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Welcome reading featuring Adrian Molina, local Crestone poets open mic, and readings by and presentation of awards to local student poets.

What poets do best: party with exquisite corpse

Workshops or experiences or collaborations! 

Join us for lunch at the poet cafe! Bring your work and your stories and have lunch with us. 

Workshops or experiences or collaborations! 

Join us for dinner and drinks!

Let the watershed readers wash over you. 

Featuring

Art Goodtimes and Danny Rosen

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!

Jesse Maloney and Shaina A. Nez

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.

Kate Kingston, Dustin Hyman and Brooke Larson

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.

Peter Anderson, Rachel Kellum, Everett Wilson, Allison Wonderland, Darci Meyers, Therese Samson and Sally Jane Seck

Your hosts The Poemfest Posse

SETH with the famous Art Compost & The Word Mechanics ready to back you up on the open mic at the only bar in town.

Workshops or experiences or collaborations! 

Join us for lunch at the poet cafe! Bring your work and your stories and have lunch with us. 

Workshops or experiences or collaborations! 

Poets read from and celebrate recently published books. 

Chris Ransick was a force of nature in the Colorado poetry scene for decades. He was a brilliant poet, master teacher of poetry, poetry advocate and selfless mentor to many Colorado poets. Friends and students of Chris Ransick will share their favorite poem from his posthumously published books, Temporary House and Joe the Ghost and share personal memories of Chris Ransick. We will learn how he nourished friends and poets and hear his haunting and beautiful poems. Hosted by Kathleen Willard.

Join us for dinner and drinks!

Let the watershed readers wash over you. 

Featuring

Juan Morales and Darci Shummer

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.

Amalio Madueño, Anne MacNaughton, Juan Isidro “Tha Poet” Concha and Doc the High Hawk

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.

Esther Belin, June Smith and Cheyenne Williams

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.

Sarah Rodriguez, Forrest Hendricks, Eli Whittington, Matt Clifford, Eric Fischman and Maggie Saunders

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.

Punketry is the profane math of punk+poetry being improvised psychpunk by Black Market Translation in collaboration with featured readers occurring every second Wednesday at Denver's Mutiny Information Cafe since 2017 and on special occasions. Hosted by Sarah Rodriguez.

It's not a poetry festival if you don't buy some books by your new favorite poets! Poets and presses, bring your books to sell and get your pens ready to sign. 

Honoring dear departed Laurie James and Carolina Brown with sharing and reading.

Let's jam.

Art Goodtimes closes out the fest with his famous Talking Gourd Circle. Bring a cool hat and some words to share.