The information in this post was provided by the women of Poetry Unlocked: Katie Chicquette-Adams, Cathryn Cofell, Sarah Gilbert, Bobbie Lee Lovell and Laura Winkelspecht:
PLEASE READ:
Last month, Poetry Unlocked’s monthly reading featuring Nancy Rafal and Margaret Rozga was visited by some unexpected/unappealing guests. We were zoombombed which means we were “hacked” by some pornography. We put hacked in quotes because we had had a very loose process for attending. We’ve freely shared our Zoom link because we want to encourage a diverse audience (but not THAT diverse!).
To help us try to avoid this in the future, we have changed the process for accessing our Zoom readings. You will need to register first. After you register, you’ll get a link to attend. We’ll first try the minimum security, so if you register once you’ll get the link that will work for the readings going forward. If we are hacked again, we’ll need to change it every month.
We have been talking about when we might meet in person again, are possibly thinking about late summer or the fall. If you have strong feelings one way or the other, please share with us!
To try out the new registration process, sign up to attend Fiction Night with C. Kubasta and Tori Grant Welhouse. Details and the link are below.
MONDAY, MAY 10
Fiction Night with C. Kubasta and Tori Grant Welhouse
7:00 pm
Virtual – see link below!
A limited open mic will follow, requiring an advance sign-up. Each open mic participant will have two minutes to read from any genre. Email us to reserve your spot at PoetryUnlockedAppleton@gmail.com. Names will be accepted in the order received until slots are filled. Thank you for understanding.
About this Event:
C. Kubasta writes poetry, fiction, and hybrid forms. Her recent books include the poetry collection Of Covenants (Whitepoint Press), and the short story collection Abjectification (Apprentice House). She lives, writes, and teaches in Wisconsin, where she is active with the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, edits the literary magazine Bramble, and serves as Assistant Poetry Editor at Brain Mill Press. Find her at ckubasta.com and follow her @CKubastathePoet.
Tori Grant Welhouse’s poems have appeared most recently in HerWords and Chestnut Review, and she was a runner-up for the Princemere Prize. She won Skyrocket Press’s 2019 novel-writing contest for her YA fantasy The Fergus, Etching Press’s 2020 poetry chapbook competition AND the 2020 WFOP Chapbook Prize for Vaginas Need Air. More at www.torigrantwelhouse.com.
TO REGISTER FOR KUBASTA AND WELHOUSE, CLICK ON THIS ZOOM LINK:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYvf-yrqDIvHdYrFgIliPn0Bzrl_v0NhTC_
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
ON DECK FOR POETRY UNLOCKED (virtual):
June 14: Sheltering with Poems Anthology Poets
July 12: Andrea Potos and Katrin Talbot
Aug 9: Jordan Brown and Madelyn Sosa
Sept 13: DeWitt Clinton and Nathan Reid
Questions? Email PoetryUnlockedAppleton@gmail.com.
These events are brought to you, in part, by the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets (WFOP), an organization founded for the creation, promotion and enjoyment of poetry throughout the state of Wisconsin. To learn more, visit www.wfop.org.
OTHER READINGS & EVENTS IN THE AREA
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May 17
ANNETTE LANGLOIS GRUNSETH
BOOK LAUNCH: Combat and Campus: Writing Through War
Hosted by Write On Door County
7:00 – 8:00 pm
Virtual – See Link Below
As a journalist and soldier with the 25th Infantry Division, riding armored personnel carriers into rice paddies, engaging in night time sweeps of the jungle, Sgt. Peter Langlois chronicles the smells, sights, and sounds during some of the darkest days of the war from 1968 – ’69. He would return home to a nation still protesting the war in which his younger sister, Annette, had walked to class behind National Guardsmen marching across the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. Their correspondence and her poetry offer a unique perspective of the war in Vietnam and social change happening at home. Together, they share what was learned and what was lost.
