Contributors' Notes
Monarach Caterpillar. Larry, Bridget & Jeremy Mundth.
Photo by Katrin Talbot. See WI Poetry News for more info.
Grant Adams’s father grew up in Iola, where he learned to hunt and fish, trapping muskrats in order to buy school clothes. His mother, a first generation Finnish-American, was born and raised on a family farm in Eagle River. She recently returned home when Grant interred her ashes there.
Bobbi Altreuter has an English degree from UW-Stevens Point, and now works full time as an Administrative Assistant. She lives in Auburndale, WI.
Antler, former poet laureate of Milwaukee, is the author of Selected Poems, Ever-Expanding Wilderness, Deathrattles vs. Comecries, and Exclamation Points ad Infinitum! His work appears in many recent anthologies including Best Gay Poetry 2008; and Wilderness Blessings.
Judith Arcana writes poems, stories, essays and books, publishing online and on paper; this poem grew out of an exchange sparked by BT Shaw, estimable poet and excellent friend. Judith’s books include Grace Paley’s Life Stories, A Literary Biography and the poetry collection What if your mother; in 2011 she completed a fiction collection called HELLO. THIS IS JANE. Visit her website: http://www.juditharcana.com/
Linda Aschbrenner is the editor/publisher of Marsh River Editions. She edited and published the poetry journal Free Verse from 1998 to 2009 which now continues as Verse Wisconsin.
Besides poetry, photography and paper arts are Sharon Auberle’s passions. She is the author of two books: Saturday Nights at the Crystal Ball; and Crow Ink, and has recently recorded a CD of her poetry with some fine Door County musicians, entitled Something After Burning.
James Babbs is not a real writer but he plays one on TV. He thinks poets should be treated more like rock stars and have swarms of beautiful groupies chasing them wherever they go. His books are available from www.xlibris.com, www.lulu.com & www.interiornoisepress.com.
Daniel Bachhuber is a Montessori elementary teacher in the St. Paul Public Schools. He has published poetry in the Iowa Review, Poetry East, The Southern Poetry Review, and many others, as well as a book, Mozart’s Carriage, with New Rivers Press, 2003. He was born and raised in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin and attended Marquette High School and Marquette University.
Judy Barisonzi has been a Wisconsin resident since 1966, and she now lives among the lakes and woods of northwest Wisconsin. Semi-retired from teaching English at the University of Wisconsin Colleges, she gives workshops in creative writing and memoir writing, participates in several local writing groups, and publishes poems in local and national magazines.
Martin Bartels’ career in journalism and communications spans almost 30 years. His work has appeared in more than 100 print and online publications around the world, including AOL CityGuide (where he served as director of operations), the Jerusalem Post, Chicago Sun-Times, and dozens of regional and community newspapers. He now runs Seed Programs International, which provides quality seed to impoverished people around the world. Bartels lives in northern Virginia with his wife, two children, a cat, and a golden retriever. His family vacations in Wisconsin each summer, on Legend Lake, near Shawano.
Douglas Basford's work can be found in Poetry, Subtropics, Western Humanities Review, Smartish Pace, H_NGM_N, Diagram, The Hopkins Review, and elsewhere. He has been awarded scholarships for the Sewanee and Bread Loaf writers conferences and a translation residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute. He teaches at SUNY-Buffalo, co-edits the online journal Unsplendid, and is reviews editor for The National Poetry Review.
Ruth Bavetta’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Rattle, North American Review, Nerve Cowboy, and Atlanta Review, among others. In 2001 she visited near Rhinelander and discovered that the Big Woods of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Wisconsin look nothing like the redwood forests of California. It took a serious wrench of the mind’s eye to get that cabin into the proper landscape—green, leafy and crammed with growth.
Guy R. Beining has had six poetry books and 25 chapbooks published over the years, and appeared in seven anthologies. Recent publications include chain, epiphany, perspective (Germany), New Orleans Review, The New Review of Literature.
Michael Belongie, a past president of the WFOP and coeditor of the 2007 Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar, has five published collections of poems; his most recent collection, Now Is All We Have, was co-exhibited with selected oils and water colors of notable nature and wild-life artist, Jonathan Wilde in 2010.
Carol Berg has poems forthcoming or in Fifth Wednesday Journal, Pebble Lake Review, Rhino, qarrtsiluni, Melusine, and elsewhere. She has an MFA from Stonecoast and an MA in English Literature.
B.J. Best is the author of Birds of Wisconsin (New Rivers Press), State Sonnets (sunnyoutside), and three chapbooks from Centennial Press, most recently Drag: Twenty Short Poems about Smoking. He is related, distantly and through marriage, to the 1986 Miss Wisconsin.
Toby Bielawski is a Bay Area writer, and has published poetry in journals and anthologies including Alehouse, Verse Wisconsin, Spillway (forthcoming), Beyond Definition from Manic D Press, and Madroad: A West Coast Anthology from Breadline Press (forthcoming). Her new chapbook, Five Kinds of Fences, is out from Drafty Attic Press (2011).She teaches and runs a poetry slam at Las Positas College, and gets jealous reading Facebook updates about springtime in Wisconsin from her friend, poet Robin Smith Chapman. Even though spring in California isn't too bad, either.
