I met with Marcus If at Backcountry Pizza to talk about Frozen Dead Guy Days (FDGD). For nearly three hours we discussed poetry, educational gatekeeping, gentrification, ontology, Buddhism, and the one time at FDGD when a uniformed Colorado Ranger quoted Pablo Neruda, in Spanish, perfectly.

If is a writer, a poet, a performer, a philosopher, a steam shovel operator, a licensed radiation engineer, and a wildly engaging person. Since coming to Colorado from a troubled childhood in Torrington, Connecticut, If has ridden the wave of public performance as an art form and has since become a leader and proponent for that community.

“The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and Leary’s books was what really got me going on the psychology of altered states of consciousness, of which there are many Buddhist practices; that’s why I ended up out here.”

Street poets were a part of a thriving scene in Boulder in the late 80s. This is when If enrolled at Naropa University, a nonsectarian, Buddhism-inspired university.

“When I started going to school there in 1989 it had two very large draws for me. One was that it had the only transpersonal psychology program in the country; it also had the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.”

“By being a student there I met all the beat poets and spent time hanging out with a bunch of them; I really got to know who those people were. It was an interesting experience because I was 23. I was a psych student in the writing program and they really didn’t know what to do with me; but then I was a whack-job writer in the psych program and they didn’t know what to do with me either.”

If remembers the local artist community meeting major barriers in furthering their education at that time, which gave him the motivation to start his own “anarchist” free school in 2012, the Beyond Academia Free Skool.

“So Naropa, the Jack Kerouac school, has a summer writing program, it used to be a four week program and back in the 90s it was running eight grand for four weeks, and that was just ridiculous. Meanwhile there’s a thriving poetry community outside of Naropa and those people couldn’t participate and it was wrong; so we decided to start an anarchist, free school.”

“Initially it was just me, but then in 2014 I decided to have the summer poetry camp and that year we had ten of some of the top names from the front range teaching classes, and it was highly successful.”

The BAFS curriculum covers Poetic Constructs, Bardic Arts, Ontological Engineering, and Esoteric Practice; with such course titles as Idiot’s Guide to Poetic Constructs, The Poet as Magikal Beast, Architecture of the Human Biocomputer, and Bardic Magick.

If himself teaches a majority of the courses for BAFS, along with many other dedicated artists and leaders. BAFS is a non-profit, entirely free alternative school for writers, poets, artists and musicians that incorporated in 2014 and received fiscal sponsorship by the Boulder County Arts Alliance in 2017. The BAFS became part of a sponsored program at the Boulder Public Library in 2018, and has since expanded their community presence, as well as developed a program to introduce children to poetry.

BAFS programs, such as the Second Sunday Writing Workshop, are held at the Boulder Public Library. More extensive programs, like the Summer Poetry Camp, a two-week writing camp in July, is held at the Love Shovel Ranch on Caribou Road, which has been If’s home for 30 years. Those who sign up for the camp are inspired to bask in Colorado nature, practice “poetic terrorism” and compete in the Drunken Haiku Competition.

If describes himself as the “Zen Tyrant” over the meritocracy of the Love Shovel Ranch, which is base camp for the dedicated poetry troupe that help teach courses at the BAFS, as well as perform at FDGD.

If and his troupe of “painters, poets, motorbikers, musicians, hermeticists, and guerilla ontologists” flow with the philosophy of pioneer “Freaks” like the Black Mountain School and the Merry Pranksters. The spirit of such groups, who are dedicated tribes of artists and free-thinkers, is to perform art and poetry publicly and make an impression to the masses who are, traditionally, poetically deficient.

Apart from being the published author of four books and collections, such as Square Feet and Tail Spin: A Garter of Sonnets, If is also a local historian and operator of Nederland’s 70-ton Bucyrus 50B steam shovel.

If says, “Dan Martin is the guy responsible for the steam shovel being there and for me knowing how to operate it. I know how to do it all and I know how to train people to do it. I also know how to do the showman thing; you toot the whistle, the kids show up and they can get in and take a picture.”

If is employed as a shop foreman in Rollinsville where he enjoys the freedom to express his artistic impulses. He was also President of the Nederland Area Historical Society in 2010 and was part of the team responsible for salvaging the historic equipment you can see right outside of the Mining Museum.

If added, “Back when Nederland Historical Society still owned the Mining Museum, Dan and I were the guys who went and got the stuff off the mountainside. That’s where a lot of the stuff at the museum came from, same thing with the shovel.”

“The shovel came from Lump Gulch, it was sitting there sinking in the mud. The History Channel came and filmed the whole deal; we were the third most popular episode of Mega Movers.”

“You can see just a bit of my leather, but the whole episode they’re talking about the research I did and they got it all wrong!”

If, being a veteran street performer, has commanded the streets of FDGD with his charismatic presence and Bardic Magick. He said, “One of the Colorado Rangers - they usually assign one or two of them to watch over the poets, because we’re poets - I get up on stage and I’m like, ‘come on.’ and I tried him a couple of times and he’s like ‘yeah, I’ll do Pablo Naruda.’And he gets up there and he does it in Spanish, then he does the translation in English!”

“I did have to harangue him a little bit and draw him out of his shell, but it worked and he was happy. Poetry is the freedom of thought and anybody can have that, and everybody should.”

This year will be If’s seventh year at FDGD, and though he’s watched the waxing and waning of Nederland’s identity over the years, he remains spirited and beyond hopeful about the festival when discussing this year’s Dead Poet Slam.

“I’d like to see Belle Turnbull come back. Belle Turnbull was a Colorado poet 150 years ago and she was kind of amazing for her time period. She had things going on that weren’t happening for another 100 years. Who else would I like to see back? Dr. Seuss! Jim Morrison!”

“One of the rules is technically you can’t bring the same poet two years in a row. Everybody wants to do Sylvia Plath, but it’s got to be somebody different every year. You have to reserve your poet, and once that poet is reserved no one else can reserve it.”

As long as bardic warriors like Marcus If continue to preside over FDGD, unlocking and emboldening the gift of poetry that resides in all of us, then the true spirit of the festival and of Nederland endures.

Be sure to look for Marcus If in his leather tophat, though I’m confident it’ll be impossible to miss him. Dead Poet Slam will take place on 1st Street on Saturday, March 19 from 5 to 6 p.m. and on Sunday, March 20 from 2 to 5 p.m. Just look for Sylvia Plath, or maybe even Jim Morrison, standing and shouting from a soapbox.

BAFS operates on funding from grant opportunities provided by the Boulder County Arts Alliance, and is a program sponsored by the Boulder Public Library.

For more information on BAFS, go to: https://loveshovelranch.com/bafs/.

For more information on Love Shovel Ranch, go to: https://loveshovelranch.com/.