Talking Gourds Tour November dates:
Telluride Arts office - Nov. 1st at 6 p.m.
Cimarron Books and Coffee - Nov. 2nd at 1 p.m.
La Zona Colona - Nov. 2nd at 5 p.m.
Lithic Bookstore & Gallery - Nov. 3rd at 7 p.m.
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Contact: Art Goodtimes 970.729.0220 (textable)
<[email protected]>
New digs for Talking Gourds poets from Denver & Junction
TELLURIDE – The Telluride Institute’s Talking Gourds Poetry Club moves to the Telluride Arts offices across from the Wilkinson Public Library for its first Tuesday poetry gathering on Nov. 1st at 6 p.m. with master poet, scholar and activist Phil Woods of Denver and Jill Burkey of Grand Junction, winner of our Fischer Prize in 2015.
In Telluride, following Club announcements and the featured performances, there will be a short intermission, after which the gourd will be passed around the room to give Club members and attendees a chance to read a poem or two. The gourds circle theme for November is “Ice.” Bring your own work or that of a favored poet to share.
And then following the Telluride Tuesday, the Traveling Gourds tour will take Woods & Burkey to Ridgway and a new venue in Colona on Wednesday, Nov. 2nd, and then Fruita Thursday evening, Nov. 3rd.
Phil Woods has been writing poetry since 1967. He received his MFA from the University of Oregon in 1983, and taught high school in Denver for 30 some years.
As Phil told Bob King in an interview in The Colorado Poet in 2012, “While I was at the University of Oregon I read almost all of Kenneth Rexroth's work and that's where I developed my aesthetic. In a country where community is so rare Rexroth believed poetry should have what he called ‘presentational immediacy.’ Coming to someone deeply impacted by folk music and rock and roll that spoke to me.”
He combines the writing life with a commitment to work for ecological balance, peace and social justice. As an activist, Phil performed two poems at the annual Ludlow Massacre Memorial in 2011, and performs often in the Denver area with the multicultural, award-winning Romero Theater Troupe.
He was formerly part of a poetry performance group, The Free Radical Railroad, with James Taylor, III, and the late Michael Adams. Two books came out featuring poems from the trio: Underground (Longhand Press, 2007) andWhistleblowers (Turkey Buzzard Press, 2009). Phil has published nine books of poetry. To Understand: New and Selected Poems (Turkey Buzzard Press, 2015) is his most recent.
Jill Burkey’s work won the 2009 Denver Woman’s Press Club Unknown Writers’ Contest and received honorable mention in the 2009 Mark Fischer Poetry Prize Contest, as well as first place in 2015.
Her poems have appeared in Pilgrimage Magazine, Paddlefish, Soundings Review, Grand Valley Magazine, IMPROV Anthology of Colorado Poets, The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, in downtown Grand Junction’s “Poetry in the Streets” project, and aired on KAFM 88.1 Community Radio in Grand Junction. Two of her poems were included in The Untidy Season by Backwaters Press, which received the 2014 Nebraska Book Award for anthology.
She is currently working on her first collection of poetry, Between, and credits her writing group, Writers in and of the Sage, with keeping her on track with deadlines and feedback. She is also working on several creative nonfiction projects.
In addition to writing, Jill teaches elementary and high school students through the Writers in the Schools (WITS) program coordinated by Colorado Humanities and the Western Colorado Writers’ Forum, of which she is a former board member. Her students have gone on to publish their poems in newspapers, magazines, and downtown Grand Junction’s “Poetry in the Streets” project. Several were named national finalists in the 2015 River of Words Poetry and Art Contest. Jill also works as a part-time office manager at Bechtel & Santo law firm.
Growing up on a three-generation cattle ranch in western Nebraska -- only miles from the homestead where Mari Sandoz and her famous father, Old Jules, once lived -- can partially account for Jill’s vivid imagination and curiosity about the past, which fuel her writing. She attended a one-room schoolhouse through fourth grade and spent many carefree afternoons riding her chestnut mare, Pet, bareback across the pastures surrounding her home.