Kimberly Blaeser is a Professor in the English Department at UW-Milwaukee. Her publications include three books of poetry: Trailing You, Absentee Indians and Other Poems, and Apprenticed to Justice, as well as the edited volume Traces in Blood, Bone, and Stone: Contemporary Ojibwe Poetry.
CL Bledsoe is the author of the young adult novel, Sunlight, two poetry collections, _____(Want/Need), and Anthem, and a short story collection called Naming the Animals. A poetry chapbook, Goodbye to Noise, is available online at www.righthandpointing.com/bledsoe. A minichap, Texas, was published by Mud Luscious Press. He’s been nominated for the Pushcart Prize 3 times. He blogs at Murder Your Darlings, http://clbledsoe.blogspot.com. Bledsoe has written reviews for The Hollins Critic, The Arkansas Review, American Book Review, The Pedestal Magazine, and elsewhere.
Melodie Bolt’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in magazines like Yellow Medicine Review, Windmills, and Tales of the Unanticipated. She lives near Flint, Michigan. Annually, she takes her children on the Badger car ferry across the lake to Wisconsin so they can attend a science fiction convention in Madison. She was published in VWOnline #101 as Melodie Barker.
Peter Branson lives in Rode Heath, a village in South Cheshire, England. A former teacher and lecturer, he now organises writing workshops. Over the last four years he has had work published, or accepted for publication, by many mainstream poetry journals in Britain. He has also had poems published in USA, Canada, EIRE, Australia and New Zealand.
Joseph Briggs has been on the Capitol tour seventeen times. Okay, it’s more like five times. Ask him a Wisconsin question. He dares you. His poetry-only twitter feed is at http://twitter.com/joewbriggs.
Sarah Busse co-edits Verse Wisconsin. She was awarded a Pushcart Prize and the WFOP Chapbook Prize in 2011. Once in a while, she still has time to write a poem.
Sean Butner currently lives with his wife and children in Oshkosh, Wisconsin where he is pursuing an M.A. in English. His work has appeared and is forthcoming in nibble, vox poetica, Midwest Literary Magazine, Indigo Rising Magazine. He maintains a blog at http://seanbutner.blogspot.com/.
Born in Monroe, Emery Campbell graduated from UW-Madison. He is the author of a book published in 2005 of his own poems plus translations of French classical poetry. In 2010, his second book came out: Selected Fables and Poems in Translation (La Fontaine, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud).
Fern G. Z. Carr is a member of The League of Canadian Poets, lawyer and teacher. She composes poetry in five languages and has been published extensively as far abroad as India, Finland, South Africa and New Zealand. For more information, please visit Carr’s website at www.ferngzcarr.com.
Alan Catlin has published over sixty chapbooks and full length books of poetry and prose. Among the more recent chapbooks are, “Deep Water Horizon” from Pygmy Forest Press and “Effects of Sunlight in the Fog” from Bright Hill Press.
Sherry Chandler is the author of Weaving a New Eden, a collection of persona and formal poems in the voices of women who featured in the history of her home state, Kentucky. Look for her work in The Cortland Review, Calyx, andThe William and Mary Review. Chandler lived in Chicago for six years during the 70s during which time she is sorry to say she never once traveled over into Wisconsin. She is, however, a Facebook friend of former WI poet laureate Marilyn Taylor.
Robin Chapman's most recent book is The Eelgrass Meadow (Tebot Bach, 2011). She is the recipient of the 2010 Helen Howe Poetry Prize from Appalachia. Her poems have appeared recently in The Alaska Quarterly Review and Prairie Schooner; she was the featured poet in the 2011 summer issue of Bosphorus Art Project Quarterly online.
Sue Chenette is a poet and classical pianist who grew up in Phillips, WI and has made her home in Toronto since 1972. She is the author of three chapbooks: A Transport of Grief, Solitude in Cloud and Sun, and The Time Between Us, which won the Canadian Poetry Association's Shaunt Basmajian Award in 2001. Her first full-length collection, Slender Human Weight, was published by Guernica Editions in 2009; her second collection, The Bones of His Being, will be released by Guernica early in 2012.
Lisa J. Cihlar's poems have been published in The South Dakota Review, Green Mountains Review, In Posse Review, Bluestem, and The Prose-Poem Project. One of her poems was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her chapbook, “The Insomniac’s House,” will soon be available from Dancing Girl Press. She lives in rural southern Wisconsin.
Chloe Clark grew up in north central Wisconsin and is currently a creative writing major at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She’s had poems published in a variety of publications including previous issues of Verse Wisconsin. She is the Assistant Editor-In-Chief of Women in REDzine.
Lenore Coberly has served as President, Credentials Chair, and Calendar editor of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. Her poems have appeared in The Sow’s Ear, The Formalist, Wisconsin Academy Review, Nimrod, and other publications and anthologies.
Cathryn Cofell serves on the Advisory Board of Verse Wisconsin. She writes, too; moreso in the past with five published chapbooks and a CD that combines her work with the music of Obvious Dog. She has lived in Wisconsin for all but three years when she tried to love and live in Colorado, both heinous mistakes now rectified.
Ginny Lowe Connors is the author of Barbarians in the Kitchen (Antrim House Books, 2005), a chapbook, Under the Porch (Hill-Stead Museum, 2010), and editor of four poetry collections. She has won the Atlanta Review’s International Poetry Competition Prize and the 2010 Sunken Garden Poetry Prize.
