Loveland chooses second poet laureate for city

In honor of National Poetry Month, the Loveland City Council honored the first city poet laureate Veronica Patterson, and named her replacement.

The Loveland City Council kicked off its Tuesday meeting with an ode to what has been called literature’s highest form.

In a stirring proclamation that called poetry “a way to bring the community together through artistic expression,” council member Rich Ball declared April 2022 as Loveland Poetry Month, and ratified the selection of Lynn Kincanon as the city’s newest poet laureate and recipient of the inaugural Veronica Patterson Poet Laureate Award.

Kincanon first came to Loveland more than 20 years ago, drawn by both the beauty of its surroundings and the close-knit neighborhoods. She has been actively involved in the local arts community for more than a decade, and helped initiate the Loveland Loves Literature program at the Feed and Grain building.

Kincanon’s poems are often nature-themed, but her three-plus decades as a nurse practitioner have also featured heavily in her work. She said that she also finds no end of inspiration in her adopted hometown, from its beautiful natural surroundings, to her house on Garfield, but “the people you meet on the street” in Loveland are also a frequent subject of her poems, and one of the things she loves most about the city.

“You cannot pass a person on the street without talking to them,” she said. “People are just so friendly. And that’s why I moved here. I just was blown away that you really cannot walk down the street without people talking to me, and I’ve never experienced that in my life.”

Kincanon said she is excited to start her term as the city’s newest poet laureate, which will run two years. She plans to continue the programs initiated by her predecessor, but she would also like to see more outreach to nursing homes. She also hopes to publish an anthology of Loveland poets.

The post of Loveland poet laureate was created by another City Council proclamation in April 2019, in order to recognize that poetry “helps to make sense of the world in which we live, lending a feeling of belonging to a community and to the world at large.”

Patterson was supposed to serve only a two-year term, but agreed to stay on another year when the pandemic delayed the new selection process.

During her time as the city’s artistic voice, she initiated a high school poetry contest, now entering its fourth year, and created a dedicated poet laureate shelf at the Loveland Library. She also played a key role in bringing Joy Harjo, the U.S. poet laureate, to Loveland in April of last year.

“There’s so much that we want to do, and I’m excited about what we have done,” Patterson said of her accomplishments.