My identity is deeply influenced by frequent moves. First as a child moving from town to town in Southern California, later because of necessity and choice. From California to Louisiana, from Louisiana to Ohio. From Ohio back to California. Tennessee. Oregon. And finally to Denver, Colorado, a land of extremes in elevation, dry air, the shock of static electricity and gasping for breath during mountain hikes. How to be a poet in this climate? This has been my challenge, to create poems that can only be written at this moment in this city, poems not of lushness but of spartan skies and Hatch chilies, weed shops on every corner, and urban neighborhoods running into sprawling suburbs. These past twelve years in Denver have taught me that no matter where we live, no matter where we call home, the land speaks to us, the people move through us, and the poems eventually write themselves. Possibly not the poems we meant to write, but the ones that must be written.
