On behalf of the Pikes Peak Poet Laureate Project selection committee and program organizers, the Cultural Office of the Pikes Peak Region (COPPeR) is pleased to announce that Janice Gould has been selected as the 2014-2016 Pikes Peak Poet Laureate. An accomplished poet and educator, Ms. Gould is an associate professor in Women’s and Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, where she developed and directs the concentration in Native American Studies. “I’m honored, very pleased, and looking forward to becoming the next ambassador for poetry in our community,” said Ms. Gould. She will succeed Price Strobridge, who served as Pikes Peak Poet Laureate from 2012-2014.
A reception to inaugurate Ms. Gould will take place on Sunday, April 27, at 2:00PM, in the Carnegie Room of Penrose Library at 20 N. Cascade Avenue in downtown Colorado Springs. The reception is free and open to the public.
Ms. Gould’s collections of published work include Doubters and Dreamers (a finalist for the Colorado Book Award for and the Binghamton University Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award), Earthquake Weather, Alphabet, and Beneath My Heart. She is also the co-editor, with Dean Rader, of Speak to Me Words: Essays on Contemporary American Indian Poetry. Among other honors, she has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ford Foundation. In 2011, she received the Literary Excellence Award in Poetry from the Pikes Peak Arts Council.
“We are honored and humbled to have a poet of such quality and accomplishment as Janice Gould serve as our region’s next Poet Laureate,” said selection committee Chairman Aaron Anstett.
The mission of the Pikes Peak Poet Laureate Project is to inspire and celebrate poets and poetry in the community. The project’s goal is to designate the best of our region’s poets as Poet Laureate and to support related programming that connects poets and poetry with our community in ways that are personal and meaningful. The presenting partners for the Project are the Pikes Peak Library District, Colorado College, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, the Cultural Office of the Pikes Peak Region (COPPeR), and Poetry West, a local non-profit poetry organization. These five organizations organize the Project and facilitate programming during the Poet Laureate’s term of office.
For questions about the April 27th inauguration event, or for additional information about the Pikes Peak Poet Laureate Project, please email Sue Hammond at the Pikes Peak Library District or call her at 719.531.6333 x2011.
