Ed Werstein, winner of last year’s Council for Wisconsin Writers’ Lorine Niedecker Poetry Award for the best collection 
of up to five poems published in literary magazines by a Wisconsin-based writer, expresses appreciation for his writing residency at Shake Rag Alley School for Arts and Crafts in Mineral Point, Wisconsin. The award includes the residency and a $500 prize.
I’d like to thank the CWW once again for their support of Wisconsin writers, and for sponsoring the Lorine Niedecker Prize for Poetry. Being last year’s recipient, I was awarded a week-long residency at Shake Rag Alley in Mineral Point, WI. I spent the week of January 13th at The Tuckpoint, one of the residences operated by Shake Rag Alley.
Located about a block from the main Shake Rag campus, The Tuckpoint is indeed unique. It was built on a vacant lot, and is a front, back and roof between two previously existing buildings, using the exterior walls of the adjacent buildings for its interior walls.
Constructed by local stone mason, potter, and artist, Roland Sardeson, the interior is filled with artifacts and artwork created by him, and other local artists, as well as antique oddities scavenged by Sardeson over the years. Just one example: the banisters are salvaged scythe handles.
Mr Sanderson lived there until 2009 when he turned the building over to Shake Rag Alley to manage. After his death in 2016, Shake Rag assumed ownership.
The quiet, solitude of winter is the perfect time for a writer retreat, and I was able to accomplish some of my writing goals, as well as get as much reading done in a week as I usually do in a month. I completed a chapbook manuscript of poems about my youth that will be forthcoming from Fireweed Press.
Please support Shake Rag Alley and CWW in any way that you can.
Ed Werstein