Trident Poetry: Former Colorado Poet Laureate David Mason and Mark Irwin

David Mason was born in Bellingham, Washington, and has lived in many parts of the world. He served four years as poet laureate of Colorado before moving to Tasmania in 2018. His many books include The Country I Remember (winner of the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award), Ludlow: A Verse Novel (winner of the Colorado Book Award), The Sound: New and Selected Poems and Pacific Light. Mason has also written four books of essays and co-edited several textbooks and anthologies. His work can be found in The New Yorker, The Weekend Australian, The Australian Book Review, Poetry, The Wall Street Journal, The Times Literary Supplement, The Hudson Review, The Nation, and many other periodicals. His libretti for operas by composers Lori Laitman and Tom Cipullo are all available on CD from Naxos. Mason’s website can be found at https://davidmasonpoet.com

Mark Irwin is the author of thirteen collections of poetry, including Once When Green (2025), Joyful Orphan (2023), Shimmer (2020), American Urn: Selected Poems (1987-2014), Tall If (2008), and Bright Hunger (2004). Recognition for his work includes The Nation/Discovery Award, two Colorado Book Awards, four Pushcart Prizes, the James Wright Poetry Award, the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry, The Juniper Prize for Poetry, and fellowships from the Fulbright, Lilly, and NEA. He has also translated three volumes of poetry and lives in Colorado and Los Angeles, where he teaches at the University of Southern California. His poetry has been translated into several languages.

Mark Irwin’s new poems that ask “how long, how bright?” are radiant with a sheen of longing and urgency.

—Arthur Sze, National Book Award

“So often we consider how to tell the story of our beginnings, but what is it to persist, through language, in a suspended state of endings? To “witness a world that is perishing” even as one is “lonely for the present”? Once When Green is a primer in listening to that which we are unaccustomed to conceiving of as having sound, relayed in a rush of lyric language after the lilting of waves and movement of stars.                                                                                

—Abigail Chabitnoy

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