The Friends of Lorine Niedecker are pleased to be involved in organizing and co-sponsoring a series of poetry readings, performances, and public discussions as part of a ‘Very Veery’ Lorine Niedecker Week in Wisconsin from September 10 – 17, 2023. Events will be held in Fort Atkinson (Hoard Museum), Kenosha (Carthage College), Fish Creek (Write On Door County), and Milwaukee (Woodland Pattern) and will feature Jenny Penberthy, Kate Colby, Flora Coker, Nick Gulig, Chuck Stebelton, and Richard Meier. The events of this week are cosponsored by Friends of Lorine Niedecker, Woodland Pattern, The Hoard Museum, Carthage College, The Ridges Sanctuary, and Write On Door County.
More details below:
Sunday, September 10, 2pm
Hoard Museum, Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin
“Trim Green Thought”
Jenny Penberthy, Kate Colby & Flora Coker
Jenny Penberthy, Kate Colby, and Flora Coker will engage in a public discussion of Lorine Niedecker’s published fiction and poetics with emphasis on Niedecker’s ‘The evenings automobiles’
Jenny Penberthy’s research and writing have focused on the poetry of Lorine Niedecker. She edited Niedecker’s poems—New Goose (Listening Chamber, 2003), Lorine Niedecker: Collected Works (University of California Press, 2002), and Harpsichord & Salt Fish (Pig Press, 1991) —and her letters—Niedecker and the Correspondence with Zukofsky 1931-1970 (Cambridge University Press, 1993)—along with a collection of essays and letters, Lorine Niedecker: Woman & Poet (National Poetry Foundation, University of Maine, 1996). In 2016 she edited Kenneth Cox: The Art of Language for Flood Editions in Chicago. Currently, she is working on a collection of previously unpublished Niedecker letters and on a book about Fulcrum Press.
Kate Colby’s nine books of poetry and essays include I Mean, Dream of the Trenches, and, most recently Reverse Engineer. She has received awards and fellowships from the Poetry Society of America, Rhode Island State Council for the Arts, the Dodd Research Center at University of Connecticut, and Harvard’s Woodberry Poetry Room. She grew up in Massachusetts, where she helped found and establish the Gloucester Writers Center, and currently lives in Providence. “I have written at length about Oppen, Creeley, Stein, Olson, William Carlos Williams and other adjacent poets, so writing about Niedecker was overdue. I grew up in New England, which shapes and deeply informs my work, so I have a particular interest in other poets who write less about than from place.”
“Flora Coker was a founding member of Theater X. For 35 years she kept company with the likes of actors John Schneider, Willem Dafoe, Deborah Clifton, Victor DeLorenzo, John Kishline, Marcy Hoffman and Rick Graham. She has played in nearly 200 productions over the course of her acting career, but Coker describes herself as a quiet person.” —Jackie Reid Dettlof
Wednesday, September 13, 6pm
Carthage College, Kenosha, Wisconsin
Poetry Reading & Class Discussion
Kate Colby & Richard Meier
Kate Colby’s nine books of poetry and essays include I Mean, Dream of the Trenches, and, most recently Reverse Engineer. She has received awards and fellowships from the Poetry Society of America, Rhode Island State Council for the Arts, the Dodd Research Center at University of Connecticut, and Harvard’s Woodberry Poetry Room. She grew up in Massachusetts, where she helped found and establish the Gloucester Writers Center, and currently lives in Providence. “I have written at length about Oppen, Creeley, Stein, Olson, William Carlos Williams and other adjacent poets, so writing about Niedecker was overdue. I grew up in New England, which shapes and deeply informs my work, so I have a particular interest in other poets who write less about than from place.”
Richard Meier has published five books of poetry: A Duration (Wave Books, 2023), February March April April (Oxeye Press, 2017), In the Pure Block of the Whole Imaginary (Omnidawn, 2012), Shelley Gave Jane A Guitar (Wave Books, 2006), and Terrain Vague, selected by Tomaz Salamun for the Verse Prize and published by Verse Press in 2001. In recent years he has practiced and taught workshops on writing and walking and other daily and durational writing practices. He is Professor of English and Writer-in-Residence at Carthage College and lives in Somers and Madison, WI.
Friday, September 15, 7:30 pm
Write On Door County, 4210 Juddville Road, Fish Creek, Wisconsin
Poetry Reading
Kate Colby & Nick Gulig
Kate Colby’s nine books of poetry and essays include I Mean, Dream of the Trenches, and, most recently Reverse Engineer. She has received awards and fellowships from the Poetry Society of America, Rhode Island State Council for the Arts, the Dodd Research Center at University of Connecticut, and Harvard’s Woodberry Poetry Room. She grew up in Massachusetts, where she helped found and establish the Gloucester Writers Center, and currently lives in Providence. “I have written at length about Oppen, Creeley, Stein, Olson, William Carlos Williams and other adjacent poets, so writing about Niedecker was overdue. I grew up in New England, which shapes and deeply informs my work, so I have a particular interest in other poets who write less about than from place.”
Nicholas Gulig was appointed Poet Laureate of Wisconsin through 2024. He is a Thai-American native of Eau Claire. Gulig is the author of Orient (Cleveland State University Poetry Center Open Book Competition, 2018), Book of Lake (CutBank, 2016), and North of Order (YesYes Books, 2015). A 2011 Fulbright Fellow, Gulig has received numerous other accolades for his work including the Rushkin Art Club Poetry Award, the Black Warrior Review Poetry Prize, the Grist ProForma Award, and the CSU Open Book Poetry Prize. Currently, he works as Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and lives with his wife and two daughters in Fort Atkinson.
Sunday, September 17, 2pm
Woodland Pattern, 720 E. Locust St., Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Poetry Reading
Kate Colby & Chuck Stebelton
Kate Colby’s nine books of poetry and essays include I Mean, Dream of the Trenches, and, most recently Reverse Engineer. She has received awards and fellowships from the Poetry Society of America, Rhode Island State Council for the Arts, the Dodd Research Center at University of Connecticut, and Harvard’s Woodberry Poetry Room. She grew up in Massachusetts, where she helped found and establish the Gloucester Writers Center, and currently lives in Providence. “I have written at length about Oppen, Creeley, Stein, Olson, William Carlos Williams and other adjacent poets, so writing about Niedecker was overdue. I grew up in New England, which shapes and deeply informs my work, so I have a particular interest in other poets who write less about than from place.”
Chuck Stebelton is author most recently of One Hundred Patterns & Three Heuristics (Green Gallery Press in 2023). His previous poetry collections include An Apostle Island (Oxeye Press, 2021), The Platformist (Cultural Society, 2012) and Circulation Flowers (Tougher Disguises, 2005). He served as Literary Program
Director at Woodland Pattern from 2005 to 2017, and returned as Interim Book Center Manager in 2023. As a Wisconsin Master Naturalist volunteer, he has led workshops and field trips for nonprofit organizations and conservancy groups including Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters; Milwaukee Public Library; Woodland Pattern Book Center; Friends of Lorine Niedecker; and Lynden Sculpture Garden.