Elizabeth Cook was born and raised in Madison, WI and cannot contemplate living in any other state. She went to Carroll College in Waukesha, WI where she discovered her love of poetry. She especially enjoys writing about the beautiful Wisconsin landscape.
William Cordeiro has an MFA in poetry from Cornell, where he’s currently a Ph.D. candidate studying 18th century British literature. His work has been published or is forthcoming in journals such as Harpur Palate, Sentence, Carte Blanche, and Waccamaw.
Mary Cresswell came to New Zealand from Los Angeles in 1970. She has published widely in poetry journals in the US, NZ, the UK and Australia. Her latest book, Trace Fossils, has just been published by Steele Roberts in Wellington. See also www.bookcouncil.org.nz/ Writers/Profiles/ Cresswell,%20Mary.
Sue Crouse studies and writes poetry in the St. Croix River Valley near Stillwater, Minnesota. She was selected to participate in the Foreword Apprenticeship Program at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis where she is working on a manuscript under the mentorship of poet Thomas R. Smith. Her collection explores the difficult themes of grief and loss after the death of her daughter and the ways one can still find beauty in the world.
Tom Cullen has been published in the WFOP Museletter, the Wisconsin Poets' Calendar 2011 and in Mused BellaOnline Literary Review in the Fall of 2010. Tom has a BA degree from Cardinal Stritch University and an MBA from the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. Tom has been a member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets for more than a year.
Alice D'Alessio is the author of the biography: Uncommon Sense; the Biography of Marshall Erdman. Her poetry book A Blessing of Trees was winner of the 2004 Posner Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers, and her 2009 book, Days We Are Given was first place winner in the Earth's Daughters chapbook contest. She is contributing editor to Woodlands and Prairies Magazine.
Ramona Davis owns and operates Altered Words, offering freelance editing, proofreading, and typing services. In addition to her business ventures, Ramona has facilitated poetry writing workshops through the DC Public Library for youth in underprivileged communities, holds a Certificate in Advancing Youth Development, and owned an after school program to benefit youth in at risk areas of Baltimore, MD. She has also done volunteer editing for a variety of authors and owns an organization (Chained With Love) that donates handmade, crocheted scarves to homeless women and their families in the Dane County area of Wisconsin.
Janann Dawkins' work is upcoming or has appeared in publications such as decomP, Existere, Mezzo Cammin, Phoebe, Two Review & Verse Wisconsin, among others. Leadfoot Press published her chapbook Micropleasure in 2008. A graduate of Grinnell College with a B.A. in American Studies & twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, she resides in Ann Arbor, MI.
Bruce Dethlefsen was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1948 and moved to Wisconsin in 1966. He is Wisconsin Poet Laureate for 2011/2012, under the sponsorship of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. Bruce’s poems have been featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac and Your Daily Poem, where he was Poet-of-the-Month. Bruce also performs original music with Bill Orth as Obvious Dog on Cathryn Cofell’s CD, Lip. His new collection, Unexpected Shiny Things, is available from Cowfeather Press.
Rick Dinges has an MA in literary studies from University of Iowa and he manages business systems at an insurance company. Tulane Review, Cortland Review, Barnwood, Roanoke Review, and Gihon River Review have most recently accepted his poems for their publications.
Iris Jamahl Dunkle teaches writing at University of California, Santa Cruz. Her manuscript Alphabet of Bones was a finalist for the Four Way Books Levis Prize in 2011. Her chapbook Inheritance was published by Finishing Line in 2010. Her poetry, creative nonfiction and scholarly articles have appeared in numerous publications including: Fence, LinQ, Boxcar Poetry Review, Weave, Verse Wisconsin, Talking Writing, Yalobusha Review and The Mom Egg.
Karl Elder is Poet in Residence at Lakeland College near Sheboygan, where he also facilitates Sheboygan County’s Mead Public Library Poetry Circle. His series of essays in response to prompts from Creative Writing Now appear online at http://www.creative-writing-now.com/language-poetry.html.
R. Virgil (Ron) Ellis lives near Cambridge, Wisconsin, where he and his wife are busy restoring fifty acres of wetland and savanna. He is an Emeritus Professor who taught writing, literature and media at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. For an exploration of his work see www.poetrvellis.com.
Martin Elster, author of There’s a Dog in the Heavens! is also a composer and serves as percussionist for the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. His poetry has most recently appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Centrifugal Eye, The Flea, Mindflights, Scarlet Literary Magazine, and Soundzine. His poem, “Talcott Mountain,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by The Chimaera. As for Wisconsin ties, he studied at the Hartford Conservatory with Tele Lesbines, former timpanist of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.
Thomas J. Erickson is an attorney in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His chapbook, The Lawyer Who Died in the Courthouse Bathroom, will be published by Parallel Press in 2013.
Ann Fisher-Wirth's fourth book of poems, Dream Cabinet, will be published by Wings Press in 2012. She is coediting Ecopoetry: A Contemporary American Anthology, forthcoming from Trinity University Press in 2012. Her poems have appeared widely and have received numerous awards. She teaches at the University of Mississippi.
