Ordering Books in a Pandemic
Good news! Our new online shop is live.
EVENTS
Performance: Poetry Camp Showcase
Fri. Aug. 7 | 3:30–4:30 pm CT
Please join us for a special reading honoring the hard work of our 2020 Poetry Camp participants!
Since 1999, Woodland Pattern's free-of-cost Poetry Camps have touched approximately 1,500 young lives in Milwaukee while also supporting the careers of some of the city’s most outstanding teaching artists and youth advocates. Both poetry-centric and multidisciplinary in focus, Poetry Camp offers a range of creative activities and formative experiences that help students aged 12–18 find and celebrate their voices, while also making it possible—through book allowances—for youth to fill their personal libraries with books that matter to them. Camp always ends with a performance by students for parents and the wider community, and this year we're excited to present this inspiring event online.
Our gratitude goes out to the many patrons who helped sponsor students this year and to the fantastic team of teaching poets and artists who served as core instructors and guest artists this week—Virnette Adams, Mahogany L. Browne, Franklin K.R. Cline, Steffon 'Brooklyn' Dixon, Nick Drain, Destinny Fletcher, George Jones, Kwabena Antoine Nixon, Heather ‘Byrd’ Roberts, and LaNia Sproles.
Workshop: I, the Revolution with Dasha Kelly Hamilton
Thurs. Aug. 13, 20, 27 | 6–8 pm CT each day | $100 General | $90 Members of WP
From antiquity, poetry has extracted truth, challenged anthems and elevated soul consciousness. I, the Revolution will explore resistance and power, with conversations about life and poetry in between.
Dasha Kelly Hamilton is a writer, performance artist, and creative change agent. Through responsive and respectful intentionality, Dasha leverages the creative process to facilitate critical dialogues around human and social wellness. Dasha delivers her engagement sessions to campuses, classrooms, correctional institutions, association conferences, social service agencies, municipal departments and team retreats. She is currently serving as Milwaukee’s Poet Laureate. Her nonprofit, Still Waters Collective, has curated poetry programming and spoken word events in the region for almost 20 years. The work has impacted more than 13,000 youth, provided professional development to more than 100 young people and created platforms for thousands of voices to be honored and heard.
Dasha has written for national, regional, and local magazines; produced three collections of poetry; recorded four spoken word CDs; and published two novels. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University and has taught writing courses at Mount Mary University, Alverno College and UW-Milwaukee. Dasha served as an Arts Envoy for the U.S. Embassy to teach, perform and facilitate community building initiatives in Botswana and the island of Mauritius.
Featured Video: Gathering Place of the Poets
In 2017 Vegetarian Alcoholic Press published an anthology of Milwaukee poets, Return to the Gathering Place of the Waters, with curatorial help from Bethany Price. This anthology was created as a companion piece to the 1983 collection, Gathering Place of the Waters: 30 Milwaukee Poets. Every year since the updated anthology was published, Bethany and Vegetarian Alcoholic’s Freddy La Force have hosted a community reading to celebrate Milwaukee’s rich literary tradition. This year’s event took place virtually on July 24th, 2020 and was curated and hosted by Bethany and Parker Adams. It was an incredible reading, a much-needed reunion, and a testament to the brilliance and range of Milwaukee poetry right now.
Our thanks goes out to Bethany and Parker, both of whom shared their work, and to the many poets who performed: Brenda Cárdenas, Bryon Cherry, Elias Dorsey, Kimberley Ellingson, Susan Firer, Bailey Flannery, Julia Frank, Allison Friske, Annie Grizzle, Kelsey Marie Harris, Nadjah Hasan, Kiara Honeysucker, Sam Pekarske, Dasha Kelly Hamilton, Gabe O'Neil, Rithi Punyamurthula, Margaret Rozga, Alea Samone, Elias Sepulveda, Chelsea Tadeyeske, and Monica Thomas.
Interview with Anne Waldman
On June 28th, Anne Waldman spoke with us on Riverwest Radio WXRW about her latest album Sciamachy, which Patti Smith has hailed as “exquisitely potent, a psychic shield for our times.” In keeping with Waldman’s life-long ethos of cross-disciplinary collaboration, Sciamachy features Laurie Anderson on electric violin, Deb Googe (of My Bloody Valentine and Primal Scream) on baritone bass, free jazz legend William Parker on n’goni, Guro Moe and Hävard Skaset (of the Norweigan hardcore group MoE) on electric bass and guitar, Waldman’s son Ambrose Bye on synthesizer, and her nephew Devin Brahja Waldman on saxophone, drums and production. Copies of Sciamachy are available at Woodland Pattern.
Anne Waldman—poet, performer, professor, editor, literary curator, cultural activist—is the author of over 50 books. Growing up in the counter-cultural mecca of downtown Manhattan in the ’50s and ’60s, she went on to co-found the Poetry Project in New York’s East Village, booking poetry readings for luminaries such as William Burroughs, Cecil Taylor, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Eileen Myles, and countless others. In 1974 she co-founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics with Allen Ginsberg in Boulder, Colorado; and in 1975 she toured with Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue. In the decades following, Waldman went on to headline poetry festivals throughout five continents, receive numerous awards such as the Guggenheim Fellowship, and teach thousands of poetry students all over the world.
Woodland Pattern & COVID-19
Due to the ongoing pandemic, we have closed our doors for the first time in four decades. During this hiatus from our physical space, we are working to facilitate remote projects and welcome your input and participation.
While we're closed, we hope you will join us for online book discussions, writing groups, workshops, live poetry performances, and other events. We also invite you to sign up for our newsletter to receive Prompts Against Anxiety—weekly exercises that promote at-home creativity, personal fortitude, and solidarity with others.
Please take a look around on our new website to take advantage of the various resources here, including activity books available for download from Cosecha Creative Space and recordings from recent online events. Be sure to check out Tropical Lung: Tec Alliance—a new exhibition of works on paper by Roberto Harrision—and read our statement on racial justice, where you can also find links to anti-racism organizations and educational materials.
We acknowledge that in Milwaukee we live and work on traditional Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, and Menominee homelands along the southwest shores of Michigami, part of North America’s largest system of freshwater lakes, where the Milwaukee, Menominee, and Kinnickinnic rivers meet and the people of Wisconsin’s sovereign Anishinaabe, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Oneida, and Mohican nations remain present.
We further acknowledge the grave evil colonialism introduced to these lands through genocide as well as slavery, and also via racist and xenophobic beliefs, laws, and practices that continue to inflict harm upon Black, Brown, and Indigenous lives. We honor those who have lived—and do live, now—at these intersections of identity and experience, and are committed to the active dismantling of white supremacy.
720 E. Locust Street
Milwaukee, WI 53212
Phone: 414 263 5001
Hours: Tues–Fri | 11-8pm
Sat & Sun | 12–5 pm | Closed Mon
Contactless pick-up: Wed–Fri | 2–6 pm, Sat | 2–5 pm
Building Accessibility: Despite the age of our physical location, and attendant limitations to access, Woodland Pattern is committed to making its programs and facilities available for as many as possible. Please call for more information.
Events Accessibility: Woodland Pattern is in the process of obtaining captioning services for its online events and can provide ASL interpretation for live events. Please contact us with accommodation requests and questions.
© Woodland Pattern 2020