Colorado Poets Laureate Gather for Release of Begin Where You Are

“Always begin right where you are/ And work out from here:/ If adrift, feel the feel of the oar in the oarlock first,/ If saddling a horse let your right knee slug/ The belly of the horse like an uppercut,/ Then cinch his suck,/ Then mount and ride away/ To any dream deserving the sensible world,” wrote Thomas Hornsby Ferril, Colorado’s fifth poet laureate, in his poem, “Always Begin Where You Are.”

This month, a dream deserving the sensible world came to fruition with the publication of the appropriately named Begin Where You Are, the first-ever anthology of poetry by all ten of Colorado’s poets laureate.

Started by social entrepreneur Turner Wyatt, the project was a two-year collaboration between Wyatt, modern poets laureate Mary Crow, David Mason, Joe Hutchison, Bobby LeFebre, Andrea Gibson and Gibson’s friend, Julia Seldin. It culminated with a packed book launch, poetry reading by all living poets laureate and a book-signing event at Petals & Pages on December 5.

The book includes poetry from all ten of Colorado’s poets laureate, including some previously unpublished poetry. To publish pieces from deceased poets like Hornsby Ferril and Alice Polk Hill, Wyatt says it was a combination of getting permission from previous publishers and in some cases, leveraging the fact that the poems were in the public due to their age.

“We scoured out-of-print poetry books from many decades ago and photocopied thousands of pages in order to create a full collection of every poem ever written by these ten poets, and then David Mason took on the challenge of narrowing down the poems that would be included in the book,” Wyatt says.

Governor Jared Polis was supposed to attend the book launch, but did not make it due to a last-minute change in his schedule, according to Wyatt. Still, around 150 people came out, and Wyatt shared that while most poetry books only sell a few hundred copies, Begin Where You Are has already sold well over 600, “which will generate thousands of dollars to support our mission.”

That mission is to support the state’s poet laureate program. The state’s eleventh poet laureate, slated to be announced next month, 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 Colorado Creative Industries, which supports the program in a partnership with Colorado Humanities and The Word, A Storytelling Sanctuary.

But Wyatt believes that the poet laureate needs an additional channel of support, so proceeds from book sales will go toward funding the next poet laureate’s travels to more rural and underserved areas around the state — a cause that is important to everyone involved.

Sixth Colorado poet laureate Mary Crow jokes that “we need a sugar daddy for poet laureate.” She held the position from 1996 to 2010.

“I did not want to be poet laureate for such a long time, but there was no money to pick another poet laureate,” she says of her unusually long reign as poet laureate. “I asked several times. …I’d have preferred to have the regular length of time.”

David Mason, Colorado’s seventh poet laureate, started his four-year term with the goal of visiting every county in the state. “In the end, I got to sixty of the 64 counties and had actual events in only about fifty of them,” he says. “It was just hard to find people in some of the more unpopulated counties who could put something together with me.”

“In Colorado, we have a stark divide between communities with a lot of resources and communities with very few resources,” adds Joe Hutchison, the eighth poet laureate. “The thing about poetry is that it travels well. …It doesn’t matter if you’re in a big city like Denver or Colorado Springs or universities with a high level study of poetry. Everybody can find their voice in poetry if they know it’s there.”

Bobby LeFebre‘s family is from Conejos County in the San Luis Valley, and he believes that poetry is one of the only things that can bring people together during times of confusion and conflict. “There’s incredible work happening in rural communities that we don’t often see here in the city,” he says. Access was one of his goals when he became the state’s ninth poet laureate in 2019, and the popularity of virtual events early in the COVID-19 pandemic aided that goal, he adds.

The book launch was an evening of Colorado inspiration as the poets read about Western movies and influences, wild horses in the San Luis Valley, and mountains being turned to gravel for monetary gain.

“This anthology gives us a focus for our pride in Colorado,” Crow says. “Here’s a book that is going to show what the history of Colorado has in terms of poetry.”

Mason, who now lives in Australia and attended the event virtually, thinks of the book as a historical document that illustrates changes in poetic voice in Colorado over the last century. “I hope it contributes to he vitality of Colorado’s poet laureate program. …Every school, library and office in the state should have a copy of this book on display,” he says. “I hope businesses will display it with pride, somewhere where their employees and customers can read it. Prisons and hospitals should have it on hand as well. It’s a great statement of Colorado life.”

Poet Katie Kramer read for Andrea Gibson, Colorado’s tenth and most recent poet laureate. Gibson died in July from ovarian cancer but was heavily involved in the book, even attending meetings while they were getting cancer treatments. Kramer, a friend of Gibson’s, recalled memories of touring with Gibson that were so vividly funny that it was like Gibson was there in spirit.

“Andrea and I came up in the poetry scene together,” says LeFebre, who notes that Hutchison was his professor at the University of Denver. “All these folks are just folks that I admire and share a kinship with. To see this physical thing out in the world is really sweet.”

LeFebre’s work in Begin Where You Are is actually some of his first published poetry. “I don’t submit for publishing,” he shrugs. “It’s not something that I really care about. The only times I’ve been published — and I’ve been published in good places — have been because folks reached out. There’s still a big problem in the publishing industry that largely centers hetero-cis-gendered white men. I just don’t have the time, energy or attention to deal with something that isn’t meant for me.”

After all, being a poet laureate is not about showing off your own poetry, but about being a spokesperson for poetry itself, emphasizes Mason. “The laureate should bring the light to bear on the art itself, the way it teaches articulateness about our complicated lives,” he says. “Poetry is a way of speaking with the dead, the living and future generations. It is an art of memory and precision, connected in its way to every facet of life on Earth.”

Colorado’s eleventh poet laureate should be announced at the start of the new year. According to LeFebre, who serves on the CCI council, four finalists were recently chosen from nominations and sent to Polis for a final decision.

Colorado has the country’s second-oldest poet laureate program, but as Crow points out, poetry has always been a part of human history. “When you think of the original Homer’s Odyssey, through the ages we’ve always had poetry telling the story of a people,” she says. “Poetry can protest against politics, it can support it or it can say nothing about it. But personal is political, and most poetry is personal, and therefore may well be political.”

It’s sad to see poetry losing ground in some circles, “but there’s a blooming poetry world out there,” Crow adds, and that was certainly proven by the high attendance of the book launch event. “Lots of people are going to poetry readings and, in groups, writing poems. I don’t think poetry is dead any more than God is dead.”

“The great American poet Richard Wilbur once said to me, ‘Inarticulateness is a curse,'” Mason adds. “You can see in American public life how true that is. Poetry is an antidote to the noise of social media and the cultivated outrage of our politics. Fight the algorithms with poems!”

Order Begin Where You Are at coloradopoets.org. The Denver Woman’s Press Club at 1325 Logan Street will host a poetry reading and discussion with eighth Colorado Poet Laureate Joe Hutchison from 10-11:30 a.m. on Saturday, December 13. Admission is $20 for DWPC members and $30 for non-members; register here.