180 poetry manuscripts. She has written poetry curriculums for the Georgia O’Keefe, Folk Art, and the Detroit Museums and served as Literature Coordinator for the state of New Mexico. She considers herself a grassroots arts activist who has been empowering the poetry community in and beyond Colorado and the Southwest. Her own poetry has been widely published.
Wayfinder
As part of his service as Colorado Poet Laureate, Joe Hutchison created the Poets section of the Colorado Encyclopedia and for many years hosted the monthly poetry reading series at BookBar bookstore in Northwest Denver, which featured poets from across Colorado and visiting poets from across the country. Currently, Joe co-edits the online poetry journal Bristlecone, devoted to the work of poets based in the Mountain West, and has been working with several other state laureates to create the first anthology of Colorado's poets laureate. Also, he recently edited a selection of 12 Colorado poets for the international literary journal Pratik, based in Nepal. He views his editorial work as an extension of his earlier work with Wayland Press, co-founded with the late poet Gary Schroeder, which published collections of poetry and fiction as well as the themed anthology A Song for Occupations: Poems about the American Way of Work. Today, Joe directs and teaches in the Professional Creative Writing program at the University of Denver’s University College.
Wayfinder
As Kate Kingston puts it, poetry transforms the mundane to the magical, changes confusion to clarity, and offers both the writer and the reader a sense of what matters. For Kate poetry has been a calling, one that has included teaching poetry to children, young adults, college students and seniors throughout Colorado and the surrounding states. As a professor at Trinidad State, she implemented a creative writing curriculum, served as editor of the Purgatoire, a literary magazine, initiated the K-12 Writing Contest and directed The Corazón de Trinidad Reading Series. As a member of the writing community, she implemented and directed The Corazón de Trinidad Poetry Festival, and currently she volunteers on the Get Lit Festival committee in the Corazón de Trinidad Creative District. She delights in presenting the art of poetry to others through workshops and readings locally as well as nationally and internationally, including Spain, Mexico, and Portugal and is thankful for the poetry awards, residencies, and fellowships that have confirmed her commitment to poetry.
Wayfinder
Anne MacNaughton is a founder of the Society of the Muse of the Southwest (SOMOS https://somostaos.org) and the Taos Poetry Circus. A poetry activist from the early eighties, she established the Poetry Education Project and sponsored the first high school competitive poetry slam team and teen slam competitions in the nation. In collaboration with the late Peter Rabbit she performed in "The Luminous Animal" poetry and jazz group. She coached participants in the state's Poetry Out Loud competition and teaches creative writing with a performance focus around the Southwest. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including The Best American Poetry, The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, Thus Spake the Corpse, The Notebook, Minerva Rising, New Mexico Poetry Renaissance, In Company: An Anthology of New Mexico Poets, Santa Fe Literary Review, Sin Fronteras, Blue Mesa Review, Adobe Walls, Lummox, The Taos Review, Taos Journal of Poetry, among others. She was a semifinalist for the Jack Grapes Poetry Prize and received the Open Hearth's Eternal Flame Poetry Award. Smugglin’ Blues is her chapbook. Her essays on poetry are included in Spoken Word Revolution and Poetry Flash. She edited The Nineties: The Best Poetry and Photos of the Taos Poetry Circus, and Peter Rabbit's Cabeza de Vaca: an Epic Poem, among others.
Wayfinder
In addition to his many years of work co-creating and sustaining the Taos Poetry Circus, Amalio Madueno consults on poetry arts programming to nonprofit organizations, providing assistance on poetry programs, events, organizational management and fundraising. His clients have included Washington Poetry Association (Seattle), Burning Word Poetry Festival (Whidbey Island), Poets Against War (Port Townsend), Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Council (Los Angeles), Hollywood Institute of Poetics (Los Angeles), the Border Book Festival (Las Cruces, NM) and others. Over many years since 2001, he has consulted to the Spoken Word Lab of Seattle (SPLAB) on the development of the Cascadia Poetry Festival, now held yearly in Seattle. He performs his work regularly throughout New Mexico and the west—from Seattle to San Diego, Santa Fe to El Paso—in featured readings, seminars, television & radio, as well as on videos and CDs.
