Begin Where You Are: The Colorado Poets Laureate Anthology

by Andrea Gibson (Editor), Bobby LeFebre (Editor), David Mason (Editor)

Begin Where You The Colorado Poets Laureate Anthology is a book of firsts. It is the first ever US state poet laureate anthology. It is the first poetry collection featuring all ten Colorado poets laureate (the second oldest state poet laureateship, established in 1919). And it is the first place readers can discover unpublished poems by Andrea Gibson—bestselling author and one of the most influential spoken word artists of our generation.
This book contains celebrated works from Thomas Hornsby Ferril and others, alongside never-before-published pieces from Bobby LeFebre, Joseph Hutchison, David Mason, and Mary Crow. Contemporary poets offer perspectives on how serving as Colorado poet laureate shaped their writing and worlds.
Spearheaded by award-winning social entrepreneur Turner Wyatt, this book is a movement with a A portion of the proceeds will fund poetry programming in underserved Colorado schools, libraries, and rural areas, making each purchase an investment in expanding access to this essential art form.

Featured Andrea Gibson, Bobby LeFebre, Joseph Hutchison, David Mason, Mary Crow, Thomas Hornsby Ferril, Milford E. Shields, Margaret Clyde Robertson, Nellie Burget Miller, Alice Polk Hill
 

Genres: Poetry

246 pages, Paperback

Published January 2, 2026

About the author

Andrea Faye Gibson was an American poet and activist. Their poetry focused on gender norms, politics, social justice, LGBTQ topics, life, and mortality. Gibson was appointed as the Poet Laureate of Colorado in 2023.

Reviews

[Kristen]

Loved the parts by and about Andrea Gibson, Bobby LeFebre, and the making of this collection. The rest really wasn’t as much my speed, but it was interesting to see the wide range of work by state poet laureates over so much time

[Cheryl]

We live in a culture that pushes down emotions. Poetry awakens them. The world puts a cubicle around our wonder, and poetry inspires awe. Watching communities throughout the state uncover their own astonishment has been one of the sweetest gifts of my life, and I am so grateful for the treasure of this time. —Andrea Gibson

Some men long for a God to praise; others doze in the nameless mountains of the body.- Joseph Hutchison

This is an epic collection spanning more than 100 years of poets who served as laureate for my adopted state and is as diverse and life encompassing as this state is. There is so much to this state to learn about and celebrate, and I am grateful it has been my home for 25 years. Some poems refer to the state and her people, some are just interesting poems written by the poets at different times, but what a treat...

Reverb added to my lifespan, an echo that asked— What part of your life’s record is skipping? What wound is on repeat? Have you done everything you can to break out of that groove?
I made a symphony of walking away from everything that did not want my life to sing. Felt a love for myself so consistent metronomes tried to copyright my heartbeat. Finally understood I am the conductor of my own life and will be even after I die. I, like the trees, will decide what I become: Porch swing? Church pew? Andrea Gibson

The reporter interviewing me refers to me as “Chicano poet” and I do not flinch She asks me what I think about umbrella terms Latino? “I’m cool with it” Latinx? “I’m cool with it” Latine? “I’m cool with it. When she asks me why, I speak of vastness I tell her that only a fool cannot see that waves are the ocean too. There is a war inside my blood. The struggle of land and language and people and politics as pronounced as the smile that also always seems to bring me to tears. Bobby Lefebre

City Limits For Melody
You’re like wildwood at the edge of a city. And I’m the city: steam, sirens, a jumble of lit and unlit windows in the night. You’re the land as it must have been and will be—before me, after me. It’s your natural openness I want to enfold me. But then you’d become city; or you’d hide away your wildness to save it.

So I stay within limits—city limits, heart limits. Although, under everything, I have felt unlimited Earth. Unlimited you. Joseph Hutchison

What Was That City After Cavafy

that tangled me in sandy roots, led me into desert, where I gasped at vastness and vacancy, pyramids fringing miles of nothing growing, a void I vanished into, as imagination gave way to reality starred with sand, endless beach where I lost patience with boredom, with ruins inside me, merciless sand.

Along the river, wrecked temples languished, doors pouring out a sand-story, above a thousand buried sphinxes—how small human life looked, where sky tired of light, where dark seemed to glow with death’s glaring ink, where distant sand lay like frosted glass, an endless repetition. I meant travel to set me free, teach me wisdom, how to bear pain, how to decipher sand patterns. Instead, each city revealed a hissing resistance where revenge pitched words like glass shards between sand barricades—beyond sand, no end of light. Sky was years ago. Mary Crow

Here Is a Land Where Life Is Written in Water (Texts for the murals by Allen T. True in the rotunda of the Colorado State Capitol Building)
Introductory Sonnet

HERE is a land where life is written in water, The West is where the water was and is, Father and son of old, mother and daughter, Following rivers up immensities Of range and desert, thirsting the sundown ever, Crossing a hill to climb a hill still drier, Naming tonight a city by some river A different name from last night’s camping fire. Thomas Hornsby Ferril

San Juan Basin
The sky precipitates its hue— The farther higher blue on blue— The deepening shades blend swiftly down, Fuse outer mountains into crown, Then racing in more vivid sheen They grow into a sea of green. San Juan puts on the springtime’s choicest form: The quick of dawn, the morning’s irised warm; She draws bright blossoms from conceptions pure And veils their perfume in the clinging breeze; She choirs the birds and then attunes the trees—

In summer loveliness completes her lure. The sea of Eden is so virgin fair That sun and sky stoop to the presence rare, A high clear warmth is in the atmosphere As mystic nuptial spins a vapor here. A brilliancy buoys on the stirring mist Where earth and heaven have met. And hopes and joys and ecstasies here dance Upon the substance of the circumstance. They swell to farther higher blue Where perfect sky completes the hue.

Milford E. Shields

An Astronomer Muses To the memory of Camille Flammarion
So, Mars has gone his way again, unheeding all our signals; We have been so vigilant, so neighborly for naught. No doubt the fiery planet is unfit for life—at least A life intelligent as ours . . . Let’s see what’s happening now in China— That’s nearer home: Three thousand killed, A city burned—
I look upon each night—only eternity.

To one, if there be one upon the nearest star, Musing alone, as I do here tonight, This little earth we think so precious to the universe May be invisible . . . And yet we dare to say that God himself came down To die for us upon a tree! The church-bells chime, The Dawn steals in on chilly feet, The Morning-Star looks down benignantly On worlds that come to birth and worlds that come to die.
I know there is a law that binds the whole, Some day we’ll find and name it; A subtle heart-beat, pulsing throughout space, Which is not light, nor heat, nor yet the swift white flame We’ve harnessed to our use. When we do find it, we shall know

It has been with us always, Unregarded . . . What if it should be just love, God’s love, supporting circling suns, and holding safe The sparrow in its flight? God’s warm enshrouding love that knows no great nor small— Why, then, the madmen beat us to it after all! Nellie Burget Miller Laureate 1923–1952

[Victoria Martynko]

This was such a cool collection of poetry from all the Colorado poets laureate! Andrea Gibson’s poems were, of course, beautiful, but my favorite poets from this collection (who I haven’t read before) were Bobby Leferbre and Joseph Hutchison. I loved Bobby’s integration of Spanish into his poetry, and it reminds me of how I use Polish into my own poems and inspires me to do it more intentionally/unashamedly ha! And Joseph’s descriptions of the natural world were divine. Lovely!

[Laurie AH]

I enjoyed the more recent poems in this compilation, but the older poems were not to my liking.