The Telluride Institute’s Talking Gourds poetry program hosts Denver-based Cantor-winner Benny Manibog and environmental poet Ellery Akers from Northern California for our monthly first Tuesday Bardic Trails Zoom reading on May 6 at 7 p.m. MST.
Register here.
“Great to have our Cantor Prize winner reading this year,” said Art Goodtimes, Talking Gourds director. “And it turns out Ellery and I share a lot of similar experiences, including our poetry years at San Francisco State in the Seventies.”
Benny Manibog (he/him) is an urban planner and writer based in Denver, Colorado. He is the winner of the 2024 Cantor Poetry Prize selected by Juan Morales. You can find him online on his Substack, The Welcome Bug, at bmanbug.substack.com.
An award-winning poet and visual artist, Ellery Akers writes and teaches private poetry classes on the northern coast of California. She is the author of four poetry books, most recently, A Door into the Wild: Poetry and Art, which won the 2024 Blue Light Book Award and a 2024 North American Book Award. Her previous collection, Swerve: Environmentalism, Feminism, and Resistance, won BookAuthority’s Award for Best Environmentalism Books of All Time.
For those that like prompts, this month’s will be “Swerving.” 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 Telluride Institute’s Talking Gourds Poetry Program hosts the free Bardic Trails virtual zoom series on the first Tuesday of each month. The Wilkinson Public Library continues as our collaboration partner and fiscal agent, with town support from Commission for Community Assistance, Arts & Special Events.
No longer needing to register with the library, participants are encouraged to visit https://www.tellurideinstitute.org/western-slope-calendar to get the zoom link each month, if they aren’t already on our mailing list.
Thanks to the Cantor Family, the Guttman Family Foundation, CCAASE and our Fischer and Cantor contest participants for supporting our program and projects. Bardic Trails is a project of the Telluride Institute’s Talking Gourds Poetry Program in collaboration with the Wilkinson Public Library. For more information, visit the Telluride Institute website.
