poems by rachel kellum
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Crestone Poetry Festival
Crestone Poemfest 6.0, our first in-person fest since Covid hit, was an incredible comeback lovefest of intergenerational rural and urban poets from across Colorado, New Mexico and the Navajo Nation. We brought in water from all directions, in hexagonal formation.
It’s been only five days since everyone dispersed. I still haven’t caught up on my sleep, already jonesing for more creative exhaustion with the poetribe.
We cheered for child-poets, birthed an exquisite corpse, bonded over botanical elixirs and scrumptious curries. We composted jazz and poetry with SETH and the Word Mechanics at T-Road Brewery. We soul-collaged, paraded and bathed in eclipse light casting crescent shaped shadows through our fingers, hair and wicker chairs. We wrote rambling Renga and fairy tales of narrowly escaped disasters. We harvested permaculture-principled poetry from Atwoodian bread and played poetry games in the magic circles of Fluxus instructions.
We brought our favorite books to the deserted island, wandered queerly along a creek dressed in gold and sage-woven tumbleweeds and spiraled bark. We hand bound books, reimagined word-nature and danced in quantum-entangled playgrounds of mycopoetry. We ate balsamic beet poems for lunch, put people first, poetry second, and found poems everywhere anyway.
We grooved with, jarred against, jam band Black Market Translation’s joyful Punketry accompaniment, unstopped our ears with righteous fire of the Beyond Academia Free Skool of Poetry, roared with Talking Gourds elder Art Goodtimes whose bellowing mantra NO… MORE… KINGDOMS! LET… THERE… BE KINDOMS! still whisper-shouts in my mind stream while I teach valley kids how to hand-build clay pumpkins, alliterate, or stop-motion-animate charcoal drawings of women emerging from tree roots.
That final morning, we nibbled scones and jazzed grief. We crossed out our names and scribbled love notes in margins. We passed the gourd, we passed the gourd, we passed the gourd. It spiraled outward.
I’m not sure how poets save the world, but they save me—trying, re-wiring, de-commodifying—one poem at a time.
Long live the Crestone Poetry Festival.
Crestone Poetry Festival
A free virtual Poemfest!
From the Sangre de Cristo mountains and beyond, the fifth annual Poemfest will be a virtual revival that celebrates poetry and friendship in Colorado and New Mexico.
With readings and open mics, you'll have an opportunity to inspire and be inspired. And explore the website for the rest of the fest: do some shopping at the bookstore, and be a part of the Ekphrastic experience with local Crestone Artists.
While we are looking forward to the return of the in-person fest, we learned in 2021 that the poets can still party online!
Crestone Poetry Festival:Feb. 27 -28
Please join us for a FREE virtual Poemfest with your favorite poets...
from the Sangre de Cristo mountains and beyond. Our virtual festival this year will be a reunion of the community we’ve enjoyed the past three years. The fourth annual Poemfest will be different from those in years past, but we will feature some of the best writers in Colorado and New Mexico, and we will pass the gourd.
Visit Poemfest.com to register!
Midnight Transmission Reading
Here are four poems from my recent reading with hosts Jesse Maloney and Orlando White. With the help of a vile vial of liquid ginseng, this old girl managed to stay awake past midnight!
For more videos of this and other Midnight Transmission readings, please visit Jesse 5-0 Productions.
Blue Daughters
Minefields
Sutra for Letting Go of Aversion
Midnight Transmission Promo
Enjoy this new late night reading series hosted by Diné Nation poets Jesse T. Maloney and Orlando White, transmitting the Word from the Rez. It was an unforgettable experience for me--an honor to read with such powerful women and be buoyed up by that smart, gentle audience in the digital realm. Jesse and Orlando are everything you want in a host: gracious, kind, humble and humorous AF. Clips from the evening will be posted soon.
The crumble on the muffin was connecting with an audience member who is the daughter of my most beloved college mentor, Dr. Joellen Jacobs, the woman who, nearly thirty years ago, walked me into the house of poetry, holding my hand through every image and cadence of Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and, later, Stevens' "The Snow Man." I found a home. The sonic, imagistic and philosophical joy I experienced in these two poems have guided my aesthetic choices for decades.
I hate to say it, but what a trip when it's true: it's a small, small world.
June 21: Join us for a reading at the Lithic Bookstore in Fruita, Colorado
Lithic Bookstore Poster for june 2018 reading
ABOUT RACHEL KELLUM — Poet, artist and teacher Rachel Kellum lives at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. Her passion is to help people of all ages live artfully and mindfully. Rachel has taught English, literature, and the humanities at Morgan Community College, where she also directed the Gallery of Fine Arts.
ABOUT PETE ANDERSON — In his books and in his life, poet, editor, teacher, and adventurer, Pete Anderson explores the ecology of story, spirit, landscape, parenting, and the cultural eccentricities of the American West. He teaches at Adams State College in Alamosa. Writing, he says, is about making a home: in the high desert, in the world of ideas, and in the great mystery of it all.
ABOUT LAURIE JAMES — Laurie James lives on a hill of sand with a pocket gopher, eighteen salamanders, and herds of well-fed birds. She can be found in Salida, picking up twigs on the edge of eternity. She’s performed with The River City Nomads for many years, and co-founded Sparrows, the Salida Poetry Festival.
ABOUT WENDY VIDELOCK — Wendy Videlock's poems have appeared several times in Poetry Magazine, Best American Poetry, Hopkins Review, The New York Times, The New Criterion, Quadrant, The Dark Horse, Rattle, and other literary journals. Her books are available from Able Muse Press and other book outlets. Wendy is also a visual artist, and her paintings are featured in several Colorado art galleries, among them:The Blue Pig Gallery, Working Artists Gallery, and Willow Creek.
Featured Poet at Talking Gourds
At Wilkinson Public Library, Telluride, Colorado: Interview with Rachel Kellum by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and Art Goodtimes:
Open Mic and Reading by Rachel Kellum: