31 Jan Talking Gourds: Bardic Trails Features Lesley Wheeler, 2/3!
Talking Gourds “Stories & Poems” Bardic Trails series happens the first Tuesday of each month. Featured guests give a 15-20 minute presentation each, followed by a short Q & A period after the presentation. Then there’s a passing of the gourd, when community members are encouraged to share stories or poems.
Poet, writer, critic and professor Lesley Wheeler of Virginia will be the featured poet for the Telluride Institute’s First Tuesday Talking Gourds’ Bardic Trails virtual Stories & Poems series on February 3rd, 7 pm MST.
Bardic Trails is a project of the Telluride Institute’s Talking Gourds Poetry Program, in collaboration with Telluride’s Wilkinson Public Library. “Stories & Poems” is free and open to all ages, thanks to the generosity of the library, a Town of Telluride CCAASE grant, private donors and Talking Gourds’ Fischer & Cantor poetry contests.
For more information, text 970-729-0220 or email Goodtimes at art@tellurideinstitute.org. To visit the Talking Gourds website go to: www.tellurideinstitute.org/talking-gourds
Go here for more about Talking Gourds.
Lesley Wheeler writes poetry, fantasy fiction, creative nonfiction and criticism. Her sixth poetry collection was “Mycocosmic,” which appeared in March of last year from Tupelo Press and was runner-up for the Dorset Prize. Her debut work of nonfiction, “Poetry’s Possible Worlds” (2022), blends memoir and criticism to read twenty-first century poetry in light of the cognitive science of “literary transportation” – getting lost in a book.
Her novel of dark academia, “Unbecoming,” appeared in 2020 and was called “an excellent feminist fantasy” in a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. Her poems and essays appear in Poets & Writers, Best American Poetry 2025, Poetry, Kenyon Review, Guernica, American Poetry Review, Gettysburg Review, Ecotone, Massachusetts Review, Strange Horizons and many other venues.
For those that like prompts, we are suggesting “Mushrooms,” although poems on any subject are welcome. Virtual attendees are encouraged to bring a story or poem to share each month after the featured reader, their own work or someone else’s.
The Wilkinson Library and Talking Gourds has started a new live Stories & Poems series at Magazine Room on the third Tuesday of every month, although we are changing the time from 5:30 pm to 5:15 pm so we can wrap up for the library’s closing time at 7 pm. We began in December with Montrose metaphysical poet Tracy Lightsey, in January we had Montrose storyteller Tanya Ishikawa, and Feb. 3rd we will have writer Karen Bellerose and musician Bob Beer – both of Lawson Hill.
Talking Gourds’ Scot Rasor (KOTO DJ Razor Blaze) is talking with Telluride Arts to continue to bring poetry to Artwalk first Thursdays in selected galleries and is also working with a lot of local arts entities to start a monthly music and poetry event somewhere in town.
No Comments