Jill earned a BA in English and business administration with endorsements in secondary education from Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, Nebraska. She currently lives in Grand Junction, CO, with her husband and two children.
Second stop on the Traveling Gourds tour is Ridgway at Cimarron Books at 1 p.m. on Wednesday Nov. 2nd. For info there, contact Sara Doehrman at [email protected] or 970-708-4027.
With the loss of the bond issue for the Montrose Regional Library a year ago, the Open Mic series in Montrose has now been temporarily suspended. But Craig Jackman’s La Zona Colona has stepped into the breach. At 5 p.m. on Wed. Nov. 2nd Woods and Burkey will do a reading at La Zona Colona Coffee – the only operating business in the hamlet of Colona on U.S. Highway 550 between Ridgway and Montrose.
For the final stop on the tour, the duo will appear Thurs. Nov. 3rd at the Lithic Bookstore in Fruita at 7 p.m. Lithic Bookstore & Gallery is located at 138 South Park Square #202 in Fruita (Upstairs -- enter through lobby door on the east side of the building on Mesa Street). For more info, contact Kyle Harvey or Danny Rosen at (970) 858-3636.
Featured poet in December -- for the final Talking Gourds Poetry Club meet of the year on the 6th -- will be San Miguel County Poet Laureate, Elissa Dickson. And the final theme will be “Bridges.”
ADDITIONAL INFO
Talking Gourds programming survives through the generous support of private donors and Club members. There is a one-time fee of $25 to join and get on the cyber mailing list for regular meetings and special events. And then there is a $10 annual renewal to be a member in good standing each year and to receive half-price on Fischer Poetry Prize submissions and monthly broadsides of the featured poets.
Talking Gourds is a multi-part program of the Telluride Institute in partnership with the Wilkinson Public Library, Between the Covers Bookstore, Lithic Bookstore & Gallery, Cimarron Books & Coffee, La Zona Colona Coffee, Ah Haa School for the Arts, Telluride Arts, the Telluride Mushroom Festival and Telluride Arts.
Talking Gourds is indebted to generous contributions from Audrey Marnoy, Peter Waldor, the late Elaine Fischer and her friends, Sean Murphy, Craig Jackman, Daiva Chesonis, Elissa Dickson, Art Goodtimes, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Danny Rosen, Kyle Harvey, Michael Olschewsky, Ruth Duffy and Sara Doehrman.
Call 970-729-0220 or visit the Gourds website <talkinggourds.weebly.com> for more info.
Fog Over the Monument
Precipitous cliffs and pillars of rock
blend into one unbroken slab
that blocks the horizon and western beyond,
but when fog rolls in and drops into gaps
or snow speckles and clings to crags,
our vision is deepened and boulders come clear.
Contours and canyons abruptly appear.
When your soul is troubled and steeped in gray,
the absence of light gives you away.
This shift in perspective allows me to see
the terrain that makes you a masterpiece.
The internal canyons that carry your scars
are roads I can travel to see who you are.
It’s painful to break, to lay yourself bare,
but it’s the real you I want, every imperfect layer.
Jill Burkey
The White Quiet
Snowy day
Out study window.
Crooks of trees
Etched in snow.
One black crow
On a branch.
Winter is stark,
austere.
We are all our seasons.
Both inside & out.
To come to peace
with that knowledge
I always turn
To the Chinese poets.
Their poise & simplicity
calms & reassures.
I found them
as a college sophomore
& they have
been companions
ever since.
Merwin once said
he was reading Rexroth’s
translations
& almost called him up
in the middle
of the night
just to thank him.
As a kid I found out
the poems in the anthology
were from The White Pony.
It has been
a treasured friend
ever since.
The crow has taken flight
& I stare
at the white quiet.
by Phil Woods
Copyright © 2016 Talking Gourds, All rights reserved.
