Rock Canyon Poets are proud to announce they will be reading poetry for the sixth time at The Round stage on Friday, June 20, 2025 from 3:00 – 8:45 p.m. as literary artists for the Utah Arts Festival.
Rock Canyon Poets boasts diverse membership, ranging from 19 to 70+ years in age with many backgrounds–including literary journal founders, editors, ex-military, business professionals, a playwright, and a periodontist. Individually, they have received several awards and been published in magazines, anthologies, journals, chapbooks, and full-length books of poetry. Rock Canyon Poets offer poetry with the tactile clarity of tin-can messages through fuzzy strings to the ears of an audience. These poems are tumbleweeds in semi-truck grills. They get stuck in your teeth, build bridges of spun sugar, and make it possible to mount a camel without a sturdy ladder.
The Utah Arts Festival takes place Thursday, June 19 – Sunday, June 22, 2025 12 noon to 11pm, on Library and Washington Squares in downtown Salt Lake City (200 East 400 South, Salt Lake City, Utah 84111).
The Rock Canyon Poets are proud to release a special 10th anniversary edition of Orogeny, the seventh collection of poems by living poets in Utah, Colorado, and original out-of-state members. Learn more in our interview with RadioACTive on KRCL 90.9 FM, including anthology editor Trish Hopkinson, graphic designer Austin Beckstrom, and Marianne Hales. Hear about the first ten years of Rock Canyon Poets and the poets also shared poems included in the anthology. (The interview starts at 17 minutes into the show.)
Orogeny is the seventh printed anthology by Rock Canyon Poets members and is currently available for pre-order, with print copies available to ship this spring. Cost is $10 plus shipping.
Co-founded by Bonnie Shiffler-Olsen and Trish Hopkinson in 2015, Rock Canyon Poets was established to develop camaraderie among Utah Valley poets, provide consistent workshopping and reading opportunities, and promote the disciplined study of writing poetry as a serious art form. Members meet twice a month at Pioneer Book in historic downtown Provo. The group sponsors poetry readings and an open mic on the 2nd Tuesday of every month. Membership is by invitation or portfolio submission only.
For more information, contact the Rock Canyon Poets, rockcanyonpoets@gmail.com.
Join Rock Canyon Poets and Speak for Yourself Open Mic for the Orogeny book release party on Monday, March 17, 2025 at 7pm at The Social, 65 N University Ave Downstairs Suite 2, Provo, UT.
The Rock Canyon Poets are proud to release a special 10th anniversary edition of Orogeny, the seventh collection of poems by living poets in Utah, Colorado, and original out-of-state members. Learn more in our interview with RadioACTive on KRCL 90.9 FM here: Click below to listen to an interview with Rock Canyon Poets, including anthology editor Trish Hopkinson, graphic designer Austin Beckstrom, and Marianne Hales. Hear about the first ten years of Rock Canyon Poets and the poets also shared poems included in the anthology. (The interview starts at 17 minutes into the show.)
Orogeny is the seventh printed anthology by Rock Canyon Poets members and is currently available for pre-order, with print copies available to ship this spring. Cost is $10 plus shipping.
I am honored to present you with our special 10th anniversary edition of Orogeny, Volume 7. In the last ten years, Rock Canyon Poets have produced exceptional work, performed at several events, met monthly to encourage and inspire each other, welcomed new members, and mourned the loss of beloved members Darin Whittaker and Colin Douglas. Our members continue to amaze me with their kindness towards each other and their commitment to the literary arts. The themes in this edition reflect not only the diversity of our members, but their experiences, beliefs, and their unwavering empathy for the human condition. It is a privilege to witness the words of these poets.
—Trish Hopkinson, Co-founder/Editor, Rock Canyon Poets
You can sample previously published poems included in the anthology below:
In “Conjure,” by Felice Austin, one of the beautiful poems in this powerful new anthology, the speaker of the poem remembers “Always turning to / the match strike sucking sound of fire coming alive / by swallowing the dark.” In the resultant light, what do we see, what do we feel? Only everything: the precise naming of things, the shift of memory and feeling, the terrible losses, the evidence of love, the taking back of the premises on which we have built our lives, and building them anew. A book like this is a way to conjure, to spell things fresh. Open its covers and listen to its many voices.
