Congratulations to Joseph Hutchison, new Colorado Poet Laureate!
The Colorado Independent reports:
Governor John Hickenlooper appointed Colorado’s eighth and newest poet laureate today, Joseph Hutchinson, a Colorado native who lives in Indian Hills.
A former poet in the schools, Hutchinson said that great public school teachers fostered his love of poetry.
“They were the ones who got me to read the rich stuff and develop the desire to want to write the rich stuff if I could,” said Hutchinson. “I want to focus on developing resources for teachers to integrate poetry into the classroom. Poems have contained the best, deepest critical thinking about human life on this planet.”
Every good and faithful Coloradoan literati should be familiar with their poet laureate! Check out Joseph’s poetry collection, Thread of the Real.
Thread of the Real
Who’d have thought: setting out
from a gap in the seam
between foothills and plains,
a pinch of cocoonish
dust like me
might take wing
northwest and seaward, away
from Nixon’s nightbound America
and mine,
to settle
where vast sounds pour
their profundities into the folds
of b.c.?
Who’d have thought
I’d sleepwalk
into Canada’s wooded raininess,
there to be startled awake
by a stogie-puffing
Irish Taoist?
Who was it
who’d led me to believe
there was no magic anymore?