To register to attend this book launch:
https://writeondoorcounty.org/event/book-launch-combat-and-campus-writing-through-war/
DEADLINES & SUBMISSIONS
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Submit to Bramble: Summer 2021
Submission Period: April 1-May 15, 2021
Guest Editor: Margaret Rozga
The guest editor is especially interested in reading multi-vocal poems, poems that show not an isolated speaker, but one engaged with other(s). Some possibilities include, but are not limited to, poems with alternating speakers, poems that include either brief or more extended dialogue, poems that include one or more lines of a remembered or imagined voice, poems that use found text, centos, epistolary poems, and choreo poems.
Visit Bramble to learn more or submit: https://www.wfop.org/bramble-how-to-submit
Sheltering with Poems Virtual Reading
Information from CWW Acting Co-President Ron Czerwien:
Thursday, April 15, 2021
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Sit back and listen to poets read their poems from the anthology Sheltering with Poems: Community and Connection During Covid. This virtual reading is sponsored by Dwight Foster Public Library in Fort Atkinson
Hosts for the reading are Amy Lutzke, Assistant Director Dwight Foster Public Library and Bruce Dethlefsen, Sheltering with Poems editor. Anthology readers include Fabu Carter, Ronnie Hess, Tom Erickson, Janet Jennerjohn, Ann Zindler, Kimberly Blaeser, Robin Chapman, Tad Phippen Wente, Heather Hanlon, TA Cullen and B.J. Best
Register to listen to the event here: fortlibrary.org/covidpoetry/
Poetry is Unlocked on Monday, April 12, and More
Information provided by Poetry Unlocked.
Reminder of April 12 Reading + New Poetry Contest!
MONDAY, APRIL 12
Nancy Rafal and Margaret Rozga
7:00 pm
Virtual – see link below
A limited open mic will follow, requiring an advance sign-up. Email us to reserve your spot at PoetryUnlockedAppleton@gmail.com. Names will be accepted in the order received until slots are filled. Thank you for understanding.
About this Event:
Nancy Rafal, Poet Laureate of Door County (April 2019-March 2021), has been writing poetry for the last three decades. She is not a “disciplined” writer and writes when the spirit moves her. Nancy’s work has appeared in many issues of the Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar, Hummingbird, and other publications. Her reading will be a retrospective of poems that have appeared in the calendars and a few she wished had been selected.
She is a past treasurer for the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and the Wisconsin Writers Association. She helped initiate the Poetry Trail in Newport State Park in Door County and the Door County Poet Laureate Project both of which are now under the auspices of Write On, Door County.
Nancy spearheaded the construction and painting of a 96-foot long mural in Baileys Harbor that honors the spirit of Lorine Niedecker and was painted by Ram Rojas.
Nancy feels she is a poetry advocate and believes that each person is capable of creative expression. “We just need a little prodding and encouragement to pick up the pen and put our thoughts and feelings on paper.”
Margaret Rozga served as 2019-2020 Wisconsin Poet Laureate. She has essays forthcoming in Mom Egg Review and Wisconsin Magazine of History. Her fifth book of poems, Holding My Selves Together: New and Selected Poem is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press in May 2021. She is co-editor of the anthology Through This Door: Wisconsin in Poems (Art Night Books, 2020).
Her other books include 200 Nights and One Day, poems about Milwaukee’s 1967-68 fair housing marches and Pestiferous Questions: A Life in Poems which features politically well-connected Jessie Benton Frémont (1824-1902) facing issues of women’s roles, the expansion of slavery, the Civil War, and its aftermath.
She is an emeritus professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee at Waukesha and was recently chosen the first scholar / artist in residence at the UWM at Waukesha Field Station.
TO JOIN US FOR RAFAL AND ROZGA, CLICK ON THIS ZOOM LINK:
Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82285369572?pwd=WHZ0THlXWVl5MWxOUzA2aEE3Qmt6QT09
To join by phone, call 1-312-626-6799
Meeting ID: 822 8536 9572
Passcode: 660912
ON DECK FOR POETRY UNLOCKED (virtual):
May 10: Fiction Night with Christina Kubasta and Tori Grant Welhouse
June 14: Sheltering with Poems Anthology Poets
July 12: Andrea Potos and Katrin Talbot
Questions? Email PoetryUnlockedAppleton@gmail.com.
