By Nash Sisk
My new poetry journal opens to pages of prolific creativity that alight my memory with writing to birdsong and the laughter of familiar and new friends in a pleasant lakeside tree grove. For this, I have to thank Summer Poetry Camp: an annual poetry education and creation collaboration between Fort Collins’ GuloGulo Poetry Collective and the Boulder-based poetry group Beyond Academia Free Skool (BAFS). Each year, Summer Poetry Camp brings together the Front Range poetry community for a weekend campout filled with free-spirited, yet focused, poetry, learning, and production, together with friendship and outdoors fun on GuloGulo founder Thomas’s peaceful countryside hemp farm.
The weekend included four workshops, each hosted by talented local poets, that were thoughtfully designed to explore new poetic possibilities. These events made for a welcoming, inspiring space for poets to explore and create.
In Friday’s opening ceremony workshop “Burn Yer Poem,” led by Thomas, we put our self doubt behind us, writing poems our internal critics haven’t allowed us to write, and then we burned them. I wrote a keeper, but burning it reminded me of the infinite renewability of creativity and set the ideas in that poem free to inspire future writing.
Cicada’s Saturday “Plant Walk” focused on Native American practices for improving our relationships with plants. We learned how to attentively and respectfully listen to plants and receive inspiration from them. Naturally, I chose one of Thomas’ hemp plants and put its wisdom into a poem about striving, resilience, and love of life.
After Saturday’s gorgeous sunset over the hemp farm’s lake, BAFS founder Marcus guided us on the “Drunken Haiku Competition” where we experimented with a form of altered consciousness of our choice to discover how different states of mind can open up new perspectives and benefit or hamper poetic production. In good poet fashion, the workshop was a perfect mixture of fun and focused exploration and writing where I found my poetic novelty Goldilox zone with the good herb.
Sunday morning we gathered by the lake, and Fort Collins poet laureate Erica Reid guided us on a meditation on death and grief, encouraging us to contemplate without fear in the sunlit greenery and open-hearted fellowship.
There were other meaningful events during the weekend that were related to Poetry Camp. We had a blast going to Old Town Square to read classic American poetry for our Fort Collins neighbors on the Fourth of July! Taking a space to publicly share poetry with our wider community was empowering, sharing the poetry was exciting and enjoyable (especially thanks to our audience’s appreciation), and I learned a lot about good performance. We ended the Fort Collins portion of Camp at Wolverine Farm with a workshop on short forms led by Joe Braun and the punk-rock improv band Black Market Translation playing music for our open-mic. I was impressed with how well the band and our performers flowed, turning us poets into rockstar vocalists!
Camping overnight on the farm throughout Poetry Camp was a special practice that helped me settle into a flow state where I wrote lots of quality content and discovered many new poetic possibilities. In the mornings, nights, and time between workshops hanging out in the grove with fellow poets where we shared thoughts and current projects, I learned valuable knowledge and insight for my future writing. It was also simply a lot of fun camping out with other poets and making new friends.
This Summer Poetry Camp was a hit, and I’m excited to do it again next year to fill my journal with more new poems and my heart with new friendship and community!