Wayfinder
Bill Root’s poems reflect a life active both within and beyond academia, with periods working in factories, as a bouncer, in a shipyard, an underground copper mine, and as a Teamster as well as distinguished writer-in-residence positions across the nation. His poetry has been translated into more than 21 languages, broadcast over Voice of America and printed in many newspapers in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, Italy, the British Isles and more. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, twice from the National Endowment for the Arts, Stanford University and the US/UK Exchange Artists Program. After the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan, Bill Root’s long poem, “The Unbroken Diamond: Nightletter to the Mujahideen,” caught the attention of Nobel Laureate, Joseph Brodsky. “You are the only American poet I know of with enough heart to address this subject.” Brodsky said. And while your lines may not much help those poor people, they surely redeem this nation.” This poem, as with so many poems in Bill’s many collections, reflects an ongoing dedication to peace and justice concerns and bearing witness. Bill has taught around the country—from being a Poet-In-Schools on the Dineh Nation and in Louisiana to Amherst College, Interlochen Arts Academy, NYU, and Universities of Southwest Louisiana and Montana as well as 20 years at Hunter College in Manhattan. Root is a traveler and has been featured at writers conferences and has read and/or taught at venues in Sweden, Scotland, Denmark, Italy, England, Macedonia, Capetown, South Africa, Prague, Vietnam and many more.
Wayfinder
From 1989 thru 2000, Seth was a member of Open Rangers, a critically-acclaimed network of poets, actors, musicians, dancers, etc., experimenting with creative ways of presenting poetry. Open Rangers was responsible for numerous live, audio & video productions and recipient of a Westword “Best of Denver” Award for the Poetry Theater production Reign of the Scar Clan. This elastic ensemble performed throughout Colorado and became a regular feature at Sparrows, Salida’s Performance Poetry Festival. While a member of Open Rangers, he was part of the critically-acclaimed performance art trio Jafrika (1993-2004) combining original music, poetry & dance, appearing in numerous theaters, stages, school assemblies, libraries, etc.. He has performed & conducted art workshops throughout the Rocky Mtn Region. Jafrika was featured at the DCPA (Denver Center for the Performing Arts) Performing Arts Festivals and the Colorado Consortium of Community Arts Councils Showcase, among others. A member of Denver’s Mercury Café Slam Poetry Team from 2000-2002, he also performed with Art Compost & the Word Mechanics, an elastic ensemble of musicians and poets providing improvisational music every Sunday night at Denver’s Mercury Café. Currently in its 23rd year, the ensemble invites poets, singers and musicians to join in a live jam. Performances currently streamed live on Facebook with highlights posted on YouTube, both at SETH & Art Compost. An actor as well as a writer, he has worked with hundreds of elementary school children teaching theater, storytelling and poetry. Also in high demand are his adult workshops on the art of performing poetry. He coordinates the Mercury Café’s annual Poetry Rodeo, a round-up of various poets and poetry organization along the Front Range.
Wayfinder
Pam Uschuk taught as an Associate Professor of Creative Writing for nine years at Fort Lewis College in Durango. She also taught at Greenhaven Maximum Security Prison for Men in upstate New York and in Indigenous schools on the Salish, Sioux, Assiniboine, Northern Cheyenne, Flathead, Blackfeet, Crow, Tohono O’odham and Yaqui nations. As Director of the Southwest Writers Institute at Fort Lewis, Pam hosted numerous readings with many fine poets including Linda Hogan, Joy Harjo, Demetria Martinez, Denise Chavez, Richard Jackson, Beth Alvarado, and Steve Barancik. Over the years, Pam has also offered community writing workshops and readings all over Colorado. Along with her husband Bill Root, Pam founded the literary journal, Cutthroat, a Journal of the Arts in 2005. Cutthroat has published hundreds of Colorado writers and is one of the most visible and consistent journals in the state. As Editor-in-Chief of Cutthroat, Pam has published numerous provocative anthologies including: Truth To Power: Writers Respond To The Rhetoric Of Hate And Fear, 2017; Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century, Winter 2020; Through the Ash, New Leaves: Writers Respond to the Climate Crisis, 2022; and The Nature of Nature and Human Nature, 2024.