These events are brought to you, in part, by the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets (WFOP), an organization founded for the creation, promotion and enjoyment of poetry throughout the state of Wisconsin. To learn more, visit www.wfop.org.
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OTHER READINGS & EVENTS IN THE AREA
April 30, 2021
“SHELTERING WITH POEMS” ANTHOLOGY READING
6:30 pm
Virtual through Write On Door County
Write On is proud to host a reading by contributors to the new poetry anthology created by the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and published by Bent Paddle Press. Edited by Bruce Dethlefsen, Kathleen Serley, and Angela Voras-Hills, Sheltering With Poems contains work by 74 Wisconsin poets,
Scheduled readers include Francha Barnard, Jody Curey, Kathryn Gahl, Annette Langlois Grunseth, Heather Hanlon, Ann Heyse, Christina Kubasta, Estella Lauter, Karen Loeb, Jill Madden Melchoir, and Tori Grant Wellhouse.
Please use this link to register: https://writeondoorcounty.org/event/poetry-reading/
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WORKSHOPS & CONFERENCES
APRIL 23 – 25, 2021
Writing on the Door Virtual Poetry Conference
Join Write On for 2.5 days of poetry readings, conversations, and craft talks. Faculty includes Mauricio Kilwein Guevara, Donna Hilbert, Sean Hill, Su Hwang, Ed Bok Lee, Denise Low, January Gill O’Neil, and Michael Torres. Keynote addresses by Naomi Shihab Nye and Kwame Dawes.
Follow this link to learn more and register: https://writeondoorcounty.org/event/writing-on-the-door-virtual-poetry-conference-2/
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DEADLINES & SUBMISSIONS
New Poetry Contest!
The Kimberly Library has opened up a new poetry contest for submissions until April 30th.
This year’s prompt asks poets to write a poem that matches the following theme:
Enchanted forests, tree mythology, the trees of your childhood… write a poem that takes us to the heart of the forest. We want your weird, whimsical, and scary forest poems.
The contest is free and open to children, teens, and adults. It’s judged by former poet laureates of Wisconsin (Marilyn L Taylor and Kimberly Blaeser), a National Endowment for the Arts Poet (Lisa Fay Coutley), an award-winning poet (Tori Grant Welhouse), and a poet laureate of the UP nominee (Tyler Dettloff). The winners of each age group get gift cards to a local bookstore, a journal, and we will be stenciling their poems on the Loop the Lock walking trail. For more details, visit here: https://kimberlypubliclibrary.org/the-heart-of-the-valley-poetry-contest/?fbclid=IwAR1BVCwqglT-tEGG7pxJJA1m2t9U9OpaIoj_Had5EKSj29nw1TESV0JwtyY
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Submit to Bramble: Summer 2021
Submission Period: April 1-May 15, 2021
Guest Editor: Margaret Rozga
The guest editor is especially interested in reading multi-vocal poems, poems that show not an isolated speaker, but one engaged with other(s). Some possibilities include, but are not limited to, poems with alternating speakers, poems that include either brief or more extended dialogue, poems that include one or more lines of a remembered or imagined voice, poems that use found text, centos, epistolary poems, and choreo poems.
Visit Bramble to learn more or submit: https://www.wfop.org/bramble-how-to-submit
*******
Submit your creative writing for The Pulse.
Write On, Door County coordinates initiative to share original poetry, literature in weekly newspaper feature. A committee from Write On will select pieces for publication and Pulse editors will determine what will be published each week. Works may be grouped in weekly themes. Submit your writing to info@writeondoorcounty.org. Include “WRITING SUBMISSION” in the subject line. Please include your contact information and a short (one-sentence) bio, including your tie to Door County.