—Lisa Bickmore, Utah Poet Laureate and author of Ephemerist
Arising in a particularly salty part of the Great American Desert, The Rock Canyon Poets look into the fundamental landscape to question accepted homogeneities, and find them crumbling rapidly. These poems observe and examine evolving scenes of love, family, and community in the crucible that is twenty-first century Utah, USA, and sees the world reimagined. The fact that this group of writers has lasted long enough to collaborate on a 7th anthology is a testament to the power of small diverse groups of humans who come together with the common urge – to write – and thus, find ways to move through the modern wilderness with increasing grace. Picking up the frayed pieces of their lives these poets collectively decide that, as one of the prime movers of the group, Trish Hopkinson, says, “When the garden grows poison, make pie.”
In “Breadcrumbs,” one of the poems in this anthology, Stacy Julin writes, “A blue umbrella / from my aunt’s favorite drink, / a smooth purple rock / from the dirt / up the canyon. / My painted heart locket on a silver chain, / scattered through drawers, / boxes of our house.” To me, those lines are like a metaphor for this whole book. It isn’t just a box full of 49 poems. It’s more like a home—with a poem in a drawer here, a poem like a switched-on lamp over there, a hurt poem talking to her friend on the phone, another poem cooking in the kitchen, a poem that smells like tangerines, a poem in place of the TV news, poems turning and falling from November limbs or coloring the Wasatch Mountains out the window, all coming together like a note on the table to remind us what to remember.
This well-sequenced volume carries us down a river of bright sensation: the poems are streaked with visual beauty, sensual grasp, tricky faith and saving disillusion. Violence and shelter. Along the way: birth, un-birth; naming, renaming. Intimate artifacts of death. Fallen peaches, wayward seedlings, and you’ll never stop seeing tangerines. Settle into your favorite reading place and savor the seventh Orogeny. Twice and again. Gorgeous.
—Karin Anderson, author of What Falls Away and (forthcoming 2025) Things I Didn’t Do
About Rock Canyon Poets
Rock Canyon Poets is a regional poetry group boasting a diverse membership, ranging from 18 to 70+ years in age with many backgrounds–including literary journal founders, editors, ex-military, business professionals, a playwright, and a periodontist. Individually, they have received several awards and been published in magazines, anthologies, journals, chapbooks, and full-length books of poetry. Rock Canyon Poets offer poetry with the tactile clarity of tin-can messages through fuzzy strings to the ears of an audience. These poems are tumbleweeds in semi-truck grills. They get stuck in your teeth, build bridges of spun sugar, and make it possible to mount a camel without a sturdy ladder.
Co-founded by Bonnie Shiffler-Olsen and Trish Hopkinson in January, 2015, Rock Canyon Poets was established to develop camaraderie among Utah Valley poets, provide consistent workshopping and reading opportunities, and promote the disciplined study of writing poetry as a serious art form. In recent years, the group has expanded to include western Colorado poets, as well as original, out-of-state member poets. Members meet twice a month virtually to inspire each other and workshop poems. Membership is by invitation or portfolio submission only.
The Rock Canyon Poets are proud to release a special 10th anniversary edition of Orogeny, the seventh collection of poems by living poets in Utah, Colorado, and original out-of-state members. Tune into RadioACTive on KRCL 90.9 FM at 6pm, Monday February 3 at 6pm for an interview with Rock Canyon Poets, including anthology editor Trish Hopkinson, graphic designer Austin Beckstrom, and Marianne Hales. Hear about the first ten years of Rock Canyon Poets and the poets will also share poems included in the anthology. Live stream here.
Orogeny is the seventh printed anthology by Rock Canyon Poets members and is currently available for pre-order, with print copies available to ship this spring. Cost is $10 plus shipping.
I am honored to present you with our special 10th anniversary edition of Orogeny, Volume 7. In the last ten years, Rock Canyon Poets have produced exceptional work, performed at several events, met monthly to encourage and inspire each other, welcomed new members, and mourned the loss of beloved members Darin Whittaker and Colin Douglas. Our members continue to amaze me with their kindness towards each other and their commitment to the literary arts. The themes in this edition reflect not only the diversity of our members, but their experiences, beliefs, and their unwavering empathy for the human condition. It is a privilege to witness the words of these poets.