Wayfinder (January 31, 1947 - September 17, 2022)
Laurie Violet James was born during a Montana blizzard to a one-eyed man and a one-thumbed woman. The inspiration for her poetry flowed from the great western landscapes and backroads she loved. Laurie was a 45-year resident of Salida, Colorado, where she worked for the local paper (Mountain Mail), turned words on a spit by firelight, spun metaphors in the view of a lone pine, and lived by the proverb, “Those who throw dirt are sure to lose ground.” Laurie was the co-founder of the Sparrows Poetry Festival, which inspired many other poetry gatherings including this one. She delighted in the poetry community she helped to create. Her poems were published in On Stage, a chapbook of poetry performances with the River City Nomads published by Cattail Press in 2011 and First Thought Last Thought, a collection of her poems published by Lithic Press in 2022.
Poets & Workshop Leaders
Aaron A. Abeyta is a Colorado native, the former Mayor of Antonito, Colorado, his home town, and the author of five collections of poetry and one novel. For his book, colcha, Abeyta received an American Book Award and the Colorado Book Award. His most recent book, Ancestor of Fire is shortlisted for the Reading the West Book Award. In addition, his novel, Rise, Do Not be Afraid, was a finalist for the 2007 Colorado Book Award and El Premio Aztlan. Abeyta was awarded a Colorado Council on the Arts Fellowship for poetry, and he is the former Poet Laureate of Colorado’s Western Slope, as named by the Karen Chamberlain Poetry Festival. Abeyta is also a recipient of a Governor’s Creative Leadership Award for 2017. He was a finalist for Colorado Poet Laureate, 2019.
• POETRY FEST POSSE •
Peter Anderson’s books include Riding the Wheel, a collection of prose poems, haiku, and haibun that celebrates life on the edge of the Sangre de Cristos, Reading Colorado, an anthology of place-based writings which won a 2024 Colorado Book Award, Heading Home: Field Notes, a collection of flash prose and prose poems exploring rural life and the modern day eccentricities of the American West, and First Church of the Higher Elevations, a collection of essays on wildness, mountain places, and the life of the spirit. He lives with his family on the western slope of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in southern Colorado where he edited and published Pilgrimage Magazine, served as poetry editor for the Mountain Gazette, taught at Adams State University, wrote a column for Colorado Central Magazine called “Dispatch from the Edge,” and launched the Crestone Poetry Festival (poemfest.com), an annual gathering of southwestern poets.
Crisosto Apache is from Mescalero, New Mexico, on the Mescalero Apache reservation. They are Mescalero Apache, Chiricahua Apache, and Diné (Navajo) of the Salt Clan, born for the Towering House Clan. They hold an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and are a professor of English. They are also an editor-at-large for The Offing Magazine. Apache’s books are GENESIS (Lost Alphabet) & Ghostword (Gnashing Teeth Publishing) winner of the Publishing Triangle’s 2023 Betty Berzon Emerging Writers Award and a finalist for the 2023 Colorado Author’s League Award in poetry. They also are a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee.
Daiva Chesonis is a fiercely proud Baltimore-born daughter of Lithuanian immigrants, transplanted to Colorado in 1992 to build Telluride’s gondola transportation system. She was co-owner of Between the Covers Bookstore for over a decade, during which time she co-founded the Telluride Literary Arts Festival. From 2019 to 2022 she was the San Miguel County Poet Laureate. Currently she finds herself in the Writes Mesa Gang poetry troupe, touring the Four Corners states when stars and calendars align. In her spare time, she can be found wandering local (and Lithuanian) forests on the hunt for mushrooms and finding herself wonderfully lost in nearby deserts and canyons, not far from where she and her always-writing husband Craig Childs live off-grid just outside Norwood, Colorado. Her first book of poetry is set to publish sometime this century.
