Beginning May 31, 2018 Columbine Poets of Colorado will host the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. This is a big deal. Go to the Columbine Poets website and click on the 2018 NFSPS Convention. From Thursday through Sunday we will fill the Renaissance Hotel on Quebec. Denver will be deluged with people speaking iambic, wearing sensible shoes and carrying book bags and bags full of goodies. It will be a reign of rhymers, mess of metaphorists, symposium of sonneteers. Language nuts who care as much about line breaks as they do about bathroom breaks.

There will be workshops, poetry readings (lots of poetry readings), music and poetry pairings, and awards from around the whole USA. These scribblers are my people and they could be yours too. If four days of verse are too much for you, consider a one day adventure with these apostles of alliteration. It’s gonna be great.

You may know that a recurrent question about poetry floats in the air like cottonwood fluff: Can Poetry Matter? This year Denver says, yes. We will make it matter.