William Ford has two books, The Graveyard Picnic (Mid-America Press, 2002), and Past Present Imperfect (Turning Point, 2006). Two chapbooks, Allen & Ellen, and Descending with Miles were published by Pudding House in 2010. His good friend, Paul Zimmer (poet and editor), lives in Crawford County. They roam around the Kickapoo River and hit the high spots of Soldiers Grove.
Christa Gahlman was born and raised in rural Wisconsin with a great appreciation for the intimacy of the woods, wide landscapes, and textured fields. She is the mother of two incredible daughters and one amazing son. She now resides in the city of Madison, and writes...and writes.
Hanne Gault has been published in the Wisconsin calendar, the Pulse and Free Verse. She won third prize in Joanne Hirshfield poetry contest.
Joey Goodall lives and works in St. Paul, Minnesota. Along with back-issues of Verse Wisconsin, his poetry can also be found in the Innisfree Poetry Journal, and he sometimes blogs about pop culture at joeygoodall.wordpress.com.
David Graham has taught writing and literature at Ripon College in Ripon WI since 1987. He is the author of six collections of poems, most recently Stutter Monk (Flume Press), and an essay anthology co-edited with Kate Sontag: After Confession: Poetry as Autobiography (Graywolf Press).
Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the California Sierra. Her poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere. Her latest book—Walking with Elihu: poems on Elihu Burritt, the Learned Blacksmith—is available on Amazon. Connection to Wisconsin: a cousin in Wonnewoc, and in 1989 she helped instruct at a SAR dog school in Osceola.
Previously, Elise Gregory’s poems have been published in Hubbub, Strange Fruit, Fine Madness, and Ascent Aspirations. She received an M.F.A. from Eastern Washington University in 2005. She lives, writes, and teaches outside Ellsworth, Wisconsin.
Carol Lynn Grellas’s most recent chapbooks are Breakfast in Winter (Flutter Press 2010) and A Thousand Tiny Sorrows (March Street Press 2010). She’s also published two electronic chaps from Goldwake Press and Victorian Violet Press. Carol Lynn serves on the editorial panel for Triggerfish Critical Review.
John Grey has been published recently in the Talking River, South Carolina Review and Karamu with work upcoming in Prism International, Poem and the Evansville Review.
Peter J. Grieco is a native of Buffalo, New York where he studies mathematics at Buffalo State College. His dear friend Sasha hails from Madison and is, of course, a Packers fan.
Tim Hawkins currently lives a short ferry trip away from the shores of Wisconsin. His writing has appeared most recently in Four and Twenty, Iron Horse Literary Review, The Pedestal Magazine and Shot Glass Journal, and is forthcoming in Blueline, The Literary Bohemian, and The Midwest Quarterly.
Richard Hedderman’s poems have appeared in South Dakota Review, CutBank, Eclipse, and elsewhere. His chapbook, The Discovery of Heaven was published by Parallel Press in 2006. He is the Senior Educator at the Milwaukee Public Museum and a Lecturer in Theatre at UW-Milwaukee.
Beth Ellen Jack has enjoyed many writing groups, especially the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. Her poetry has appeared in The Goose River Anthologies, Hudson View, Chiron Review, Echoes, The Writer's Journal, The Writer & the 2011 WFOP calendar. Poetry awards included prizes from the Arizona State Poetry Society, Santa Barbara Writer's Conference & The Writer's Journal. Beth Ellen Jack adores Door County & dreams of retirement there.
Catherine Jagoe works as a translator. Poems from her chapbook Casting Off (Parallel Press, 2007) were featured on The Writer’s Almanac and Poetry Daily. Her translations from Spanish include two novels, That Bringas Woman (1996) and My Name Is Light (2003).
Jo Jensen is an artist, teacher, poet, and gardener. She was born in Milwaukee, now lives in Madison. She has several poems currently published electronically on Madpoetry.org, and "Ode to Otis" in print in Meow Poetry, Jeffrey Winke, editor, 2009.
Nancy Jesse grew up on a dairy farm in Barron County, Wisconsin. Creative writing became one of her favorite courses during a thirty-year career teaching English at Madison West High School. She has published both prose and poetry and lives with her husband Paul.
Poet Gary Jones lives with his wife of many years on Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula where he enjoys reading, gardening, and silent sports. His verse has appeared most recently in Rosebud, Pearl, Verse Wisconsin, Knock, Peninsula Pulse, and Clutching at Straws. Jones, who is an award-winning poet, teaches poetry writing workshops for both high school students and adults.
Martha Kaplan grew up in Seattle, has lived in Minneapolis, Houston, and Chicago, and now lives in Madison. Her poetry is influenced by the vicissitudes of landscape, natural and human, and the impact of one on the other. She has published with Blue Unicorn; Branch Redd Review; Möbius, the Poetry Magazine; Hummingbird and the Wisconsin Poets' Calendar. Her poem “A Modest Proposal” won an Editor-in-Chief’s Award from Möbius, The Poetry Magazine, 2010.
Phyllis Ann Karr moved with her parents to Wisconsin in 1977. She married a native Wisconsinite a decade later and moved farther north, to a lake in Bayfield County.