Patrick Cryptozoa regularly reads poetry at the T-Road Brewery poetry night in Crestone, Colorado, where he lives full time in an off-grid Ger/Yurt. Patrick sees his performance poetry as existing only in a moment in time—a moment either shared or forever missed. Patrick is in possession of the single existing copy of a chapbook of poetry that he has written. He has a BFA in Fimmaking which, in his opinion, is the perfect introduction to life as a poet. He is currently working on a lyrical script. Patrick is survived by friends and family.
• WORKSHOP LEADER •
Conifer, Colorado poet Julie Cummings is the President of Columbine Poets, Inc. as well as the Immediate Past President of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. In addition to facilitating and conducting poetry writing workshops regularly, she hosts a monthly poetry open mic. Her poetry has been featured at several poetry festivals in Colorado and throughout the United States, including the Woodtick Poetry Festival in Minnesota. The Poetry Society of Texas selected her to deliver the keynote address at its 100th anniversary in 2021. Purchase her poetry book, Ride of My Life, on Amazon or directly from her. Her self-published CD, Be Heard, is also available. She has published poetry in several anthologies. She believes there is a poem somewhere that touches everyone, it just has to be found by them. Julie Cumming's website is juliecummingspoetry.com. Check out her 2024 workshop offering here.
Lawton Eddy has been playing with poetry since childhood days and it still keeps her young! Co-creating Salida's Sparrows Poetry Festival and performing with River City Nomads since the early 2000's have been highlights. Her poems have appeared in regional magazines and newspapers and her many poetry performances include Telluride Mushroom Festival, the long-running C3 in Denver as well as City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco. Poems from her 2021 collection, Chasing Grace - poems of a life, were featured in a multi-performance International Women's Day celebration in Salida in March. Lawton loves PoemFest!
Juliana Aragón Fatula, a Corn Mother (women who have earned accolades for community activism and creative endeavors) is the author of: Crazy Chicana in Catholic City and Red Canyon Falling on Churches, winner of the High Plains Book Award for Poetry 2016, and a chapbook: The Road I Ride Bleeds. She is a member of Colorado Alliance of Latino Mentors and Authors, and Macondo, “a community of accomplished writers…whose bonds reflect the care and generosity of its membership.” She mentors for Bridging Borders, a Teen Leadership Program for girls. No justice no peace.
• WORKSHOP LEADER • Madison Gill-Silva (she/her) is a poet from Colorado. She received her BA in English from Colorado State University-Pueblo. Her debut chapbook, Casualties of Honey, was the winner of the 2022 Fledge Chapbook Prize awarded by Middle Creek Publishing. She was also previously selected by poet Donald Levering as a recipient of the Cantor Award. Her work appears in print or online with such publications as Tinderbox Poetry Journal, South Broadway Press, and Snakeskin Poetry among others. She and her husband and their cat live in a tiny house on Colorado’s western slope. Find her on instagram @sweetmint_poet
• POETRY FEST POSSE •
Rachel Kellum lives at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains where she writes, walks, gardens, teaches, and loves the simplicity and silence of end-of-the-road, small-town living with her partner, pets and plants. You can find hundreds of her poems and links to her visual art on her blog wordweeds.com, in the 2012 chapbook Ah, published by Liquid Light Press, and in a variety of online journals and print anthologies. Her new book, Walking the Burn—a fulllength poetry collection exploring intergenerational trauma and healing—is forthcoming from Middle Creek Publishing later this year.
