Colorado Writers

Mayor Hickenlooper Names Chris Ransick Denver Poet Laureate

By Jenny Shank, 3-23-06

At a ceremony yesterday at the Denver Public Library's Central Branch, Denver mayor John Hickenlooper installed Chris Ransick as the city's Poet Laureate for a two-year term. Ransick is the city's first living Poet Laureate; Metro professor, Hispanic activist, and poet Lalo Delgado was given the title posthumously in 2004. Ransick teaches at Arapahoe Community College in Littleton, and won the Colorado Book Award for his poetry collection Never Summer in 2003.

According to a Mayor's Office press release, Ransick's appointment should be a boon to other local poets. Ransick said, "I intend to explore the literary landscape in Denver and bring forward as many voices as I can find. I know there is richness and variety and intensity here. If I can help celebrate that and raise the profile of our literary culture, it will be the best use of what has been entrusted to me."

Ransick's next poetry collection, Last Songs And Last Chances is set to hit stores this August. His website describes it as "a sequence of ten suites and intervening refrains" set in Colorado and beyond.

The Poet Laureate program is just the latest arts-friendly initiative that Mayor Hickenlooper has launched through the city's Office of Cultural Affairs. As has been reported in articles like this 2003 piece in the Denver Post, Hickenlooper is an adherent of the ideas of Richard Florida, whose book The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life, proposes a model for invigorating cities by encouraging and attracting creative residents. To that end, Hickenlooper has also promoted a "One Book, One Denver" program and gives annual awards for "Excellence in the Arts."

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