Woodland Pattern

⛺⛺Poetry Camp Week 1 (June 22–26) has reached capacity, but registrations for Poetry Camp Week 2 (July 6-10, 8:30 am–3:30 pm daily) are still open! ⛺⛺

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Woodland Pattern’s Poetry Camp is a free-of-cost, five-day, inter-arts camp aimed at helping young people embrace their own stories and feel confident about telling them! Each day includes a light breakfast, two hours of focused writing, a workshop with a guest artist, lunch, and a field trip.

Throughout the week, students write and participate in a range of creative activities, working not only with poets and spoken word artists, but also with actors, performance coaches, musicians, and visual artists. By the end of the week, students have produced various art works and created a body of new writing that is performed before the community and commemorated in print. At the end of camp, each student also receives a $100 Woodland Pattern gift card to purchase books of their choosing to help build their personal libraries.

Poetry Camp is open to Milwaukee youth entering grades 6–12. Both weeks will offer a very similar experience. To register or for more information, please visit woodlandpattern.org/youth or the link in our bio.

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Welcome to our 🔎 More About 🔎 series and celebrate with us the small presses, authors, and books from our Small Press Subscription Program!

Presenting our third small press, author, and book from the July Bundle, which you can sign up for by June 15th [link in profile]:

📚 Noemi Press 📚 strives to introduce voices that might otherwise be marginalized by mainstream presses to a broader audience. Noemi provides writers with support and guidance through extensive editorial collaboration. We have been a historically brown and q***r press since our founding in 2002.

✨ Said Shaiye✨ is an Autistic + ADHD (AuHD) Somali Writer & Photographer in Minneapolis. His debut book, Are You Borg Now?, was a 2022 Minnesota Book Award Finalist in Creative Nonfiction & Memoir.

⛔ Are You Borg Now? (2nd Edition, 2025) ⛔ A brilliant, experimental poetry memoir, this snippet from Douglas Kearney’s “Introduction” (reproduced on the back cover) offers a glimpse into the book’s vibe: “Are You Borg Now? is a memoir that freely, defiantly refuses memory. It blocks invasive trauma, turns away from it. And then, more often than not, Said will cipher with himself, rhyming to fill the whitespace with black. After all, “barring out” means to rap and to refuse entry … A poetics of refusal.”

Check out our full micro-interview with Said in the comments below!

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@ noemipressbooks


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Our incentive for starting this program was to offer assistance to publishers affected by Small Press Distribution's abrupt closure in spring 2024. Now in 2026, with the sudden termination of NEA awards for literary presses and magazines, the crisis for small poetry publishers in the US has increased manifold, as has our motivation to continue providing this service. You can learn more about these twin crises and get updates on how to help small presses from CLMP (Community of Literary Magazines and Presses). Thank you for helping us support the small-press ecosystem from which new voices in American poetry most frequently emerge!

Thank you for the wonderfully full past month of final programs at our Locust Street location. Hugs abounded and hearts were warmed during our Homecoming Farewell: A Weekend of Readings and Reunions; It was truly a beautiful sendoff.

Our Book Center will remain open through July 10 for browsing and to provide a stable spot for our two weeks of Poetry Camp. And we invite you to join us this summer for our off-site programming. . . starting with our June events (at Juneau Park 😉🌻)!

[Event links in bio]

Woodland Pattern is proud to be a 2026 general operating grant recipient of the Literary Arts Fund!
Thank you for helping us champion a lifetime practice of reading, writing, and poetry.

⭐Link in bio for the full announcement⭐

📖 Poetry Reading: Michael Imossan 📖

THURS, June 4, 6:30 pm CDT
*OFF-SITE* at Boswell Book Company, 2559 N Downer Ave., Milwaukee
Free with registration
[Link in profile]

We are co-hosting this event with Boswell Book Company to welcome Michael Imossan, winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets for first full-length collection, All That Refuses to Die.

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Imossan's debut collection brims with stories and memories that evoke as well as provoke. As he moves through historical places, the poet compares the past with the present and finds that nothing has really changed. Imossan moves into historical spaces such as museums and sites of enslavement, touching artifacts that hold meaning, and asking, Where was Africa? Where is Africa now? And what has changed? The Biafran War that claimed three million lives, though declared over, still has its lingering effect on Nigeria and Nigerians. Congo, though free of King Leopold and the exploitation of cotton, is still not free of other kinds of exploitation, nor is Uganda. Though the slave trade has ended, African bodies are still found in the Sahara Desert and in the Atlantic Ocean.

Poet Fady Joudah says: "Imossan is a capacious poet. He shows us how a heart can take in an entire continent and spread it as love to the world. His collective heart is perhaps the most interior heart and most true.”

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Michael Imossan is a Nigerian poet of Ibibio origin. He is curator of the poetry column for Nigerian NewsDirect, poetry editor for the Chestnut Review, and author of the chapbooks For the Love of Country and Memory and The Smell of Absence, which was selected for inclusion in Kumi Na Moja: New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set. He is a recipient of a PEN International writers’ grant.

