It’s often said in vino veritas, or in wine there is truth.

But perhaps it should be in poiesis veritas, or in poetry there is truth.

It’s National Poetry Month, and while poetry might not make headlines too often in our social media channels, devoted fans, both those who consume and those who produce the genre, rely on the freewheeling form of literature that can express ideas and feelings other forms of writing might not.

The Pikes Peak region is alive with soulful poets who have an eye for metaphor, an ear for rhythm and a way with syllables. Here are four who have recently released books of poems.

Jacqueline Viola Moulton, ‘Forgive My Pop Heart’

Favorite poets: Ross Gay, Ocean Vuong, Anne Sexton, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, her poetry students.

Many years ago, Jacqueline Viola Moulton found herself sobbing in a photomaton at an airport in France.

She stepped inside the photo booth, where people have their picture taken for a passport, and captured the fraught moment, both on film and in her mind forever.

“I think back on that moment, where the heart goes on a journey all its own,” Moulton said. “And the heart pops and we become split into an inside and outside person. All these moments where we become our insides, where our insides leak out and there you are crying in a photo booth. And you have visual representation of yourself outside of yourself.”

This long ago epiphany sparked her second book of poetry, “Forgive My Pop Heart,” which was released last year. It’s available online at Moulton’s website, thedepressedwaitress.com, and locally at Cottonwood Center for the Arts, where Moulton teaches creative writing, poetry and nonfiction classes, and hosts a monthly literary arts open mic night. All while working on her doctorate in philosophy and aesthetics and training as a national-level Olympic weightlifter.

The words pop heart in the title are a play on the words pop art. Moulton describes the book as a visual diary about the complexities of being human, of having internal and external sides and the tension between the two.

“A human is fascinating. We’re a threshold, a portal for the outside and inside,” she said. “And the heart is a muscle with an inside and outside that has both strength and fragility all at once. The heart is like a balloon, both metaphysically and in reality — it can pop. There’s trauma to that. But the heart is ongoing. It’s a muscle that keeps working.”

Deep, dark and whiny — that’s how Moulton describes the poems she first wrote in high school, each one starting with the words, “Hello darkness, my old friend.”

“I really love when I get to break the rules, and poetry is always a breaking of the rules,” she said. “At a young age there was a space that was different that allowed you to put into words what couldn’t be put into words. When you’re young, your feelings are so big. Like no one could ever imagine how I feel. Poetry feels like a natural vehicle for big feelings.”

And if one is waiting for the muse in order to write, Moulton has some pragmatic advice.

“I just sit down and do it,” she said. “Inspiration is the most overrated thing in the world. It’s so finicky and feels like a gift you either have or you don’t. I like working hard. It’s probably why I like lifting weights. So I sit down and do it and trust every time I do it something will come out. Is it always good? Absolutely not.”

Katie Scruggs Galloway, ‘Still and Still Moving’Favorite poets: Anis Mojgani, Jacqueline Suskin, Denise Levertov.

Four years ago, Katie Scruggs Galloway embarked on an intense dissection process.

She began ripping apart and looking at her relationship to her Christian faith, all prompted by the pandemic and that first summer of civil unrest when Black Lives Matter protests made daily headlines.

Galloway, who was finishing her undergraduate degree and taking a poetry course online, unloaded her creativity into poems about the tangled-up, divisive and aggressive world she saw on the news, where people took sides and clung to them.

“I grew up in the church and could see this framework I saw my life through with cracks in it. Crumbling almost,” she said. “I couldn’t buy in quite the same, but I wasn’t ready to let go of my beliefs completely. I struggled between my personal beliefs and the group beliefs of the church.”

Her new book of poetry, “Still and Still Moving,” reflects that wrestling match. Her 35 mm photos also populate the pages. The book is a finalist for poetry in this year’s Colorado Book Awards. She’ll find out if she won in June.

It’s available online at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com and locally at Poor Richard’s Bookstore and Basecamp Books and Adventure.

Galloway’s poetry is a case of what came first — the songwriter or the poet? Or are they the same? The Colorado Springs resident started noodling around on the piano and guitar and writing lyrics more than a decade ago — she has an EP on Spotify under the name Color Math — but eventually it became clear certain lines were better off on paper than in a song.

“There’s a John Keats quote that says if poetry comes not as naturally as leaves to a tree, it better not come at all,” Galloway said. “That strikes me as you have to work for a poem. A spark of a poem comes from passion and passion is spontaneous. Sometimes I’ll be ruminating on something and it’s like a poem asks to be written.”

Galloway, who’s also a freelance editor and writes spontaneous poetry at events with the writing community Becoming Poetry, hopes her new book offers comfort.

“The remedy to isolation is honesty,” she said. “For someone who’s looking for a companion in an isolating experience of deconstructing their beliefs or changing their mind, I hope this book can be a companion for them.”

Valerie Shereck, ‘Conversations With Flowers’Favorite poets: Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, e.e. cummings.

For Valerie Shereck, writing a poem is like painting a picture with words.

One of her poem paintings was inspired during an evening walk, when three deer ambled out into heavy traffic and a man wearing a headlamp came out of nowhere to guide them to safety.

“For me it was like I’ve got to share this with someone because it was so touching,” Shereck said.

The moment and subsequent poem made its way into her new book, “Conversations With Flowers,” which was released last year. It’s available online at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com and locally at Poor Richard’s Bookstore and Covered Treasures Bookstore in Monument.

Shereck, who worked as a nurse and still teaches yoga, released her first book of poems, “Red Birds in a Tree,” in 2020. Her poems usually spring from an image or something she’s observed that begs to be captured in words.

“I’ve always journaled,” she said, “but for me it comes easier to write a poem than to be longwinded.”

And for her, they need to have a deeper meaning.

“If it’s just words put together and doesn’t have any kind of message I can’t keep it.”

Kristen Sullivan, ‘You’re Ready to Hear This Now’Favorite poets: Rupi Kaur, Courtney Peppernell, Zara Bas.

The muse often likes to visit when we fall in or out of love.

For Kristen Sullivan, it was the latter. When the pain of ending an inadvisable relationship came along, she knew what to do — write.

Sullivan self-published her second book of poems, “You’re Ready to Hear This Now,” last summer. It’s available online at amazon.com and in the local bookstore Westside Stories.

“My roommate was like you’re sad, what are you going to do about it?” Sullivan said.

“I said fine, I’ll do something. I sat and wrote the first 25 pages. It was everything I needed to hear at the time. This is the hard truth, this is what happened. It was my way of healing.”

Poetry captured her attention at 11 with its succinctness.

“It’s more efficient,” she said. “I used to love journaling. I still do. I’d write two pages and I could say it in five lines. I could get to the point — this is what I feel.”

She likens the process of writing a poem to meeting up with another version of herself, a creative self who might or might not show up.

“I’ll go to a coffee shop or be at home and say is she going to come?” Sullivan said. “It feels like I’m so in love with this person, my creative self. I’m so excited to see her, I hope she shows up. But even if she doesn’t I’ve sat down and practiced. And if she does show up we wrote something inspiring and fun.”

Contact the writer: 636-0270