Spring Glen is a tiny town near Price, Utah in Carbon County. This is coal country, an area decidedly not originally part of “The Corridor” in Utah. That there’s a beautiful, historic Greek Orthodox Church there is a testament to the immigrant population, Greek and otherwise, who settled here as miners at the turn of the 20th Century.
I’m being hosted to read from and sign copies of Dream House on Golan Drive by Nancy Takacs, poet and former professor at Utah State University-Price (formerly the College of Eastern Utah) and friend and sculptor Karen Templeton. In fact the reading, a pairing with poet Danielle Dubrasky, will take place in one of the more unusual artist’s studios ever. Made of straw bales and mud, the two-story structure houses Karen’s expansive space where she works magic out of clay and bronze.
The Crandall Canyon Mine in nearby Huntington was the site of a horrible accident in 2007. The mine made headline news when six miners were trapped by a collapse in August of that year. Ten days later, three rescue workers were killed by a subsequent collapse. The six miners were later declared dead and their bodies were never recovered.
Karen was commissioned to create the memorial for this tragic event. She knew that the six bodies would never be recovered and that the families of the dead would never be able to see or touch them again. The bronze memorial in town is of the nine men, accessible enough for any and all to stroke the faces in effigy of those who so tragically died.
I’m honored to be reading with Danielle, my long-time friend (we met in college), a professor at Southern Utah University and an exceptional, big-hearted poet whose most recent chapbook Ruin and Light she will read from.
See you in Carbon County at Templeton Studios, 3732 N 2000 W, Helper, UT 7:00 pm
Postscript: Thanks for a terrific event in Spring Glen!