Lynda La Rocca is a New York City-born poet and freelance writer who has also worked as a municipal and general-assignment reporter for the Asbury Park (NJ) Press and a teaching assistant at Colorado Mountain College in Leadville, Colorado. Her five poetry chapbooks include Spiral (2012, Liquid Light Press), Unbroken (2023, Kelsay Books), and It Could Have Gone Another Way (2024, Kelsay Books), and her individual poems have appeared in such publications as The New York Quarterly; Frogpond (Haiku Society of America); THINK: A Journal of Poetry, Fiction, and Essays; The Colorado Sun, and Encore (National Federation of State Poetry Societies, Inc.). Lynda lives in Salida, Colorado, with her writer-photographer husband Steve Voynick.
Jesse Tsinajinnie Maloney grew up on the Leeward side of O’ahu. He went to the same High School as Israel Kamakawiwo’ole. His work has appeared in Turtle Island Quarterly, Peach Velvet Lit Mag, About Place, Cutthroat and other places. His debut full length work Health Carefully was released through Cyberwit press 2019. 2020 he co-hosted the la virtual reading series Midnight Transmission with poet Orlando White. 2021 he was nominated for the Pushcart Prize for his poem ‘Eyes of the
Leper’ featured in Cutthroat Vol. 26. He’s producing a collaborative spoken word/instrumental album featuring poets Pamela Uschuk and William Pitt Root to be released Spring 2025. Jesse Tsinajinnie Maloney teaches at Dine’ College and lives with his wife and cats on the Navajo Nation.
David Anthony Martin is an environmental educator, artist, writer, and publisher. He is the founder of Middle Creek Publishing & Audio. He is a lifelong outdoorsman, born on the Olympic Peninsula of the Salish Sea, he grew up in a very rural and forested traditional land of the Squaxin peoples. He has made Colorado his home for over 25 years and lives in Beulah, Colorado where he teaches, guides hikes, leads summer camps and care-takes and stewards the Pueblo Mountain Park.
Ellen Metrick writes: “At 57, and despite decades of fighting it, I am just beginning to accept that I am what I once wanted to be: a relatively self-sufficient jane-of-many-trades. I’ve taught school, run rivers for a living, made and shoveled snow, lived in my truck and a tipi, built a straw bale home with my (late) husband and raised a lovely, thoughtful and creative human being. I’ve tried to fix my lawnmower. Poetry has been my lifeblood since before I can remember. Sometimes, I can be found on stage with my dear poet friends Art Goodtimes and Daiva Chesonis as the Writes Mesa Gang. I have two published books of poetry. I dabble in creative nonfiction and am deep in a fiction project. I write for local newspapers and magazines and teach a monthly writing group at Lone Cone Library. And I’m in love. Life is good. Except for that lawnmower.”
• POETRY FEST POSSE •
Darci Meyers is a somatic psychotherapist and chaplain in private practice in Crestone. She is a longtime Buddhist practitioner and explorer of consciousness, as well as a writer and poet. Her writing often explores topics very personal to her, such as the connection to nature, grief, death, and spirituality. As a lover of nature and open spaces, Darci feels profoundly at home in the wild high mountain desert at the base of the Sangre de Cristo mountains in Crestone.
Craig Nielson is a poet, architect, climber, and explorer of desert landscapes. His first collection of poems, Touch of Grace, was published by Ghost Road Press in 2005. His forthcoming collection Worn Open Places will be published by Kelsay Books in 2025. He is the founding member of the southern-Colorado-based performance-poetry troupe River City Nomads and co-organizer of the quarterly live poetry event “Season of Words” in Salida, Colorado. His work has appeared in Pilgrimage, Mountain Gazette, and Colorado Central Magazine, along with the anthologies A Democracy of Poets, Open Windows 2005, and Telling It Real, and the chapbook, On Stage: River City Nomads. He writes, designs, climbs, and explores from his home base in the central Rockies of Colorado.
