Mary Crow, Colorado

The state of Colorado has no official duties for its poet laureate although the selection committee suggested that it would be wonderful if I would speak in all areas of the state during my tenure. Under the sponsorship of the Colorado Endowment for the Humanities, I did this, carrying out Poetry in the Schools work, readings, and community discussions about how the visibility of poetry could be enhanced locally.

In addition, I decided to undertake some projects of my own based on my conviction that poets need to do all they can to increase the audience for poetry. My original intent was to initiate these projects in northern Colorado where I live and then find a way to extend them to the entire state; however, because of the lack of resources I have not been able to move beyond local work. My projects include putting poems on local buses, training MFA students to teach poetry in the schools, and giving awards to local teachers for the innovative use of poetry in the public school classroom. All three of these projects have been very successful, with shared sponsorship and enthusiastic public response. "Poetry in Motion" (registered trademark of the Poetry Society of America) is carried out in conjunction with Poetry Society of America, local business sponsors, the Poudre R1 School District, and Colorado State University.

At the most recent ceremony, the poetry placards for the buses with poems and artwork were
presented to the public, the mayor spoke, and more than eighty people attended. (Five hundred poems had been submitted to the selection committee.) My second project, "Literacy Through Poetry," has won grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, the Colorado Council on the Arts, the Lila B. Morgan Memorial Fund, among others, and has brought Kenneth Koch, Jack Collom, and Julio Marzan to Fort Collins to train graduate students to teach poetry in the schools. Over its three years it has reached just about every elementary school in the city. My third project gives small cash awards to teachers and a parallel award to the teacher's school libraries for poetry books. It is funded by a memorial award set up to honor a high school teacher and will give its sixth round of awards this spring.

–Mary Crow