Our April Watershed reading featured poets published in the Through This Door: Wisconsin in Poems anthology. On April 17, 2021 at 7pm, poets Terimarie Degree, Jim Landwehr, Ed Werstein, Kathrine Yets, Kimberly Blaeser, Nick Demske, Abayo Animashaun, Esteban Colon, and Roberto Harrison will read their work. The reading included a brief Q&A with the poets. This event was streamed live on our YouTube channel and on our Facebook page.
April Watershed Reading
Abayomi Animashaun is the author of three poetry collections and editor of three anthologies. A member of the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission, he teaches at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and lives in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Kimberly Blaeser, past Wisconsin Poet Laureate and founding director of In-Na-Po—Indigenous Nations Poets, is a writer, photographer, and scholar. She is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Copper Yearning, the bilingual Résister en dansant/Ikwe-niimi: Dancing Resistance, and the 2024 volume Ancient Light. Blaeser edited Traces in Blood, Bone, and Stone: Contemporary Ojibwe Poetry and wrote the monograph Gerald Vizenor: Writing in the Oral Tradition. Her photographs, picto-poems, and ekphrastic pieces have appeared in exhibits such as “Visualizing Sovereignty,” and “No More Stolen Sisters.” An Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist, she is an enrolled member of White Earth Nation. The 2024 Mackey Chair in Creative Writing at Beloit College and a Vassar College Tatlock Fellow, Blaeser is a Professor Emerita at UW–Milwaukee and an MFA faculty member for Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Her accolades include... Read More
A transplant from the South Chicagoland area, Esteban Colon was the 2018-19 Poet Laureate of Kenosha, Wisconsin. He is the author of Things I Learned the Hard Way and has been published in many journals and anthologies. He continues writing more because of the current state of our world, than despite it.
Terimarie Degree grew up with both parents serving in the US Navy and has lived everywhere from California to the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. Her work has been published in literary journals and anthologies including Where I Want to Live (2018), Secret Words Volume 4 (2019), On Environment (2019) and Reflections (2020).
Nick Demske is a poet, librarian and movement worker based out of Racine, Wisconsin. His first book is self-titled and won the Fence Modern Poets Series in 2010.
Roberto Harrison, who is also a visual artist, served as 2017-2019 Milwaukee Poet Laureate. He has published six books of poetry, including Bridge of the World (2017) and Yaviza (2017) and served as a co-editor for the Resist Much/Obey Little anthology.
Jim Landwehr has published five poetry collections, most recently Thoughts From a Line at the DMV and Genetically Speaking. He served as 2018-2019 poet laureate for the Village of Wales, Wisconsin. During his term, he solicited and received over 50 autographed books of poetry for donation to Kettle Moraine High School.
Ed Werstein, Milwaukee, is the East Region VP of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets (WFOP) and represents the WFOP on the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission. In 2018 he edited the anthology, Bards Against Hunger: Wisconsin Edition, which raised money for local food pantries and shelters. His recent chapbook is Benediction & Baseball (Fireweed Press).
Margaret Rozga, 2019-2020 Wisconsin Poet Laureate, initiated the project that grew into this anthology in workshops throughout Wisconsin and served as co-editor in bringing Through This Door to publication. Her fifth book of poems, Holding My Selves Together, is scheduled for publication in May 2021 by Cornerstone Press.
Angela (Angie) Trudell Vasquez was the Madison Poet Laureate from 2020 to 2024, and the first Latina to hold the position. She received her MFA in poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2017. In Light, Always Light, her third collection of poetry came out in 2019, and her fourth, My People Redux, was published in 2022 both from Finishing Line Press. She started the first Youth Poet Laureate in Wisconsin during her poet laureate term. Angie is also a Macondo Fellow, was a Ruth Lilly Fellow as an undergrad, and the former Chair of the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission. She is actively seeking a home for her fifth collection of poetry, The Farewell Tour, and in the ninth year of rewilding her yard back to prairie. Her working theory is the land remembers.
Kathrine Yets, a winner of the Wisconsin Writers Association’s Jade Ring Award, is the author the chapbook So I Can Write (2019). Her new collection, The Animal Within, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press. Her poems and reviews of poetry collections have appeared in many journals.
The Watershed Reading Series is supported in part with additional funds from the Endres Mfg. Company Foundation, The Evjue Foundation, Inc., charitable arm of The Capital Times, the W. Jerome Frautschi Foundation, and the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation.
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Arts + Literature Laboratory is located at 111 S. Livingston Street #100, Madison, Wisconsin, 53703.
Our galleries are normally open Tuesday through Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday noon to 5pm, and other programs take place throughout the week. Please check the events calendar and education section for details.