Lawrence Kessenich grew up in Wisconsin and still has a large extended family there. His poem "Angelus" won the Strokestown International Poetry Prize in Ireland in May 2010. And his essay about his Waunakee-bred father was published in the anthology This I Believe: On Love in November 2011
Athena Kildegaard lives in western Minnesota. Her books are Rare Momentum and Bodies of Light, both from Red Dragonfly Press, and Cloves & Honey, forthcoming from Nodin Press. In her first year of marriage she lived in southern Minnesota, her husband in Chicago, and they traveled many times across Wisconsin full of eagerness.
Judy Kolosso divides her time between a home in southeastern Wisconsin and the farm she grew up on in Neenah. She has been published in Wisconsin People and Ideas, Echoes, Fox Cry Review, and several anthologies. She has two books: Aubade, a chapbook, and a full-length collection titled In the First Place.
C. Kubasta teaches literature and writing at Marian University and UW-Fox Valley. Her poems and translations have appeared in numerous journals, including Stand, So To Speak and The Spoon River Poetry Review. She currently lives in Oshkosh with her partner John, cat Cliff and dog Ursula.
Len Kuntz lives on a lake in rural Washington State with rural sea creatures. His favorite movie is Love, Actually, and his favorite part is when the Brit says “I’m going to a fabulous place in America called Wisconsin.” His work appears in widely on the web and in print, and also at lenkuntz.blogspot.com.
Jim Landwehr was born and raised in St. Paul, MN, and now lives and works in Waukesha as a Geographic Information Systems Analyst. Jim writes creative non-fiction, memoir, and poetry and is currently enrolled at AllWriters' Workplace and Workshop (www.allwriters.org)
Jackie Langetieg has three books of poems: White Shoulders (Cross+Roads Press), Just What in Hell is a Stage of Grief, and Confetti in a Silent City (Ghost Horse Press) . She is a member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and regular contributor to the annual calendar.
Estella Lauter is Professor Emerita at UW-Oshkosh. Her first chapbook, Pressing a Life Together By Hand (2007) was nominated for two Pushcart prizes. Her poem "Gaza, January 2009" tied for first prize in the 2009 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Contest; it appears on www.wagingpeace.org.
Tom Lavelle, a native of Pittsburgh, lived in Milwaukee between 1981 and 83. Since then he's visited sporadically. He lives today in Stockholm, where he teaches and writes as he has done since 1992. It's not colder than Wisconsin, but darker.
Janet Leahy is a member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. Her poems have appeared in The Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar, in Wisconsin People and Ideas, Verse Wisconsin, in the anthology Empty Shoes, and other publications. She is a teacher in Milwaukee and lives in New Berlin.
Norman Leer is professor emeritus of English at Roosevelt University in Chicago. He has published a critical study of the novels of Ford Madox Ford, a chapbook and two books of his own poetry: I Dream My Father in a Song and Second Lining, both from Mellen Poetry Press, 1992 and 1997 respectively.
Quincy R. Lehr's poetry and criticism have appeared in numerous journals and e-zines in the U.S., UK, Ireland, Australia, and the Czech Republic. His first book, Across the Grid of Streets, appeared in 2008, and his second, Obscure Classics of English Progressive Rock, will appear in 2011.
MaryEllen Letarte’s father was born in Pepin, WI. MaryEllen lives and writes in Lunenburg, MA where she’s developed and now directs the Louise Bogan Chapter of the Massachusetts State Poetry Society.
J. Patrick Lewis’s first book of poems—Gulls Hold Up the Sky—has just been published by Laughing Fire Press. His poems have appeared in Gettysburg Review, New England Review, New Letters, and many others. He is the current Children’s Poet Laureate of the United States.
Barbara Lightner has been published in works by Grey Fox Press, IOBA, Wisconsin Light and others; her poetry has appeared, or will appear, in the Table Rock Review,New Verse News, Come Be a Memoirist, the Zocala Press’ chapbook series, and the feminist anthology Letters to the World.
Melissa Lindstrum was born in Milwaukee and lived there most of her life. Though she’s spent the last four years in other time zones, she is back in Wisconsin, working and eating lots of cheese in Madison.
Mary Linton lives in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. She is a wetland biologist and loves mucking about in Wisconsin's wonderful waters. Mary finds the combination of teaching, wetland research, and writing perfect for mental health.
E.O. Lipchik lives and writes in Milwaukee.
Ellaraine Lockie's chapbook, Stroking David's Leg, was awarded Best Individual Collection for 2010 from Purple Patch magazine in England, and her chapbook Red for the Funeral, won the 2010 San Gabriel Poetry Festival Chapbook Contest. Ellaraine serves as Poetry Editor for the lifestyles magazine, Lilipoh.
Karen Loeb’s writing has appeared in such places as Phantasmagoria, Pinyon, Wisconsin People and Ideas, the UK print journal Flash, and the on-line journals New Works Review and Verbsap. A collection of her stories, Jump Rope Queen won a Minnesota Voices award and was published by New Rivers Press.
Anna Lucas is a member of Green River Writers, based in Louisville, KY, founded by her beloved mentor, Mary (Ernie) O’Dell. She and her husband once bought contraband cheese curds from a couple selling Wisconsin cheese out of the trunk of their car.
Though David Lurie grew up on the East Coast, he’s spent the last three years bouncing between Milwaukee and Chicago. He’s taught in two high-need Milwaukee Public Schools, taught test prep for wealthy Chicagoans, and sold fitness equipment, all while writing and making plans for Ph. D programs.