—Trish Hopkinson, Co-founder/Editor, Rock Canyon Poets
You can sample previously published poems included in the anthology below:
In “Conjure,” by Felice Austin, one of the beautiful poems in this powerful new anthology, the speaker of the poem remembers “Always turning to / the match strike sucking sound of fire coming alive / by swallowing the dark.” In the resultant light, what do we see, what do we feel? Only everything: the precise naming of things, the shift of memory and feeling, the terrible losses, the evidence of love, the taking back of the premises on which we have built our lives, and building them anew. A book like this is a way to conjure, to spell things fresh. Open its covers and listen to its many voices.
—Lisa Bickmore, Utah Poet Laureate and author of Ephemerist
Arising in a particularly salty part of the Great American Desert, The Rock Canyon Poets look into the fundamental landscape to question accepted homogeneities, and find them crumbling rapidly. These poems observe and examine evolving scenes of love, family, and community in the crucible that is twenty-first century Utah, USA, and sees the world reimagined. The fact that this group of writers has lasted long enough to collaborate on a 7th anthology is a testament to the power of small diverse groups of humans who come together with the common urge – to write – and thus, find ways to move through the modern wilderness with increasing grace. Picking up the frayed pieces of their lives these poets collectively decide that, as one of the prime movers of the group, Trish Hopkinson, says, “When the garden grows poison, make pie.”
In “Breadcrumbs,” one of the poems in this anthology, Stacy Julin writes, “A blue umbrella / from my aunt’s favorite drink, / a smooth purple rock / from the dirt / up the canyon. / My painted heart locket on a silver chain, / scattered through drawers, / boxes of our house.” To me, those lines are like a metaphor for this whole book. It isn’t just a box full of 49 poems. It’s more like a home—with a poem in a drawer here, a poem like a switched-on lamp over there, a hurt poem talking to her friend on the phone, another poem cooking in the kitchen, a poem that smells like tangerines, a poem in place of the TV news, poems turning and falling from November limbs or coloring the Wasatch Mountains out the window, all coming together like a note on the table to remind us what to remember.
This well-sequenced volume carries us down a river of bright sensation: the poems are streaked with visual beauty, sensual grasp, tricky faith and saving disillusion. Violence and shelter. Along the way: birth, un-birth; naming, renaming. Intimate artifacts of death. Fallen peaches, wayward seedlings, and you’ll never stop seeing tangerines. Settle into your favorite reading place and savor the seventh Orogeny. Twice and again. Gorgeous.
—Karin Anderson, author of What Falls Away and (forthcoming 2025) Things I Didn’t Do
About Rock Canyon Poets
Rock Canyon Poets is a regional poetry group boasting a diverse membership, ranging from 18 to 70+ years in age with many backgrounds–including literary journal founders, editors, ex-military, business professionals, a playwright, and a periodontist. Individually, they have received several awards and been published in magazines, anthologies, journals, chapbooks, and full-length books of poetry. Rock Canyon Poets offer poetry with the tactile clarity of tin-can messages through fuzzy strings to the ears of an audience. These poems are tumbleweeds in semi-truck grills. They get stuck in your teeth, build bridges of spun sugar, and make it possible to mount a camel without a sturdy ladder.
Co-founded by Bonnie Shiffler-Olsen and Trish Hopkinson in January, 2015, Rock Canyon Poets was established to develop camaraderie among Utah Valley poets, provide consistent workshopping and reading opportunities, and promote the disciplined study of writing poetry as a serious art form. In recent years, the group has expanded to include western Colorado poets, as well as original, out-of-state member poets. Members meet twice a month virtually to inspire each other and workshop poems. Membership is by invitation or portfolio submission only.
Rock Canyon Poets are proud to announce they will be reading poetry for the fifth time at the Big Mouth Stage on Friday, August 27, 2021 from 7:20 – 8:00 p.m. as literary artists for the Utah Arts Festival. You can read about our 2015 performance in this Daily Herald Article: Newly formed Rock Canyon Poets perform at Utah Arts Fest.