• WORKSHOP LEADER •
Judith Oakland, MA, CHP is a graduate of Naropa’s Contemplative Psychothery Master’s program, a somatic therapist for 30+ years, an explorer of 7 decades of life, a lover of silence and beauty, a practitioner of meditation, and a late bloomer to creative arts! Soul collage came into my life joyfully 10 years ago. Wild writing and soul collage have been pathways for a deeper inward dive….Carl Jung offers that midlife is the best time for individuation and transformation — I agree! and I look forward to sharing this process with you! Check out her 2024 workshop offering here.
• WORKSHOP LEADER •
Danny Rosen started Lithic Press in 2008 and opened Lithic Bookstore and Gallery in 2015, in Fruita, Colorado. He has worked in geology, astronomy, construction, and education. From 1995 to 2014, he gave astronomy presentations in schools throughout western Colorado in the portable Western Sky Planetarium. Part of each year between 2003 and 2008 he ran an astronomical observatory in Namibia in southern Africa. In a previous life, he was a climber. His full length collection, Primate Poems, was published in 2016. Check out his 2024 workshop offering here.
• WORKSHOP LEADER •
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer has 13 collections of poetry, and her work has appeared in O Magazine, A Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour, American Life in Poetry, on fences, in back alleys, on Carnegie Hall Stage and on hundreds of river rocks she leaves around town. Her poems have been used for choral works by composers Paul Fowler and Jeffrey Nytch and performed around America. Her collection, Hush, won the Halcyon prize. Naked for Tea was a finalist for the Able Muse Book Award. Other books include Even Now, The Less I Hold and If You Listen, a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. In 2023 she released All the Honey and Beneath All Appearances an Unwavering Peace (a book for grieving parents with artist Rashani Réa); a book of writing prompts, Exploring Poetry of Presence II; and Dark Praise, a spoken word album with Steve Law. Check out her 2024 workshop offering here.
Photo: Joanie Schwarz
Wendy Videlock, the poet laureate of Western Colorado, lives in Palisade, Colorado. She is the winner of the PbtS Sonnet Prize, the Fischer Prize, The Cantor Prize and the four time recipient of the Keats Soul Making Prize. Wendy is also a two-time finalist for the Rattle Prize and has twice been a finalist for The Colorado Book Award and Colorado State Poet Laureate. Her poems, reviews, and essays appear most notably in Poetry, O Magazine, Hudson Review, Best American Poetry, Hopkins Review, Rattle, The New York Times, and American Life in Poetry. Her newest books include a collection of essays, The Poetic Imaginarium: A Worthy Difficulty (Lithic Press) and a new collection of poems, Wise to the West (Able Muse Press). Wendy believes that discovering one’s unique voice is a worthy difficulty and that listening deeply is an act of love. Her work is inspired by a love of language, a love of landscape, and by love itself.
Kathleen Willard’s books of poetry also include Cirque & Sky, winner of the Middle Creek Publishing Fledge Chapbook Award, a series of pastorals and anti-pastorals set in the Rocky
Mountain West, and This Incendiary Season, published by Middle Creek, which documents both her travels to India on a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship and her anxiety as her mother battled cancer
an ocean away during her trip. In the face of her mother’s grave illness, Willard was going to decline the opportunity to travel and study in India, but her mother insisted, “Go, you must go.”
In 2024, Willard will publish two new books of poetry. The Next Noise Is Our Hearts by Middle Creek Publishing is a call to action to combat climate change through innovation and regeneration, and Electric Grace, by Lune Press, which shares her love of St. Francis of Assisi.
• POETRY FEST POSSE •
Everett Wilson earned a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from SUNY-Binghamton in 1988. Since then he’s been a bank teller, legal secretary, adjunct writing instructor, lover, husband, grieving widower, Zen monk, waiter, baker, chef, poet, bookkeeper, editor, memoirist, tantrika, chef (again?!!!), a/v tech, baker (again?!!!) and husband all over again, because apparently once is just not enough. He’s been all of these things, but is none of them. Most recently, he finds himself meditating a lot more than is probably healthy, writing for the sake of his sanity, and working at the local library, where all the cool people hang out and talk about books.
