Talking Gourds: George Sibley Wins 12th Annual Karen Chamberlain Award!

27 May Talking Gourds: George Sibley Wins 12th Annual Karen Chamberlain Award!

Talking Gourds puts out the word. Long-time professor, community organizer, poet, actor, author, editor, freelance writer, water ace and festival host George Sibley of Gunnison was awarded the 12th annual Karen Chamberlain Award for Lifetime Achievement in Colorado Poetry at the Mountain Words Festival in Crested Butte May 22nd.

For more information on the Chamberlain Award, visit tellurideinstitute.org/chamberlain-award or text Talking Gourds Poetry Program at 970-729-0220.

For more information on George and Maryo’s work, visit gard-sibley.org/george-sibley

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George Sibley with Art Goodtimes of Talking Gourds. Courtesy Talking Gourds.

“George’s contributions to the Gunnison community and the wider Western Slope has not been limited to poetry, but has also brought great benefit to the political, social and environmental well-being of our mountain home,” noted Talking Gourds director Art Goodtimes. “We were honored to celebrate him and his invaluable work at the Mountain Words Festival this year.”

The Chamberlain literary honoring has been a collaboration of the Telluride Institute’s Talking Gourds Poetry Program and Crested Butte’s Mountain Words Festival for the last several years.

Keeping track of all that George has been involved in in the region is a huge task.

Let’s begin in 1969 with Crested Butte’s end-of-winter ‘Flauschink’ Festival that he helped start, promoting continuity between the residual European immigrant culture and the oncoming ‘New West’ culture. It’s still going after 55 years.

In 1971, it was the Crested Butte Art Festival, still going; in 1972, the Crested Butte Mountain Theater, still going; in 1978, the Crawford summer melodrama, still going, and a three-volume history, Longhorns and Short Tales, still available; in 1981, a Centennial Pageant for Hotchkiss and the North Fork Valley; in 1988, while teaching at Western State College, George wrote and acted in the valley’s first “Sonofagunn,”an annual play taking a humorous look at what everyone was taking seriously in the valley, with a promise to find a role for everyone who wanted to participate, George serving as principal writer for the first 15 years, still going; in 1989, created the first Headwaters Conference, drawing together issues and speakers from the three principle cultures of the mountainous region– Indigenous, Chicano, and Anglo – where the Gourd Circle became the standard final event, still going (if limited to student participation these days); and in 1995, produced the first Gunnison Valley Journal, a collection of original stories, essays, poetry and images by and for the people of the valley, 12 issues later still going, with the last issue edited by George and his partner Maryo Gard Ewell on the subject of community.

And those notches in his achievement coup stick don’t even touch his poems, novel, essays, columns and articles, including a 400-page definitive history of Colorado River development within the Western half of the state, nor his early editing of Crested Butte’s local newspaper.

The term “Renaissance man” gets bandied about a lot as an encomium, but in George’s case it’s well-deserved.

Chamberlain Award, more:

The Chamberlain Award began in 2014 at the Karen Chamberlain Poetry Festival when the late Reg Saner of Boulder accepted the honor for the first time.

Past awardees include David Rothman of Crested Butte, Aaron Abeyta of Antonito, Katie Kingston of Trinidad, Veronica Patterson of Loveland, and the late poets Chris Ransick of Denver, Marlyn Krysl of Boulder, Bruce Berger of Aspen and Jack Mueller of Ridgway.