Rock Canyon Poets boasts diverse membership, ranging from 19 to 70+ years in age with many backgrounds–including literary journal founders, editors, ex-military, business professionals, a playwright, and a periodontist. Individually, they have received several awards and been published in magazines, anthologies, journals, chapbooks, and full-length books of poetry. Rock Canyon Poets offer poetry with the tactile clarity of tin-can messages through fuzzy strings to the ears of an audience. These poems are tumbleweeds in semi-truck grills. They get stuck in your teeth, build bridges of spun sugar, and make it possible to mount a camel without a sturdy ladder.
The Utah Arts Festival takes place Friday, August 27 – Sunday, August 29, 2021 12 noon to 11pm, on Library and Washington Squares in downtown Salt Lake City (200 East 400 South, Salt Lake City, Utah 84111).
Co-founded by Bonnie Shiffler-Olsen and Trish Hopkinson in 2015, Rock Canyon Poets was established to develop camaraderie among Utah Valley poets, provide consistent workshopping and reading opportunities, and promote the disciplined study of writing poetry as a serious art form. Members meet twice a month at Pioneer Book in historic downtown Provo. The group sponsors poetry readings and an open mic on the 2nd Tuesday of every month. Membership is by invitation or portfolio submission only.
For more information, contact the Rock Canyon Poets, rockcanyonpoets@gmail.com.
Twenty-two writers. Twenty-two original views of Utah. Collected as Utah @ 125, these works of flash nonfiction are part of Thrive125, a far-ranging cultural initiative celebrating the state’s 125th anniversary.
What: Utah @ 125, a collection of new 125-word nonfiction pieces by Utah writers
The flash nonfiction pieces in Utah @ 125, each just 125 words long, were commissioned from writers ranging from Utah Poet Laureate Paisley Rekdal, a University of Utah professor, to Lance Larsen, a former state poet laureate and Brigham Young University professor, and Tayler Fang, a recent Logan High School graduate, who served as 2019-2020’s National Student Poet of the West.
Other writers include slam poets, playwrights, nature writers, activists and novelists, based in Vernal, Cedar City, Provo, West Valley City, Eagle Mountain, Logan and Salt Lake City. These short-short essays describe a Bonneville Trail hike on the winter solstice, the anchoring feeling of watching quails march across a front yard, extraordinary views from on top and inside the artworks of “Spiral Jetty” and “Sun Tunnels,” and what it means to grow up in a town like Beaver.
The Utah Department of Heritage & Arts published Utah @ 125, a new digital literary chapbook, as part of Thrive125. The ambitious statehood celebration, which was launched Jan. 4 with a TV broadcast hosted by Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson and featuring Utah performing artists, will continue throughout the year.
Along with the literary chapbook, the Thrive125 initiative includes: a database of Utah’s 1896 architecture; “Becoming Utah: A Peoples’ Journey,” a short educational film with curriculum resources about Utah’s history; a One Book, One Utah state library book club highlighting Craig Child’s “Virga & Bone”; a “Voices: Discord and Harmony in 1896” digital exhibit; plus historical and cultural panels, such as “Wintertime Native American Tales”; and “Coming Together: How Utah Became the Union’s 45th Star,” an exhibition at the Utah State Capitol.
Each day during the month of April, Utah Poetry Festival is looking to promote a Utah poet to celebrate both the Festival and National Poetry Month.
For details on requirements, subject matter, tips for recording, and where to send your video, read more here: Read for the Fest.
The Utah Poetry Festival Will Be Online April 16-18, 2021 and registration is open now.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021 Utah Poetry Festival will be virtual. Beginning Friday, April 16 and ending Sunday, April 18, 2021, the festival will feature poetry pedagogy roundtables, moderated conversations and public Q&A’s with poets from around the state, and two headline reading events.
The Utah Poetry Festival is free and open to the public. Events can be watched live or streamed later via the Utah Humanities YouTube channel. Live events will feature public Q&As. All events will be closed captioned by AI Media. Only registered participants will receive a link to the Google Drive file with documents from the Saturday pedagogy panels. Registration is currently open. View the schedule to register. Festival attendees must register for each event they wish to attend.
