The Midwest Video Poetry Festival will present a screening of the PBS Wisconsin digital series Welcome Poets, featuring Lorine Niedecker and Nicholas Gulig, on Saturday, October 18, 2025 at 7:00pm. Free admission, donations welcomed. Nicholas Gulig and producer Colin Crowley will be in attendance at the screening.
PBS Wisconsin’s limited digital series Welcome Poets explores the lives, work and legacies of two Wisconsin poets with strong ties to Fort Atkinson. In the series’ six episodes, the life and work of the late poet Lorine Niedecker is celebrated through the personal reflections of 2023-24 Wisconsin State Poet Laureate Nicholas Gulig as he examines the people, places and influences that have shaped his own life as a poet. All six episodes will be screened, with a total running time of approximately 60 minutes.
This series examines the impact that each poet has left and is leaving on the history of Wisconsin literature. Through a combination of contemporary documentary footage, historical reenactments, video collage and archival materials, Welcome Poets illustrates how Niedecker and her poems made Fort Atkinson a beacon for poets like Gulig, who went on to win the Wisconsin People & Ideas poetry contest twice (in 2017 and 2023), publish three poetry collections (including the award-winning books Orient and The Other Altar), and become Wisconsin's first Asian American Poet Laureate.
“Welcome Poets is a unique multimedia project that uses a novel approach to bring the thoughts and words of two important Wisconsin poets to life,” PBS Wisconsin multimedia producer Colin Crowley said. “Our hope for this web series is that it will inspire our audience to gain a greater appreciation of the role that poetry can play in defining the meaning we give to our lives and to the places we call home.”
