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A Virtual Celebration of Spring (Save the Date…)
Sunday, March 21 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. (Mountain Time ) Open Zoom: 1:00 – 1:30 p.m. Each reader will have a 2-minute spot, including opening or inter-poem remarks. Read your own work or work by your favorite author. Featured Readers: 1:30 – 3:30 p.m.Read More
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Free Poetry Event with Valzhyna Mort
Good international poetry news! In the UK, The Poetry Society and the University of Liverpool are offering a free Zoom event: a lecture by the extraordinary Belarusian poet and translator Valzhyna Mort. (Lecture details here.) Her third collection, Music for the Dead and Resurrected, bowled me over when I read it last month; you can read a short review of it here, but it can’t do justice to Mort’s powerful, complex work.Read More
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Nothing Is Truer than Truth
More than fifteen years ago I became convinced that the man named William Shakspere, resident of Stratford-upon-Avon and identified since the mid-18th century as the author William Shakespeare, was not, in fact, the author of the plays and poems. (See a select bibliography at the end of this post.) Then, about a decade ago, I discovered that a movie about the real author—Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford—was in the works.Read More
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Join Me at the 2019 Castle Rock Writers Conference on Saturday, September 28th
I’m excited to be part of this year’s Castle Rock Writers Conference, where I’ll be leading two related but independent workshops focused on the notion of Soundscape in poetry. Soundscape is a word I’ve pulled in from the world of music, where it means “a piece of music considered in terms of its component sounds” (says Lexico)—sounds considered apart from the poem’s rhythm. In poetry, it refers the full range of effects a poem’s sounds have on its readers.Read More
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On David Giannini’s Mayhap: Selected Brief Poems
No American poet since William Stafford is as quotable as David Giannini. A tendency toward aphoristic piquancy layers and complicates all of his work. It’s not that he rejects simplicity; it’s simply that the world and the mind that perceives it are not simple, and Giannini is committed to complexity as part of his continual reach toward wholeness. Giannini’s new collection (his fourth from Dos Madres Press), Mayhap: Selected Brief Poems, is a fine example his commitment.Read More
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Immensity’s Resonance
I’ve never, as I recall, posted while vacationing in México. It is typically an escape into extended quiet time with my lovely wife amid sea vistas, the soft rattle of palm leaves, a margarita or two, conversations with good friends in which I slaughter the Spanish language … and, of course, a stack of books to read. José Juan Tablada This time I’m also diverting myself by translating a small book of haiku-influenced poems by José Juan Tablada, called Un Día … poemas sintéticos (One Day … Synthetic Poems).Read More
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Join Me & Other Denver Area Authors
Click here for complete details (you’ll need to scroll down after you land).Read More
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Spring, Poetry, David Mason … and the Danger of Having a Poet Laureate
Don’t miss this wonderful interview….Read More
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The Drama of War-Time Poetry
The performance of “War of Words” went off without a hitch last night in the Black Box Theater at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities. Having written the script, I was surprised by how moving it was—how the century-old poems sprang to life with such power and subtlety from the mouths of the five actors. Among the many enlivening elements were smoothly delivered accents—Hardy’s Dorset English, Apollinaire’s bon vivant playfulness, the taut Germanic sounds of Trakl, and the sly Chicagoan cadences of Carl Sandburg.Read More
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Poetry Voice Interview with Moi (and Other Goodies)
When Uche Ogbuji sent me the links to his and Kierstin Bridger‘s latest Poetry Voice podcast (Episode 9 of their series), I have to admit feeling a bit leery about listening to it because it includes an interview the dynamic duo did with me after a reading at BookBar, which featured Kierstin herself and Beth Paulson. Since I default to blather when in conversation, I worried that the interview would be embarrassing in one way or another: inarticulate, crammed with inaccuracies, etc.Read More
Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-2019, has published 20 collections of poems and edited or co-edited three poetry anthologies. He currently directs two master’s-level programs for University College at the University of Denver: Professional Creative Writing and Arts & Culture Management. Joe lives with his wife, Melody Madonna, in the mountains southwest of Denver, Colorado, the city where he was born. 
