The Telluride Institute’s Talking Gourds Poetry Club begins its fall/winter First Tuesdays season Sept. 1 at 6 p.m. at Arroyo Wine Bar and Gallery with New Mexico poet and cultural journalist Bill Nevins.

Continuing its partnership with the Montrose Regional Library, Talking Gourds also will send Nevins to Montrose to perform at the Library’s Open Mic reading series at 6 p.m. on Wednesday Sept. 2nd.

Bill was born in New York City, attended Iona College and the University of Connecticut before traveling to Ireland, Spain and Mexico. Settling in New Mexico, he taught at the University and at high schools in Albuquerque, as well as freelancing on cultural issues for several national publications.

He was the feature of an award-winning 2007 documentary about a clash with school administrators over his fearless championing of his students’ free speech rights and his subsequent firing, Committing Poetry in Times of War. In 2014 Swimming With Elephants Publications published Heartbreak Ridge and Other Poems – dedicated to his son, Liam Nevins, a decorated U.S. Army Special Forces Green Beret killed in Afghanistan.

Irish-American poet and author Terence Winch calls Heartbreak Ridge “a campfire of the resistance, a place where all kinds of poems -- from jeremiads, scourgings, and passionate rants to absolutely beautiful works of love and loss -- gather between its covers. Bill Nevins is a truth-teller, and what he has to tell us about the last half century of American life and politics is a matter of highly charged poetic urgency.”

In Telluride, following Club announcements and the featured performance, there will be a short break, after which the gourd will be passed around the room to give Club members and attendees a chance to read a poem or two. The theme for September is “Light”. Bring your own work or that of a favored poet.

The fall/winter series continues with Laurie James of Salida October 6th and 7th, and Vonda Harris of Delta and Carol McDermott of Montrose November 3rd and 4th. We’ll be ending the year with the husband/wife poetry team of Ruth Duffy and Michael Olchewsky of Nucla December 1st and 2nd.

Talking Gourds Poetry Club is a program of the Telluride Institute in partnership with the Wilkinson Library, the Montrose Regional Library, Between the Covers Bookstore, Ah Haa School for the Arts and Arroyo Telluride.  Members meet monthly, on first-Tuesday evenings, at Arroyo Fine Art Gallery & Wine Bar at 220 E. Colorado Ave. beginning at 6 p.m. (next door to Ace Hardware).  The same guest will appear at the Montrose Regional Library’s Open Mic the next evening (a Wednesday).  For more info, contact Meg Nagel at <www.montroselibrary.org/event/open-mic-10> or 970-964-2548

Talking Gourds is indebted to generous donations from Audrey Marnoy, Peter Waldor and the Montrose Friends of the Library. Call 970-729-0220 or visit the Gourds website <talkinggourds.weebly.com> for more info.