Marci Madary fell in love with poetry when she was a child and began writing poems during her teenage years. Marci currently works with the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration but continues reading and writing poetry, expressing who she is as a mother of two and daughter of the universe.
Al Maginnes has published four chapbooks and four full length collections of poetry, including Ghost Alphabet, which won the 2007 White Pine Poetry Prize. In 2010, two chapbooks appeared, Between States (Main Street Rag Press, 2010) and Greatest Hits 1987-2010 (Pudding House). Recent and forthcoming poems appear in Lake Effect, Salamander, Solo, Cloudbank, Center and others. He teaches at Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Susan McLean is a professor of English at Southwest Minnesota State University. Her first full-length poetry book, The Best Disguise, won the 2009 Richard Wilbur Award and was published by the University of Evansville Press.
Rick McMonagle was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. His parents honeymooned at Lake Geneva. He lived in the country outside of River Falls, WI from 1996 to 2008. His poetry lineage includes John Haag, his first poetry teacher at Penn State; and Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman at Naropa Institute.
Kelly McNerney lives in San Francisco where she serves as Editor-in-Chief for Fourteen Hills: SFSU Review. She is working on her MFA in Poetry at San Francisco State University, and just finished a collection of poems entitled Peripheries. Her work has appeared in Red Wheelbarrow and Metonym.
Mary Mercier, native to Milwaukee, now lives 77 miles west of that Cream City, with her husband and two wily cats. She is the author of one chapbook, Small Acts (Parallel Press). In 2005 her poem “Snow Geese” was included in Martha Glowacki’s exhibition, Starry Transit, staged at the UW’s Washburn Observatory.
Richard Merelman writes poems because language is the only medium through which he can hope to achieve beautiful expression. Recent poems have appeared in Bumble Jacket Miscellany and Verse Wisconsin. He taught political science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison until 2001.
Mary Meriam’s poems have appeared in the NY Times, Poetry Foundation,American Life in Poetry, and Rhythm. She’s the author of The Countess of Flatbroke (Modern Metrics, 2006) and The Poet's Zodiac (Seven Kitchens, 2011), and editor of Filled with Breath: 30 Sonnets by 30 Poets (Exot, 2010) and Lavender Review.
Patricia Monaghan teaches literature and environment at DePaul University in Chicago and tends a vineyard in Black Earth. She is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Homefront (Word Tech Press). Her chapbook, The Grace of Ancient Land, is coming out this winter from Voices from the American Land. She is Senior Fellow at the Black Earth Institute, a progressive think-tank dedicated to reconnecting environment, spirituality and social justice through the arts.
Middlewestern poet and essayist Tom Montag has lived in Fairwater, Wisconsin, since 1976 and is recently the author of Curlew: Home, Kissing Poetry's Sister, The Idea of the Local, and The Big Book of Ben Zen.
Julie L. Moore is the author of Slipping Out of Bloom (WordTech Editions) and Election Day(Finishing Line Press). In addition, her manuscript, Scandal of Particularity, was a finalist for the 2011 FutureCycle Press Poetry Book Prize and a semi-finalist for the 2011 Perugia Press Prize. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice and Best of the Net anthology, Moore has also had her poetry published in Alaska Quarterly Review, American Poetry Journal, Atlanta Review, CALYX, Cave Wall, Cimarron Review, The Missouri Review Online, The Southern Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Verse Daily. You can learn more about her work at www.julielmoore.com.
CJ Muchhala grew up in northern Minnesota and as a child, made annual summer trips to Milwaukee to visit relatives. Much to her surprise, when she grew up she landed in metro Milwaukee, where she has now lived for more than the sum of her childhood years. Her poems have been widely published in various media and exhibited in art/poetry collaborations; she is also a Pushcart Prize fiction nominee with work most recently in Red Cedar 2011 and the anthology Verse & Vision.
James B. Nicola has had over a hundred poems appear in a score of publications including Tar River, the Texas Review, The Lyric, and Nimrod. A stage director by profession, his book Playing the Audience won a CHOICE Award. He also won the Dana Literary Award for poetry, was nominated for a Rhysling Award, and was a featured poet at the New Formalist in 2010.
Ayaz Daryl Nielsen attended Blair Public High School from '62 - '65, and earned a BA in English over a nine-year period from the UW-Eau Claire.
Cristina M. R. Norcross is a freelance writer and poet living in Oconomowoc, WI with her husband and their two sons. She is the author of Land & Sea: Poetry Inspired by Art, The Red Drum and Unsung Love Songs. Visit her website at: www.FirkinFiction.com
Robert Nordstrom is a poet, free lance writer, and school bus driver living in Mukwonago, Wisconsin. He used to think that the nine-month school year was instituted to give teachers and students a break. Now he understands that it's actually for the mental health of the bus drivers.
Joe “Pepe” Oulahan was born in Mexico City, raised in many different parts. Now he lives in Milwaukee with his wife, Chris. He has two beautiful, grown children - Amalia and Kylie. At the moment, he’s very concerned about extreme right-wing agenda being played out in our nation.
Elmae Passineau is a former English teacher, principal, and private pilot. Currently, she is a thinker, reader, friend, helper, feminist, and writer.