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🍀📖 Poetry Reading: Poetry in the Park 📖🍀

TUES, June 9, 6:30 pm // Rain date: Wed. Jun. 10
*IN PERSON at Juneau Park
[Link in profile]

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Bring your blankets and chairs, snacks and drinks, and friends, and join us at the Solomon Juneau statue for this beloved summer reading series. Poetry in the Park takes place in Juneau Park on the second Tuesday of June, July, August, and September, with rain dates scheduled on the second Wednesday of each month. This season’s events are made possible with support from Juneau Park Friends.

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Shana Wilson, who goes by the name Blue Lotus, is a lover of words, good music, and creativity. She is a poet, spoken-word artist, photographer, and massage therapist, who uses her voice and sound to encourage healing, reflection, and hope. The healing power of poetry was introduced to her around age 7; she’s been an active listener, reader, and writer of it ever since. When the weather allows, she can usually be found near a body of water playing one or more of her singing bowls or her Djembe named Ocean.

Gina Cornejo is a Milwaukee-born, raised, and reunited autobiographical writer, immersive storyteller, solo performer, actor, and self-proclaimed professional feelings-haver. The daughter of a Peruvian mariachi singer and a professional jazz dancer from Chicago, Gina’s captivation with the arts began in her bloodline. She believes our distinct path of artistic expression is based on the risk of venturing out to seek within.

Nick Demske is the author of Nick Demske (Fence Books, 2010). A librarian at the Racine Public Library and County Supervisor for Racine County’s First District, Demske is the co-founder of the BONK! Poetry and Music series and co-founder of the Joshua Glover Justice Fund, a bail fund for people incarcerated pretrial in Racine County.

[Bios continues in comments]

Welcome to our 🔎 More About 🔎 series and celebrate with us the small presses, authors, and books from our Small Press Subscription Program!

Presenting our second small press, author, and book from the July Bundle, which you can sign up for by June 15th [link in profile]:

📚 Bench Editions 📚 A young press (started in 2024) based in Cincinnati, “Bench Editions is an independent publisher of contemporary fiction and poetry. We hold no allegiance to any particular aesthetic, genre, or form, but are dedicated to ambitious, energizing, imaginative writing, both in English and translation. We release 2-4 books per year.”

✨ Kylan Rice ✨ is the author of An Image Not a Book (2023), Name & Earth (2026), and Cloud on Page Opposite (forthcoming 2027). He edits Thirdhand Books and teaches as an assistant professor at Utah State University.

🍃 Name and Earth (2026) 🍃 To quote Cass Donish’s praise for the book: “Intellectually lush, channeling chicory and Keats, Kylan Rice’s poetic voice pries open a mirror; we step through it into an inverted world that belongs to this unique mind, this distinctively ardent language.”

Check out our full micro-interview with Kylan in the comments below!

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kylan.rice

Woodland Pattern, a founding member of the Poetry Coalition, is accepting applications for a paid Poetry Coalition Fellowship position. This position is 20 hours per week from September 2, 2026, to June 30, 2027. The total stipend is $20,000 plus $1,100 toward health care.

The Poetry Coalition is a national alliance of nearly thirty organizations dedicated to working together to promote the value poets bring to our culture and the important contribution poetry makes in the lives of people of all ages and backgrounds.

Founded in Milwaukee in 1979 as a forum and resource center for poets and other artists in the Great Lakes region, Woodland Pattern is dedicated to the discovery, cultivation, and presentation of poetry and the arts. Home to a nationally recognized collection of small-press poetry and offering annually more than 400 activities and events, Woodland Pattern promotes a lifetime practice of reading and writing through programs that encourage exchange across the visual, performing, and literary arts.

For more information and/or to apply, please visit woodlandpattern.org/opportunities or find 🌟 the link in our bio 🌟

Applications are due by July 15 ❕❕❕

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Images from

Each week, 📻 Woodland Pattern Radio 📻 broadcasts selections from nearly five decades of Woodland Pattern’s visiting poets, artists and musicians. And monthly, we re-share an episode from the glimmering depths of our archive.

Today we revisit episode 23: Merrill Gilfillan (2024) & Tom Raworth (2012)

This episode presents poet and alfresco essayist Merrill Gilfillan’s full Sunday, March 31, 2024 virtual reading for the North Central reading series, followed by a clip from Tom Raworth’s 2012 Woodland Pattern visit. Our intro music features the Mike Reed Ensemble and closing music features poet Tom Raworth on the music box in collaboration with Milwaukee saxophonist Steve Nelson-Raney.

Thank you as always for tuning in.

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We invite you to check out the Woodland Pattern Radio Hour page for more archived episodes, and visit Woodland Pattern on SoundCloud to hear the full programs from which these readings and concerts were broadcast.

For new episodes: Tune in at WXRW 104.1 if you’re in the neighborhood, or stream from anywhere via the Riverwest Radio website each Saturday 6-6:30PM CT.

[All links in bio]

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