In January, the city of Durango announced its first-ever poet laureates - a 3-year grant-funded position to elevate two local poets' voices.
Zoe Golden and Esther Belin recently read their poetry to an audience of over 100 community members at the Durango Public Library.
Golden is the city of Durango's Rising Poet Laureate and a junior at Durango High School. She read an original poem called Home for the Guilty:
"This is a country where we acknowledge tragedy as a part of life,
where we build soldiers out of dirt,
give badges to Blue Coated murderers,
give a voice to Blue Coated marauders stepping on soldiers out of dirt.
This is a country in a tug of war with who gets to live in peace…"
Alongside Golden was Belin, the Durango Poet Laureate, who is Navajo and a professor at Fort Lewis College. She read a poem she wrote as a letter to another Navajo poet:
"My family and I were on our way to a powwow.
I was driving our minivan in a snowstorm from Durango in Albuquerque… I was suspended.
The snow-packed road widened.
The wind blue powdery flakes across the road.
I lost all sense of direction.
I found myself staring into the deep whiteness, snow-blinded in articulates.
So now I listen to the whiteness of the page.
I listen for its breath.
I tenderly move my fingers across the whiteness…"
Belin and Golden say they're excited to show their community the power of poetry.
"... Bringing a new outlook and way for people to engage with each other and create community, but also in a way that connects people emotionally through the writing and the image of writing," Belin stated.
"We're a rural area, and we don't really get to see a lot of the creative arts here because people are very outdoor-invested," added Golden.
She said one of her goals during her laureateship is to create a public mural incorporating poetry.
"I really want to have a piece of art, somewhere in the community that incorporates words because I feel l everywhere I go, there's murals. I feel like we're really into the whole painting thing."
The reading at the library was a special moment for Tanya Kanning, Zoe Golden's mother. Kanning says her daughter has been writing poems since childhood.
"Most of her poetry I've never even heard or read before; she kind of keeps it to herself," said Kanning. "She's been leaning into poetry for a long time now. All throughout middle school, she's just a prolific writer, and she's got journals full of poems that she has written over the years."
The poets will speak at upcoming events around the community. They also hope to lead workshops in the future.
This story is part of Voices From the Edge of the Colorado Plateau. Voices is a reporting collaboration between KSUT Public Radio and KSJD Community Radio. It seeks to cover underrepresented communities in the Four Corners. The multi-year project will cover Native, Indigenous, Latino/Latina, and other communities across southwest Colorado.
Explore more Voices stories on the KSUT website.
