Arts center to host Colorado poet

    A reception for the book “From the Garret on Grand: on Miss Lonelyhearts and the Virgin of Guadalupe” will take place tonight, with poetry readings and music tonight and again Saturday night at the Carnegie Center for the Arts. 
    An opening of art by Tony Moffeit, whose work is featured on the cover and inside the volume “From the Garret on Grand,” will begin at 7 p.m. Music and poetry also will be offered during the evening. 
    Moffeit is director of the Pueblo Poetry Project in Pueblo, Colo. In 1992, he received a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship and a CoVisions grant from the Colorado Council on the Arts for a performance program, “Poetry, Culture, and the Individual.”
    The recipient in 1986 of the Jack Kerouac Award for his volume of poetry, “Pueblo Blues,” Moffeit was the first-place recipient of the Denver Press Club’s first annual Thomas Hornsby Ferril Poetry Prize.
    Moffeit and guitarist Rick Terlep, also of Pueblo, will present a concert Saturday night at the Carnegie Center from their CD “Outlaw Blues Revolution.” The CD from DigiVintage Records was released May 1, and the initial release event will be at the Carnegie Center.
    Moffeit, who grew up in Claremore, Okla., and was influenced by the work of Woody Guthrie, performs his poetry and songs regularly with Terlep, who has a blues band, “Little Ricky and the Roosters.” Moffeit also accompanies himself on a conga drum.       
    One of Moffeit’s songs, “Voodoo Snake Woman Blues,” was an Internet hit on the mp3 charts in 2000, remaining on the top 20 “acoustic blues” charts for most of the year. 
    Two other poets who will participate in the weekend’s festivities are Kyle Laws of Pueblo and Linda Rocheleau of Savannah, Ga. Laws is editor of “From the Garret on Grand,” which was published in 2008. Her poems have appeared in several magazines and anthologies.
    Rocheleau’s poems have been included in several review magazines and anthologies. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, and her work appeared in “The Paradelle.” She has poems online at “Hispanic Cultural Experience 2007.”
    Saturday evening also will be open to area poets to recite their verses “and anyone else who wants to throw in their cowboy hat,” said Dona Lancaster, executive director of the Carnegie Center for the Arts.
    The fun, poetry and music will begin at 7 p.m. Saturday. There is no charge for the weekend presentations, but free-will donations will be accepted.
    For more information, call Lancaster at (620) 225-6388.