‘We need to get people back to the arts’
By Ellen Metrick Planet Contributor
“What is poetry about if not community?,” asked Western Slope Poet Laureate Wendy Videlock during a summer solstice poetry event at Lithic Books in Fruita last week. Community is what Paulo Munguía is finding after becoming the newest San Miguel County Honorary Poet Laureate on June 18, during the most recent San Miguel Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) meeting.
“I’m overwhelmed. Excited. Grateful…and I feel like I have a new family,” Munguía said after the induction ceremony.
Munguía is appointed from June 2025 to June 2027. Local poets present to welcome him at the induction ceremony included Art Goodtimes, whom the county called “Poet Extraordinaire,” and outgoing San Miguel County Poet Laureate Joanna Spindler.
During the induction ceremony, Spindler read her newly minted occasional poem, written for Manguía’s induction, called, “Amigo Mio.” She read in Spanish first and then in English.
“You speak now with the voices of the multitude,” she said. “Your words are now the words of the entire region, a community, an era,” she added, referencing both the honor and work of the honorary laureate position.