Couldn’t be more proud of our incredible talented community poets here in Utah! I am honored to have edited and released this anthology of Self-Portrait poems earlier this week. Special thanks to our designer Austin Beckstrom who always does such an incredible job! He loves book design, so if you’re needing an incredible designer for an affordable rate, definitely check him out. Also, HUGE thanks to
Rock Canyon Poets, in participation with KRCL 90.9 FM, is seeking Utah poets to feature for the ongoing Poetry Still Happens series. The series gives a platform to poets living and working in Utah to share audio of an original poem.
What we are looking for
Contemporary poetry
Spoken word/slam poetry
Poems focusing on current events and social justice issues are preferred
Audio guidelines
Recordings are limited to 4 minutes in length and should include the following:
30 seconds or less: introduce yourself and tell us something about you (short bio, make sure it is in first person) and/or where the poem you will be reading was published (if applicable)
Reading of a single poem, up to 3 minutes
30 seconds or less: tell us where to find you online (social media or web site), your most recent book
Example: “Hello, my name is Robert Frost. I’m a poet living in Salt Lake City. The title of this poem is “The Road Not Taken” and it was originally published in The Atlantic Monthly. [READ POEM]. This is Robert Frost and my most recent book is The Boy’s Will. You can find it on my web site RobertFrostPoems.com or follow me on Twitter and Instagram.”
How to record
Use your smartphone’s voice memo app or another digital recording device. An easy way to record audio using the built-in voice memo app on your smartphone. Be sure to check the audio settings on your phone and app before recording. For the iPhone, set it to lossless. For Android phones, use the highest quality available. Either wav or mp3 files work, as long as it results in 44100 hz, 16-bit, mono or better.
NOTE: Try a few practice recordings to determine the best placement of the phone’s microphone in relation to your mouth — usually a 45-degree angle and two inches away is best.
Upload your audio into the cloud (Google Drive, for example), then send the download link to rockcanyonpoets@gmail.com. Please include an author photo and any website/social media information for you or your work. If the topic of the poem is in relation to a current event or social justice issue, please let us know in the body of the email.
You should receive a response within a month or two.
Then tune in on KRCL RadioActive for new Poetry STILL Happens mini-features, played throughout the month and featured on their web site and Facebook, as well as the Rock Canyon Poets web site and Facebook. Follow both to make sure not to miss a thing!
Announcing the Community Writing Center’s Annual 30 Poems in 30 Days Writing Competition! Write 30 poems based on daily prompts throughout the month of April. Winners will have a chapbook of their original poems produced by the CWC.
Register by April 30th, either online or in person, for just $5 (fee can be waived on request).
April 1, 2020 at 10:00 a.m., the first of the 30 writing prompts will be posted on the CWC’s Facebook (@CommunityWritingCenter) and Instagram (@slcc_cwc) accounts. Each morning, a new prompt will be posted. Participants must meaningfully incorporate each prompt into the corresponding poem. Contestants must submit their poems via Submittable or in person at the CWC by May 9, 2020 @ 3 p.m. Please see our full rules and regulations.
April is National Poetry Month! Join the CWC for an online workshop that celebrates poetry in all its glory! We’ll explore various genres of poetry, learn to compose poems, and practice revising and sharing our work. We also encourage you to submit to our 30 Poems in 30 Days contest – winners will have a chapbook of their original work published by the CWC.
Cost: Free. Registration is required.
Location: Location: Online–Details TBA
The Southern Quill is an undergraduate literary journal edited by students at Dixie State University. Published annually since 1951, the journal has been in circulation for more than half a century. They welcome exceptional and polished submissions of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and visual arts from writers and artists residing in Utah and Clark County, Nevada.
Submission Guidelines
We do not accept previously published work, regardless of format or circulation.
We accept simultaneous submissions so long as you withdraw your submission if your work is accepted elsewhere.
Submitters between the ages of 12-17 must submit all categories of work to the Young Adult section.
Please include a short biography of 50 to 100 words with your submission. We will include it in our publication should we accept your work.
Upon publication, all rights will revert back to the author.
SQ contributors will receive two copies of the issue in which their work appears as compensation.
Rock Canyon Poets 