Literary souls from El Rio de Las Animas Perdidas in Purgatorio, Corazon de Trinidad, Colorado, bring you poems that emerge through water, effervesce with a sense of diffusion, condensation, and precipitation. These poets honor the fluidity of water alongside its gathering force and its ability to reshape everything.

A braided presentation (poems & anecdotes) telling the Rez experience/story pandemic and post pandemic through the lens of the contemporary Navajo Nation economy and political climate.  The virus didn’t just wreck lungs and hearts, it eviscerated key institutions on the reservation.  Post pandemic Navajo Nation leadership have become beholden to bilaagana interest at a level where they are paralyzed to answer to the Dine’ people.

In Pueblo, Colorado, the Arkansas River and Fountain Creek converge before continuing eastward and beyond. We are writing at a confluence of ideas, experiences, and landscapes where the Front Range greets the eastern plains. In this reading, Pueblo poets will read poems that intersect between the personal and the communal and also touches on inspiration and delight from our part of the state.

The Rio Grande watershed has nurtured human culture over millennia, from the indigenous to the imported, brought by the poets. Amalio Madueño uses the language of the American Southwest border regions, sometimes called Chicano Spanish, the constantly changing idiomatic expression of a culture within a culture. Anne MacNaughton brings us landscapes of stars and fire, climate change in the desert mountains of the southern Rockies. And Juan Isidro “Tha Poet” Concha comes to us from the ancient lineages of Taos Pueblo and Mexico. Together with hip hop artist Doc the High Hawk, the duo brings us native spoken word for the 21st century.

Lithic Books is the hub around which spokes of poetry poke all around the Western Slope in the watershed of the mighty upper Colorado. Poet publisher Danny Rosen anchors us in Fruita, and Art Goodtimes of Wrights Mesa connects Lithic to Telluride & San Miguel County’s Talking Gourds poetry program. Danny & Art will share poems “In the spirit of Yes - for why not go Yes on a partly cloudy night with not an ill wind blowing but something moving in the dark the trees the stones the sky very high but not as high as”... . High on language!

Wavedown N Denver Dandyheads splashing around in the puddle of Denver Poetry Community and Boulder Poetry Scene row a crest down to Crewstone to share poems with you. From Pearl Street’s alley full moon reading and Beyond Academia Free Skool, Jazzetry and Punketry, Front Range poets Sarah Rodriguez, Forrest Hendricks, Eli Whittington, Matt Clifford, Eric Fischman and Maggie Saunders will take the stage for a mosh pit popcorn performance that will leave you feeling like a mouthful of hot whiskey from the trunk of a car on Boulder Creek.

What's the Native American word for water?  As Indigenous writers we often are asked outlandish questions about the land, our culture and our language.  As poets, we generally respond through poetry.  In this reading, three Diné poets from the four corners area will share poems that respond to the numerous questions about Indigeneity in the modern world.