Alice F. Pauser’s inspiration is drawn from Nature and dream journaling. Her recent collection, Follow the Red Road, is based in the dreams of Ancient Shamanic Women. She hopes to publish the collection in 2012. Alice teaches dream journal writing and how to craft it into other genres.
Richard Peake published early poems in Impetus alongside John Ciardi and in The Georgia Review. Collections of his poetry are Wings Across… and Poems for Terence published by Vision Press. He published Birds and Other Beasts in 2007. In the past few years he has won awards from Gulf Coast Poets and The Poetry Society of Texas and published in journals such as Avocet, Asinine Poetry, Boundless 2010, and elsewhere.
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The New Yorker and elsewhere. For more information, including his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” and a complete bibliography, please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.
Alayne Peterson is an associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Fond du Lac. Her poetry has appeared in The Front Range Review, INK, Into the Candy Shop, and the Hiram Arts Magazine. She lives near a bend in the Ice Age Trail with her husband Tony and their two children.
Nancy Petulla is a retired minister who lives in a 150 year old farmhouse. She has lived there for 34 years.
Born in Altoona, Pa and mostly self-taught, Bill Piper lives in Hopewell Township, New Jersey with his wife, Molly Weigel, and 15 year old son, Hank. An educator for over 25 years, he contributes to the family income with his free lance teaching and editing business. He loves birds and insects and trees. Poetry is the tracks of the mind at play in language.
Between 1989 and 2009 Jeff Poniewaz taught a course he devised called “Literature of Ecological Vision” via UW-Milwaukee. His 1986 book Dolphin Leaping in the Milky Way won a PEN Discovery Award. Allen Ginsberg praised it for its “impassioned prescient ecological Whitmanesque/ Thoreauvian verve and wit.” “The Last Endangered Species Glass,” “Kinnickinnic River Elegy” and “Message from the Deep” are included in Jeff’s latest chapbook, which can be ordered for $6 (plus $2 postage & handling) made payable to Inland Ocean Books, P.O. Box 11502, Milwaukee, WI 53211. “20/20 By 2020” was first published in Napalm Health Spa, an online journal out of Boulder, CO.
Charles Portolano started writing poetry 14 years ago to celebrate the birth of his daring, darling, daughter Valerie, and to preserve the memories. Valerie was born with many obstacles to overcome. Writing soon became his way of saving his sanity. Valerie is doing great now; she is quite the young writer.
Andrea Potos lives in Madison with her husband and daughter. She has a collection from Parallel Press titled The Perfect Day. Her book Yaya's Cloth won a 2008 Outstanding Achievement Award in Poetry from the Wisconsin Library Association.
Jim Price retired to Osceola Township in Wisconsin over a year ago, after a 30 year career in human services. He’s written a lot of poetry over the years, and feels maybe it's time to share with a wider circle than friends and family. Verse Wisconsin #102 included his first published poem.
Ester Hauser Laurence Prudlo has lived away from the state for some 28 years, but she returned two years ago for summers. The author of three children’s books, she has published a few poems. A retired counselor to soldiers and inmates, she is mother of 4, and grandmother of 4, and lives with her husband, Tony.
Zara Raab’s Swimming the Eel is due out this fall. Her work appears in West Branch, Arts & Letters, The Dark Horse, River Styx and elsewhere. Her reviews and essays appear in Redwood Coast Review, Poetry Flash, The Review Review, Colorado Review and elsewhere. She attended U. Michigan and has a niece who teaches at U. Wisconsin.
Charles Rammelkamp edits the online journal, The Potomac, http://thepotomacjournal.com, and has a chapbook of poems forthcoming from MuscleHead Press entitled Mixed Signals.
Diana Randolph lives, writes and paints in Drummond, located in Northwest Wisconsin, in the heart of Chequamegon-Nicolet National forest. She is currently working on a book of poetry and paintings which will be titled Beacons of the Earth and Sky (Savage Press.) For more information please visit www.dianarandolph.com.
James Reitter earned his BA in Creative Writing, his MFA in Poetry, and his Phd in Folklore. He’s spent the past four years as an Assistant Professor of English for UW-Sheboygan and lives in Sheboygan with his fiancée, two cats, and a bearded dragon.
Georgia Ressmeyer has twice won grants from the Wisconsin Arts Board, and is the author of two short novels. Her poetry has appeared widely in journals and magazines. Her chapbook, Today I Threw My Watch Away (Finishing Line Press, 2010), placed 2nd in the WFOP’s 2011 chapbook contest.
Liz Rhodebeck is a poet and freelance writer from Pewaukee, where she is active in the local arts community and co-edits the project, "One Vision: A Fusion of Art and Poetry in Lake Country." She published her third chapbook, What I Learned in Kansas from Port Yonder Press. www.waterwriter.com.
Harlan Richards grew up on the west side of Madison and came late to his penchant for poetry, having not begun to write until his mid-50s. He has had poems accepted by Love’s Change Magazine, Shepherd, Samsara and Italian—Americana. He is currently living in Wisconsin’s Belly of the Beast.
