Beth Paulson has been
widely published over the last two decades in national literary journals
and online sites. Her poems have been four times nominated for Pushcart
Prizes as well as Best of the Net. In
2019 she was named a Finalist for the Able Muse Write Prize. Her poetry
has appeared in several anthologies including most recently Going
Down
Grand: Poems from the Canyon (Lithic Press, 2015) and In Plein
Air: Poems and Drawings of the Natural World (Poetic License
Press, 2017), and Wet:An Anthology of Water Poems and Prose
(Sharehoouse, 2021). Beth’s sixth collection of poems, Luminous,
was published in 2021 by
Kelsay Books, and she recently co-authored with Don Paulson Images
of the Mountain West in Photographs and Poems (Twain Publishers,
2019). Beth taught English at California State University Los Angeles
for over 20 years. She currently
lives in Ouray County, Colorado where she co-founded and co-directed the
Open Bard Poetry Series and leads Poetica, a workshop for area writers.
In April 2019 Beth was named the first Poet Laureate of Ouray
County.
Beth's
previously published books include Immensity (Kelsay Books,
2016), Canyon Notes (Mt. Sneffels Press, 2012), Wild
Raspberries (Plainview Press, 2009), The Company of Trees
(Ponderosa Press, 2004), The Truth about Thunder (Ponderosa
Press, 2001). She has also written a collection of essays, Uniquely
Ouray: Reflections of Life in a Mountain County (Ponderosa Press,
2007).
Her poems have been included in Crazy Woman Creek:
Women Rewrite the American West (Houghton
Mifflin, 2004) and What Wildness is This: Women Write about the
Southwest (University of Texas Press, 2007). Two of her poems also
appears in IMPROV: An Anthology of Colorado Poets (Green Fuse
Press, 2008) and the anthology What's Nature Got To Do With Me?
(October 2011) from Native West Press. One of her poems appears in Going
Down Grand: Poems from the Canyon" 2015, Lithic Press.
Beth has received several prizes for her poems, including
a 2011 "Best of the Net" nomination for her poem, "Fragility." Beth was
named a semi-finalist for the 2011 Janet McCabe Prize for her poem "And
Then I Touched a Match to New-Laid Wood." Her poem, "Hollyhocks," was
nominated for the 2007 Pushcart Prize and her poem, "The Color of Snow,"
was nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Prize. Beth's poem "Moon Directions"
was awarded an Honorable Mention Prize by Passager magazine
for their Summer 2010 issue. A second poem, "Chance,"
honored by Passager, appears in their 2013 issue. Her poem
"Driving North" was nominated for a 2011 Pushcart Prize. Her poem Fragility
was nominated for Best of the Net in 2011. Beth received third place in
the 2012 Mark Fisher Prize contest for her poem, "Failte Eire." She
received second prize in the Common
Ground Review 2015 contest for her poem "Each Life Converges."
She received third prize in the Naugatuck
River Review's 2016 Narrative Poetry contest and
a Pushcart Prize nomination for 2016 for her poem
"Still Life with Oranges." Her poem, "In
the Museum," received an Honorable Mention in Common Ground
Review in 2018. For her poem "For Land that Moves Back and Forth"
she was named a 2019 semi-finalist by Naugatuck River Review.
Beth's poems have been published or are forthcoming in: The
Climbing
Art, Idaho Connections, Clark Street Review, Trestle Creek Review,
Herb Network, Buffalo Bones, Mountain Gazette, Hard Row to Hoe,
Sunstone, The Kerf, Welcome Home, Writing on the Edge, Tapestries, Mad
Blood, Blueline, Shemom, Blind Man's Rainbow, Voicings from the High
Country, Advocate, Sweet Annie and Sweet Pea Review, Red Owl,
Tributaries, Aethlon, Ruah, Innisfree, The Oak, HeartLodge, Slow
Trains, Pegasus, Terrain, Damselfly, The Lyric, Aurorean, Poetry of
the Spirit, Still Crazy, Iris Magazine, Plainsongs, Red Rock Review,
Poetry Saves, New Mexico Review of Poetry, Passager, Write On, Plain
Spoke, Whirlwind Review, Wild Goose Review, Ruminate, Willow Creek
Journal, Common Ground Review, Cloudbank, Imagination and Place,
Willows Wept, The Eleventh Muse, Colorado Life Magazine, Riversongs,
Pinyon, and Naugatuck River Review, Emrys Journal, Earth's
Daughters, Dash, Lindenwood Review, Westview, Colorado Life, Ellipsis,
The Progenitor, Trajectory, Front Range Review, Crosswinds,
Glassworks, Off The Coast, Clover, Illuminations, Third Wednesday,
Caesura, Leaping Clear, Main Street Rag, Slant, Bryant Literary
Review, Able Muse Literary Magazine, Santa Fe Literary Review, and
I-70 Review.