Telluride Arts office - Nov. 1st at 6 p.m.
Cimarron Books and Coffee - Nov. 2nd at 1 p.m.
La Zona Colona - Nov. 2nd at 5 p.m.
Lithic Bookstore & Gallery - Nov. 3rd at 7 p.m.
View this email in your browser
Contact: Art Goodtimes 970.729.0220 (textable)
<[email protected]>
New digs for Talking Gourds poets from Denver & Junction
TELLURIDE – The Telluride Institute’s Talking Gourds Poetry Club moves to the Telluride Arts offices across from the Wilkinson Public Library for its first Tuesday poetry gathering on Nov. 1st at 6 p.m. with master poet, scholar and activist Phil Woods of Denver and Jill Burkey of Grand Junction, winner of our Fischer Prize in 2015.
In Telluride, following Club announcements and the featured performances, there will be a short intermission, after which the gourd will be passed around the room to give Club members and attendees a chance to read a poem or two. The gourds circle theme for November is “Ice.” Bring your own work or that of a favored poet to share.
And then following the Telluride Tuesday, the Traveling Gourds tour will take Woods & Burkey to Ridgway and a new venue in Colona on Wednesday, Nov. 2nd, and then Fruita Thursday evening, Nov. 3rd.
Phil Woods has been writing poetry since 1967. He received his MFA from the University of Oregon in 1983, and taught high school in Denver for 30 some years.
As Phil told Bob King in an interview in The Colorado Poet in 2012, “While I was at the University of Oregon I read almost all of Kenneth Rexroth's work and that's where I developed my aesthetic. In a country where community is so rare Rexroth believed poetry should have what he called ‘presentational immediacy.’ Coming to someone deeply impacted by folk music and rock and roll that spoke to me.”
He combines the writing life with a commitment to work for ecological balance, peace and social justice. As an activist, Phil performed two poems at the annual Ludlow Massacre Memorial in 2011, and performs often in the Denver area with the multicultural, award-winning Romero Theater Troupe.
He was formerly part of a poetry performance group, The Free Radical Railroad, with James Taylor, III, and the late Michael Adams. Two books came out featuring poems from the trio: Underground (Longhand Press, 2007) andWhistleblowers (Turkey Buzzard Press, 2009). Phil has published nine books of poetry. To Understand: New and Selected Poems (Turkey Buzzard Press, 2015) is his most recent.
Jill Burkey’s work won the 2009 Denver Woman’s Press Club Unknown Writers’ Contest and received honorable mention in the 2009 Mark Fischer Poetry Prize Contest, as well as first place in 2015.
Her poems have appeared in Pilgrimage Magazine, Paddlefish, Soundings Review, Grand Valley Magazine, IMPROV Anthology of Colorado Poets, The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, in downtown Grand Junction’s “Poetry in the Streets” project, and aired on KAFM 88.1 Community Radio in Grand Junction. Two of her poems were included in The Untidy Season by Backwaters Press, which received the 2014 Nebraska Book Award for anthology.
She is currently working on her first collection of poetry, Between, and credits her writing group, Writers in and of the Sage, with keeping her on track with deadlines and feedback. She is also working on several creative nonfiction projects.
In addition to writing, Jill teaches elementary and high school students through the Writers in the Schools (WITS) program coordinated by Colorado Humanities and the Western Colorado Writers’ Forum, of which she is a former board member. Her students have gone on to publish their poems in newspapers, magazines, and downtown Grand Junction’s “Poetry in the Streets” project. Several were named national finalists in the 2015 River of Words Poetry and Art Contest. Jill also works as a part-time office manager at Bechtel & Santo law firm.
Growing up on a three-generation cattle ranch in western Nebraska -- only miles from the homestead where Mari Sandoz and her famous father, Old Jules, once lived -- can partially account for Jill’s vivid imagination and curiosity about the past, which fuel her writing. She attended a one-room schoolhouse through fourth grade and spent many carefree afternoons riding her chestnut mare, Pet, bareback across the pastures surrounding her home.
