Undocumented: Great Lakes Poet Laureates on Social Justice

press release: Join us for this gathering of seven poets laureate from the Great Lakes region reading from the new anthology, Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice. The book is organized around themes from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Ten Ways to Fight Hate: A Community Response Guide,” calling on readers to act on behalf of victims of social injustice. The evening of poetic and activist inspiration features Sarah Sadie, Wendy Vardaman, Kimberly Blaeser, James Armstrong, Oscar Mireles, Emilio DeGrazia, Denise Sweet, and Ken McCullough.

A native of Kalamazoo, Michigan, James Armstrong has published poems in Triquarterly, Gulf Coast, Orion, The Snowy Egret, The New York Times Book Review, Shade, and elsewhere. He has a Ph.D. in American Literature from Boston University and has taught English and Creative Writing at Northwestern University and in the MFA program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His book of poems, Monument in a Summer Hat, was published in 1999 by New Issues Press. A fine-arts press edition of his work on Lake Superior, entitled Purl, was published in May of 2003 by Syphon Press. Armstrong received the PEN-New England Discovery Prize for poetry in 1996, and he has been awarded both an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in poetry and a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship in poetry. His latest book, Blue Lash, came out in April, 2006, from Milkweed Editions. He is a Professor of English at Winona State University in Winona, Minnesota, and was Winona’s first Poet Laureate.

Kimberly Blaeser, writer, photographer, and scholar, is the author of three poetry collections—most recently Apprenticed to Justice; and editor of Traces in Blood, Bone, and Stone: Contemporary Ojibwe Poetry. She served as Wisconsin Poet Laureate for 2015-16.  A Professor at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she teaches Creative Writing and Native American Literature. Blaeser also serves on the faculty for the Institute of American Indian Arts low rez MFA program. She is an editorial board member for the “American Indian Lives” series of the University of Nebraska Press and for the “Native American Series” of Michigan State University Press. Her poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction have been widely anthologized, with poetry selections translated into several languages including Spanish, French, Norwegian, Indonesian, and Hungarian. An enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, she grew up on White Earth Reservation.

Sarah Sadie (Sarah Busse) is co-editor of Cowfeather Press (www.cowfeatherpress.org) and one of the Poets Laureate of Madison, Wisconsin (2012-2015), where she lives with her family. Her poems and books have won the Council for Wisconsin Writers’ Niedecker and Posner Prizes, as well as a Pushcart. Do-It-Yourself Paper Airplanes, her most recent chapbook, was published in 2015 by Five Oaks Press. Sarah teaches online at the Loft, at the University of Iowa’s Summer Writing Festival, and occasionally elsewhere. These days you can find her blogging at Dowsing for Divinity on the Patheos Pagan channel, and occasionally posting articles, pictures and notes of interest on her website.

Emilio DeGrazia, a long-time resident of Winona, Minnesota, founded Great River Review in 1977. A first collection of short fiction, Enemy Country (New Rivers Press), was selected by Anne Tyler for a Writer’s Choice Award, and a novel, Billy Brazil (New Rivers Press), was chosen for a Minnesota Voices award. A second story collection, Seventeen Grams of Soul, received a Minnesota Book Award in 1995, and a second novel, A Canticle for Bread and Stones, appeared in 1996.  In the past few years DeGrazia published Burying the Tree, his first collection of essays; a memoir (of sorts) called Walking on Air in a Field of Greens; Seasonings, a first collection of poetry; and Eye Shadow, creative non-fiction. He also has served two terms as Winona’s Poet Laureate.

Ken McCullough was born in Staten Island NY but spent most of his childhood in Newfoundland. He regards the mountains of Montana and Wyoming as his spiritual home. In 1992 he was adopted into the Minneconjou band of the Lakota nation. McCullough is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop. He was Poet Laureate of Winona, MN for three terms. His most recent books of poetry are Dark Stars and Broken Gates, both from Red Dragonfly Press, his ninth and tenth books. He has also published fiction, reviews and illustrations, and his work has received several awards. McCullough translated the poetry of Pol Pot survivor U Sam Oeur (Sacred Vows--a bilingual edition) and collaborated with U on his memoir (Crossing Three Wildernesses) both with Coffee House Press. McCullough lives with his wife Lynn, a playwright, on a farm just outside Winona, where he plans to make his stand.

Oscar Mireles is the first Latino Poet Laureate (2016-18) of the City of Madison. He is the editor of three anthologies titled I Didn't Know There Were Latinos in Wisconsin in which the last edition featured 40 Latino writers. He published a chapbook titled Second Generation in 1985. He has read poetry at the Detroit Institute of Art, Chicago Cultural Center and The Loft in Minneapolis. He has been the Executive Director of Omega School for the past 22 years, which provides GED preparation for young adults in Dane County. 

Denise Sweet is faculty emerita at UW-Green Bay. She is the author of Know By Heart and Songs For Discharming and a co-author of Days of Grace and Nitaawichige. Songs for Discharming won both the WI Posner Award for Poetry and the Diane Decorah Award awarded by the North American Indigenous Writer’s Circle of the Americas.  She is Anishinaabe (White Earth).

Sweet’s poetry and fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals such as Cream City Review, Calyx, Sinister Wisdom, Yellow Medicine Review, Another Chicago Magazine. In 2006 the International Crane Foundation commissioned Sweet to author a poem for the organization— eventually titled, “All The Animals Came Singing.”  Additionally, her poem, “Constellations,” is part of a permanent installation at the Midwest Express Center in Milwaukee. In 2004, she became Wisconsin’s second Poet Laureate.

Her most recent book, Palominos Near Tuba City: New and Selected Poems was released in April 2018.

Wendy Vardaman (wendyvardaman.com) is the author of Reliquary of Debt (LitFest Press 2015) and Obstructed View, co-editor of Local Ground(s)--Midwest Poetics and Echolocations, Poets Map Madison, founding co-editor of Cowfeather Press, and one of Madison's two Poets Laureate (2012-2015).