“For outstanding service to poetry in Colorado, a long history of building communities of poets & providing inspiration to us all by developing a body of powerful work”

The Crested Butte Center for the Arts and the Telluride Institute’s Talking Gourds Poetry Program gave this year’s Karen Chamberlain Award for lifetime achievement in Colorado poetry to teacher, poet, and mayor Aaron Abeyta of Antonito at a ceremony during the Mountain Words Literary Festival.

“Aaron won our hearts with his first book, Colcha (Univ. of Colo. Press, 2001), said Talking Gourds co-director Art Goodtimes who introduced Aaron Friday night. “Colcha won both an American Book Award and a Colorado Book Award in 2002.”

In introducing Abeyta, Goodtimes cited Aaron’s work as a teacher of poetry, professor of English, political leader, football coach, and a perennial presence at Western Colorado University’s annual Headwaters Conference in Gunnison each fall.

After receiving the award, Aaron performed a letter/poem in praise of books. The piece begins in the San Luis Valley where his family has lived for generations – writing as he was from the banks of the Conejos River.

“Language is water that carries me simultaneously forward and into the past,” read Abeyta. “The river becomes this mirror that is both truth and the shimmer of the half remembered; slow, flat water, which heals and forgives. The river is what I try to save. I believe the river is better than all of us; it knows how we love, and it urges the broken parts of us healed, and that is why I am writing this letter; I believe books, language, and the perfect word hold that same power.”

– The full text of the piece is available online here.

“We are delighted to name Aaron as this year’s Chamberlain Award winner,” noted Brooke Harless MacMillan, Center for the Arts Artistic Director. “He has been an inspiration and north star for many writers in Colorado and the West, and has worked long and hard in support of the craft of writing and literary arts. We are deeply honored to present the award to Aaron this year.”

HISTORY OF THE KAREN CHAMBERLAIN AWARD

(Originally published in the Telluride Watch in Art Goodtimes’ column Up Bear Creek in May of 2015.)

Having stepped into the footsteps of the Karen Chamberlain Poetry Festival in Carbondale, which ended last year (2014), the organizers of the Talking Gourds poetry program wanted to keep alive Karen’s name. She was a marvelous poet who won state awards, helped found the Aspen Writers Conference, and was a mentor to many poets around the state.

She also was an admirer of Telluride, which she visited often and where she had many friends. In that vein, the Telluride Institute has revived the Karen Chamberlain Award that was first given in 2013 to Reg Saner, one of Colorado’s most beloved poets and professor emeritus at the University of Colorado in Boulder. It currently makes the award annually in collaboration with the Gunnision Valley Literary Festival.