Jill earned a BA in English and business administration with endorsements in secondary education from Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, Nebraska. She currently lives in Grand Junction, CO, with her husband and two children.
Second stop on the Traveling Gourds tour is Ridgway at Cimarron Books at 1 p.m. on Wednesday Nov. 2nd. For info there, contact Sara Doehrman at [email protected] or 970-708-4027.
With the loss of the bond issue for the Montrose Regional Library a year ago, the Open Mic series in Montrose has now been temporarily suspended. But Craig Jackman’s La Zona Colona has stepped into the breach. At 5 p.m. on Wed. Nov. 2nd Woods and Burkey will do a reading at La Zona Colona Coffee – the only operating business in the hamlet of Colona on U.S. Highway 550 between Ridgway and Montrose.
For the final stop on the tour, the duo will appear Thurs. Nov. 3rd at the Lithic Bookstore in Fruita at 7 p.m. Lithic Bookstore & Gallery is located at 138 South Park Square #202 in Fruita (Upstairs -- enter through lobby door on the east side of the building on Mesa Street). For more info, contact Kyle Harvey or Danny Rosen at (970) 858-3636.
Featured poet in December -- for the final Talking Gourds Poetry Club meet of the year on the 6th -- will be San Miguel County Poet Laureate, Elissa Dickson. And the final theme will be “Bridges.”
ADDITIONAL INFO
Talking Gourds programming survives through the generous support of private donors and Club members. There is a one-time fee of $25 to join and get on the cyber mailing list for regular meetings and special events. And then there is a $10 annual renewal to be a member in good standing each year and to receive half-price on Fischer Poetry Prize submissions and monthly broadsides of the featured poets.
Talking Gourds is a multi-part program of the Telluride Institute in partnership with the Wilkinson Public Library, Between the Covers Bookstore, Lithic Bookstore & Gallery, Cimarron Books & Coffee, La Zona Colona Coffee, Ah Haa School for the Arts, Telluride Arts, the Telluride Mushroom Festival and Telluride Arts.
Talking Gourds is indebted to generous contributions from Audrey Marnoy, Peter Waldor, the late Elaine Fischer and her friends, Sean Murphy, Craig Jackman, Daiva Chesonis, Elissa Dickson, Art Goodtimes, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Danny Rosen, Kyle Harvey, Michael Olschewsky, Ruth Duffy and Sara Doehrman.
Call 970-729-0220 or visit the Gourds website <talkinggourds.weebly.com> for more info.
Fog Over the Monument
Precipitous cliffs and pillars of rock
blend into one unbroken slab
that blocks the horizon and western beyond,
but when fog rolls in and drops into gaps
or snow speckles and clings to crags,
our vision is deepened and boulders come clear.
Contours and canyons abruptly appear.
When your soul is troubled and steeped in gray,
the absence of light gives you away.
This shift in perspective allows me to see
the terrain that makes you a masterpiece.
The internal canyons that carry your scars
are roads I can travel to see who you are.
It’s painful to break, to lay yourself bare,
but it’s the real you I want, every imperfect layer.
Jill Burkey
The White Quiet
Snowy day
Out study window.
Crooks of trees
Etched in snow.
One black crow
On a branch.
Winter is stark,
austere.
We are all our seasons.
Both inside & out.
To come to peace
with that knowledge
I always turn
To the Chinese poets.
Their poise & simplicity
calms & reassures.
I found them
as a college sophomore
& they have
been companions
ever since.
Merwin once said
he was reading Rexroth’s
translations
& almost called him up
in the middle
of the night
just to thank him.
As a kid I found out
the poems in the anthology
were from The White Pony.
It has been
a treasured friend
ever since.
The crow has taken flight
& I stare
at the white quiet.
by Phil Woods
Copyright © 2016 Talking Gourds, All rights reserved.