Colorado’s Poet Laureate reads in Loveland, Monday 2-20

Colorado’s Poet Laureate, David Mason, will be reading from his work as part of the grand re-opening of the Loveland Public Library, after extensive renovation, on Monday, February 20, at 3:00 p.m. in the Gertrude Scott Meeting Room.

Mason's books of poems include The Buried Houses (winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize), The Country I Remember (winner of the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award), and Arrivals. Mason’s poetry explores a wide range of subjects, including family, relationships, the outdoors, travel, history, and the American West. Adept in traditional forms, Mason uses blank verse to tell the story of the 1914 Ludlow massacre—in which miners and their families were killed by the Colorado National Guard—in his verse novel, Ludlow. It was published in 2007, and named best poetry book of the year by the Contemporary Poetry Review and the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.

Mason authored of a collection of essays, The Poetry of Life and the Life of Poetry; his memoir, News from the Village, appeared in 2010; and a new collection of essays, Two Minds of a Western Poet, followed in 2011.

He has also written the libretti--something that particularly interestes me given my duaughter's profession (as an opera singer, that it--for composer Lori Laitman’s opera of The Scarlet Letter (which will have its professional premiere at Opera Colorado in May 2013). He recently won the Thatcher Hoffman Smith Creativity in Motion Prize for the development of a new libretto.