On May 31, 2026, Denver Poets Day, a perennial poetry event over the span of the last 50 years, brings together poets of all stripes to celebrate local literary heritage.

The gathering lands on Walt Whitman’s birthday, and pays homage to the “Mile High Underground,” a poetry legacy which is varied, long standing, and still vibrant and thriving.  

Who this course is specifically for? 

This workshop was designed for folks who want to explore redefining embodiment for themselves in a way that includes experiences like dissociation, over-stimulation, hyper-fixation, fight/flight/freeze response, stimming, compulsions, pain and flare. I hope the workshop is supportive for folks who are often asked to ignore, change or stop certain embodied experiences. There are a lot of ways that our systems and culture ask us to suppress our bodymind's natural impulses which is rooted in ableism. I want the workshop to be a space for reclamation, where we can let our bodyminds be as they are and dictate how we make our art in response. 

I think my poetry has always tilted towards Joy, especially as the battle cry at the end of my pieces. One of my friends once told me that they love that my Poetry is just a love letter to all of my identities and as an intersectional person, my identities often come with pain and grief and anger, and I love being able to express that with the arc of joy existing throughout all that I am.  

The poems in this collection address how, with each cycle, we can reform, reframe, and be reborn. Through playing with the structure of the burning haibun, I explore my own cycles of parenthood, recovery, and grief.

I think my vision for poetry is the same vision I have for people: I want us all free and thriving. I want us to exist without concern for money or property. I want us in all of our forms and styles and experiments. And so I think people can support this vision in the greater movement for social justice and oppressive system dismantling. I think that people should feel free to imagine their own unique visions for poetry and all of us can mutually support each other’s unique visions.