How Poetic: Colorado’s First Poets Laureate Anthology Will Help Sustain the Program

Maybe it’s the elevation or the iambic beauty of the mountains themselves, but Colorado has always been a state full of poets. It became the second state to launch a poet laureate program in September 1919 (California started the country’s first that April), and across the past century has appointed ten poets to inspire Coloradans and advocate for the art form.

But their collective words have never been published between the covers of the same book — until now. Begin Where You Are: The Colorado Poets Laureate Anthology is the first collection of poetry from all of Colorado’s poets laureate, and maybe even the first state poets laureate anthology in general, surmises Turner Wyatt, the project’s curator and director.

A few years ago, Wyatt was involved in starting a poet laureate program in Durango, where he lives. “I was thinking a lot about poets laureate and how it’s so cool that there’s this official/unofficial position of this artist, and how unique that is. I found the book The Poets Laureate Anthology, which is a collection of poetry of the first 100 or so years of U.S. poets laureate. I thought, ‘That’s so cool. I’m going to buy the Colorado version of the same thing,’ and it didn’t exist.”

He reached out to Bobby LeFebre, his friend and Colorado’s ninth poet laureate, and asked why it didn’t. “And he was like, ‘I don’t know, but it should,'” Wyatt recalls.

Wyatt, a self-described entrepreneur who has helped start a handful of social enterprises and nonprofits over the years, got to thinking about how he could publish one for social impact. “I thought, what if we create a book and then use the profits from the book to create an endowment for the poet laureate so they have more funding to travel to more rural places and be able to afford to go to more low-income schools and libraries,” Wyatt says. “At the time, we didn’t know that arts funding was going to be on the chopping block a couple years later, but I think that emphasizes the validity of this right now.”

Colorado’s poet laureate program is a partnership between Colorado Humanities, Colorado Creative Industries and The Word, A Storytelling Sanctuary. The next poet laureate will receive a stipend of $10,000 a year for public events and appearances, as well as an additional stipend of $5,000 during the first year for additional events associated with the Colorado 250/150 commemoration, according to CCI.

Even though that’s more than previous poets laureate have received, Wyatt doesn’t think it’s enough money to get the next poet laureate out of the metro bubble and into more rural areas. “That’s no fault of theirs, by any stretch,” he says of CCI and Colorado Humanities. “They’re doing the best they can. This is just a way of augmenting it. It’s a way of sustaining it into the future, so that if Colorado continues to be hit by the federal government and funding runs out, our poet laureate in Colorado will have the stability into the future to continue operating.”

And Colorado Humanities has definitely taken a hit. Earlier this year, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities rescinded most of their grants around the country as the agencies were ordered to redirect their focus under the Trump administration. Colorado Humanities, which had been expecting its annual operating grant from NEH of around $1 million (which accounts for most of its $1.5 million annual budget), lost about 70 percent of those funds. “It’s devastating to our organization. We’re in danger of closing,” then-Colorado Humanities Executive Director Maggie Coval told Westword in July.

The Begin Where You Are project is being managed by the nonprofit Colorado Poets Laureate Anthology, which will use proceeds from sales of the book to fund poet laureate travel to communities “that are otherwise hard to reach, funding trips to all four corners of the state,” Wyatt says.

The book was a collaborative effort between Wyatt and the five Colorado poets laureate who were living at the time: Mary Crow, David Mason, Joseph Hutchison, LeFebre and Andrea Gibson. They all made an effort to include poems that had not been published before.

“It’s so interesting to watch how the style of poetry evolved over the last century,” Wyatt muses. “A hundred years ago, the beatniks had not come. Poetry looked totally different. They were using very traditional rhyme and meter. And then you have Andrea Gibson, a hundred years later, who’s this nonbinary person who is ranting for pages and pages, and it’s beautiful, but completely different.”

Begin Where You Are will also serve as Gibson’s first posthumous publication. Gibson, who died in July from ovarian cancer, had been a strong advocate for the anthology, signing on for the project right after becoming the state’s tenth poet laureate.

“We’re devastated they’re not going to be around for the publication,” Wyatt says of Gibson. “This is a project that they really cared about. There are a handful of poems that Andrea wrote at the end of their life that have not been published. We’re honored to have this book be a showcase for the first publication of any of their poetry since they passed away.”

Nominations for Colorado’s eleventh poet laureate are currently being reviewed by a panel of representatives from arts, humanities education and literary communities, which will make recommendations to Governor Jared Polis. “Poetry and the arts are an important part of who we are in Colorado, and our poet laureate must be someone who reflects that,” Polis says. “The tragic passing of Poet Laureate Andrea Gibson impacted so many people here in Colorado and across the world, but Andrea’s legacy continues inspiring others. I look forward to finding Colorado’s next poet laureate to build on Gibson’s legacy, inspire young Colorado poets and bring us together through writing and prose.”

Colorado poets laureate now serve two-year terms; the eleventh poet laureate will serve from January 2026 — when the Centennial State starts its 150th anniversary year — to December 2027.

“Poets laureate play a unique and important role in uplifting arts and culture in Colorado,” says Josh Blanchard, director of CCI. “They commemorate our past, celebrate who we are and inspire a vision for our future. We are thrilled to celebrate their contributions in this special anthology, and in turn support the work of poets laureate to come.”

Sarah Olivier, the new head of Colorado Humanities, echoes those words, saying she is grateful that proceeds from the book will help the program live on and continue to inspire and unite communities across the state.

Begin Where You Are, now available for pre-order, will have an official release party on Friday, December 5, at Petals & Pages, where Wyatt and Julia Seldin, a friend of Gibson’s who collaborated on the book, will speak, and LeFebre, Hutchison, Mason and Crow will do poetry readings. There’s a rumor that Polis might attend.

Wyatt hopes that people find healing in the book. “I think poetry has such a unique ability to resonate with us in a way that connects us to each other, to nature, to place and to our moment in time,” he says. “I think that can be really healing, especially in challenging moments. That’s why I think poetry has been so pivotal to every social movement throughout history, to our collective understanding of our humanity throughout history. I hope they feel like they are contributing to a mission.”

The Begin Where You Are book launch and poetry reading will run from 6-8 p.m. Friday, December 5, at Petals & Pages, 956 Santa Fe Drive; you can pre-order books at coloradopoets.org or purchase them at the event. RSVP for the event here.