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.

Having most recently directed the Crestone Poetry Festival, poet and author Peter Anderson will be featured presenter for the Tuesday Sept. 2^nd Bardic Trails session beginning at 7 pm.

 Anderson’s books include Riding the Wheel, a collection of prose poems and haiku that celebrates the natural world on the edge of the Sangre de Cristos; Reading Colorado, an anthology of place-based writings which won a 2024 Colorado Book Award; Heading Home— Field Notes, a collection of flash prose and prose poems exploring rural life and the modern day eccentricities of the American West; and First Church of the Higher Elevations, a collection of essays on wildness, mountain places, and the life of the spirit.

 He lives on the western slope of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains where he edited and published Pilgrimage Magazine, served as poetry editor for the Mountain Gazette, taught at Adams State University, and wrote a column for Colorado Central Magazine. For more information on his work, check out petehowardanderson.com.

 For those that like prompts, this month’s will be “Mountains” 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.

 October’s featured presenter will be Betsy Quammen (formerly a reporter for the old Telluride Watch when I was editor) telling ghost stories; November Beth Franklin of Boulder who runs the Colorado Poets Center will read; and December will bring CMarie Fuhrman of Idaho (and currently heading up the poetry program at Western Colorado University in Gunnison).