This list of poetry readings, workshops, submissions and more comes to you from the women of Poetry Unlocked: Katie Chicquette-Adams, Cathryn Cofell, Sarah Gilbert, Bobbie Lee Lovell and Laura Winkelspecht.
“Community and Connection During Covid” Poetry Reading
Sheltering with Poems Virtual Reading
Wednesday, March 31, 2021
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Sit back and listen to poets read their poems from the anthology “Sheltering with Poems: Community and Connection During Covid.” This virtual reading is sponsored by Mystery to Me Bookstore in Madison. Event listing here: mysterytomebooks.com/evening-poetry
Host for the reading will be Angela Voras-Hills, one of the three poetry editors for the anthology.
Register here to listen to the reading: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/poetryevening
Ron Czerwien
Poetry Unlocked Leads Off April Poetry News
Courtesy of Cathryn Cofell with Poetry Unlocked and Wisconsin Fellowship of Poetry.
POETRY UNLOCKED
MONDAY, APRIL 12
Nancy Rafal and Margaret Rozga
7:00 pm
Virtual – see link below
A limited open mic will follow, requiring an advance sign-up. Email us to reserve your spot at PoetryUnlockedAppleton@gmail.com. Names will be accepted in the order received until slots are filled. Thank you for understanding.
About this Event:
Nancy Rafal, Poet Laureate of Door County (April 2019-March 2021), has been writing poetry for the last three decades. She is not a “disciplined” writer and writes when the spirit moves her. Nancy’s work has appeared in many issues of the Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar, Hummingbird, and other publications. Her reading will be a retrospective of poems that have appeared in the calendars and a few she wished had been selected.
She is a past treasurer for the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and the Wisconsin Writers Association. She helped initiate the Poetry Trail in Newport State Park in Door County and the Door County Poet Laureate Project both of which are now under the auspices of Write On, Door County.
Nancy spearheaded the construction and painting of a 96-foot long mural in Baileys Harbor that honors the spirit of Lorine Niedecker and was painted by Ram Rojas.
Nancy feels she is a poetry advocate and believes that each person is capable of creative expression. “We just need a little prodding and encouragement to pick up the pen and put our thoughts and feelings on paper.”
Margaret Rozga served as 2019-2020 Wisconsin Poet Laureate. She has essays forthcoming in Mom Egg Review and Wisconsin Magazine of History. Her fifth book of poems, Holding My Selves Together: New and Selected Poem is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press in May 2021. She is co-editor of the anthology Through This Door: Wisconsin in Poems (Art Night Books, 2020).
Her other books include 200 Nights and One Day, poems about Milwaukee’s 1967-68 fair housing marches and Pestiferous Questions: A Life in Poems which features politically well-connected Jessie Benton Frémont (1824-1902) facing issues of women’s roles, the expansion of slavery, the Civil War, and its aftermath.
She is an emeritus professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee at Waukesha and was recently chosen the first scholar / artist in residence at the UWM at Waukesha Field Station.
TO JOIN US FOR RAFAL AND ROZGA, CLICK ON THIS ZOOM LINK:
Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82285369572?pwd=WHZ0THlXWVl5MWxOUzA2aEE3Qmt6QT09
To join by phone, call 1-312-626-6799
Meeting ID: 822 8536 9572
Passcode: 660912
ON DECK FOR POETRY UNLOCKED (virtual):
May 10: Fiction Night with Christina Kubasta and Tori Grant Welhouse
June 14: Sheltering with Poems Anthology Poets
July 12: Andrea Potos and Katrin Talbot
Questions? Email PoetryUnlockedAppleton@gmail.com.
These events are brought to you, in part, by the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets (WFOP), an organization founded for the creation, promotion and enjoyment of poetry throughout the state of Wisconsin. To learn more, visit www.wfop.org.
***************************************************
OTHER READINGS & EVENTS IN THE AREA
April 8, 2021
“SHELTERING WITH POEMS” ANTHOLOGY READING
6:30 pm
Virtual through the Marathon County Public Library
The Marathon County Public Library is proud to host a reading by contributors to the new poetry anthology created by the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and published by Bent Paddle Press. Edited by Bruce Dethlefsen, Kathleen Serley, and Angela Voras-Hills, Sheltering With Poems contains work by 74 Wisconsin poets.
The reading is scheduled from 6:30 – 8pm and will feature these poets who have poems in the anthology: Max Garland, Nancy Austin, Elizabeth Tornes, Diana Randolph, Linda Aschbrenner, Bruce Dethlefsen, Jeffrey Johannes, Lucyrose Johns, Cathryn Cofell, and Kathleen Serley.
Please use this link to register: https://www.mcpl.us/events/10370
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April 30, 2021
“SHELTERING WITH POEMS” ANTHOLOGY READING
6:30 pm
Virtual through Write On Door County
Write On is proud to host a reading by contributors to the new poetry anthology created by the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and published by Bent Paddle Press. Edited by Bruce Dethlefsen, Kathleen Serley, and Angela Voras-Hills, Sheltering With Poems contains work by 74 Wisconsin poets,
Scheduled readers include Francha Barnard, Jody Curey, Kathryn Gahl, Annette Langlois Grunseth, Heather Hanlon, Ann Heyse, Christina Kubasta, Estella Lauter, Karen Loeb, Jill Madden Melchoir, and Tori Grant Wellhouse.
Please use this link to register: https://writeondoorcounty.org/event/poetry-reading/
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WORKSHOPS & CONFERENCES
APRIL 23 – 25, 2021
Writing on the Door Virtual Poetry Conference
Join Write On for 2.5 days of poetry readings, conversations, and craft talks. Faculty includes Mauricio Kilwein Guevara, Donna Hilbert, Sean Hill, Su Hwang, Ed Bok Lee, Denise Low, January Gill O’Neil, and Michael Torres. Keynote addresses by Naomi Shihab Nye and Kwame Dawes.
Follow this link to learn more and register: https://writeondoorcounty.org/event/writing-on-the-door-virtual-poetry-conference-2/
******************************************************************
DEADLINES & SUBMISSIONS
Submit to Bramble: Summer 2021
Submission Period: April 1-May 15, 2021
Guest Editor: Margaret Rozga
The guest editor is especially interested in reading multi-vocal poems, poems that show not an isolated speaker, but one engaged with other(s). Some possibilities include, but are not limited to, poems with alternating speakers, poems that include either brief or more extended dialogue, poems that include one or more lines of a remembered or imagined voice, poems that use found text, centos, epistolary poems, and choreo poems.
Visit Bramble to learn more or submit: https://www.wfop.org/bramble-how-to-submit
*******
Submit your creative writing for The Pulse.
Write On, Door County coordinates initiative to share original poetry, literature in weekly newspaper feature. A committee from Write On will select pieces for publication and Pulse editors will determine what will be published each week. Works may be grouped in weekly themes. Submit your writing to info@writeondoorcounty.org. Include “WRITING SUBMISSION” in the subject line. Please include your contact information and a short (one-sentence) bio, including your tie to Door County.
Poems by 74 Wisconsin Writers is Available in “Sheltering with Poems”
“Sheltering with Poems,” an anthology of 89 poems from 74 Wisconsin writers is available to order now from the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets website (WFOP.org).
The 122-page book features a foreword by former Wisconsin Poet Laureate Max Garland and both cover and interior artwork by Wendy Vardaman. Garland says poetry can relate the “ongoing news of what happens in the hearts and minds of ordinary people facing extraordinary peril. News from the front lines of feeling.”
The poetry editors for the anthology are Bruce Dethlefsen, Kathleen Serley and Angela Voras-Hills. The book is co-published by the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and Bent Paddle Press. All proceeds from sale of the book go to WFOP.
For more information about the anthology, including a list of upcoming virtual readings, go to bentpaddlepress.com.