Charles P. Ries’s narrative poems, short stories, interviews,and reviews have appeared in over two hundred print and electronic publications. He has received four Pushcart Prize nominations. He is a founding member of the Lake Shore Surf Club, the oldest fresh water surfing club on the Great Lakes. Most recently he was interviewed by Jane Crown for Blog Radio (www.janecrown.com --click on archived shows at the bottom of the page).http://www.literati.net/Ries/
Jeannie E. Roberts is an award-winning poet, a lifelong visual artist and the author and illustrator of Let's Make Faces! children's book (www.RhymeTheRoostBooks.com). Her poetry has appeared in Wisconsin Poets' Calendar, Goose River Anthology and elsewhere, including the mixed-media show The Vision and the Word.
Nichole Rued is a student at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming in Sheepshead Review, Underground Voices, and Verse Wisconsin.
Chuck Rybak is a professor of creative writing and literature at UW-Green Bay. He is the author of three collections of poetry, the most recent being Tongue and Groove, which was published by Main Street Rag. Chuck lives in Green Bay with his wife and two daughters.
Jane Satterfield’s most recent book, Daughters of Empire: A Memoir of a Year in Britain and Beyond, appeared from Demeter Press in 2009. Her second collection, Assignation at Vanishing Point, received the 2003 Elixir Press Poetry Prize. She’s received an NEA Fellowship in Literature and three Maryland State Arts Council grants.
G. A. Scheinoha never imagined he’d follow in his father’s tracks: a series of blue collar jobs. He’s written a million words over thirty years, some of which have recently appeared in Avocet, Bellowing Ark, Bracelet Charm, Echoes, Floyd County Moonshine and Verse Wisconsin.
David Scheler’s poetry has been published or is forthcoming in the Aurorean, Mid-America Poetry Review, Trestle Creek Review, and other national and international publications. David has a new chapbook, Casting for Meteors, (Finishing Line Press). During the past several years, David has translated over 100 of his poems into French, several of which have appeared in bi-lingual poetry journals in this country and in the U.K.
Wendy Schmidt is a Wisconsin native who has written short stories and poems for the last 10 years. She enjoys gardening, animals and collecting odds and ends. Cold weather survival supplies include a writing desk, computer and her mewing muse sleeping nearby.
Robert Schuler has been trying to write for fifty years. His fifteenth collection of poems, The Book of Jeweled Visions, has recently been published by Tom Montag’s MWPH Books, PO Box 8, Fairwater, WI 53931. Price: $12.50 plus $1.50 postage.
Having retired from the University of Kansas in 2001, Elizabeth Schultz now balances scholarship on Herman Melville and the environment with essays and poems about the people and places she loves. She has published two critical works on Melville, two collections of poetry, one book of short stories, and published her scholarship and poetry widely. She has also co-organized an international conference on ecocriticism in Beijing and regularly participates in international ecocriticism conferences.
Paula Schulz teaches 20 Kindergarten students and writes at every opportunity. “Hummingbird” was written for her daughter, who died of an inherited illness.
A lifelong resident of Wisconsin, Kathleen Serley enjoys all of our seasons: spring gardening, summer beach combing, fall hiking and winter snow shoeing. She teaches English.
Dana Serum is a senior at Winona State University in Winona, Minnesota. She’s been published in the WSU Satori Magazine for poetry and photographs in 2010, and 2011. She’s majoring in Photojournalism and minoring in English: Creative Writing. Dana's hometown is Gilmanton, Wisconsin.
Laura Sheahen’s poems have been published in MiPOesias, In Posse Review, The Dark Horse, Orbis, Stirring and other journals; one poem was recently chosen to be recorded for the audio zine Whale Sound. Sheahen lives in Rome and works in humanitarian aid.
Peg Sherry, a “closet” writer for years, invested her energies in family and academia: four children, Masters’ degree, teaching regular and gifted students at all levels, including college. Her work is in local and state magazines and in her books of poems and essays.
Dave Shortt’s poems have appeared in several print publications including Mesechabe, Bullhead, Nexus, Nedge, and in online ezines including Muse Apprentice Guild, Sugar Mule, Switched-On Gutenberg and Astropoetica. He has spent several years in Wisconsin.
John H. Sime lives in the Kickapoo Valley of Western Wisconsin where he operates a funeral home. He has written poetry since service in the U.S. Peace Corps as an English teacher in Bamako, Mali. He has contributed to Kickapoo Free Press, Hummingbird, the Epitaph-News, and the American Funeral Director.
Noel Sloboda serves as dramaturg for the Harrisburg Shakespeare Company and teaches at Penn State York. Sloboda is the author of the poetry collection Shell Games (2008) as well as three chapbooks. He has also published a book about the autobiographies of Edith Wharton and Gertrude Stein.
Sheryl Slocum teaches English as a second language in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. All of her life she has loved dirt, sand, dust, rocks, stone, geology, and poetry.
David Steingass is the author of six books including Fishing for Dynamite, and GreatPlains (RedDragonfly Press, Redwing MN) which won the 2002 Posner Award from the Council of Wisconsin Writers. He is interested especially in technical and stylistic possibilities among lineated poems, prose poems, and flash fiction. Besides reading and writing at his Madison home, Steingass presents writing workshops and residencies in schools.
Matthew Stolte began practicing concrete & visual poetry July 1998 in Madison, Wisconsin.
Laura-Gray Street is author of Pigment and Fume (Salmon Poetry, 2012) and co-editor of Ecopoetry: A Contemporary American Anthology (Trinity UP, 2012). Her work has appeared in Hawk & Handsaw, Many Mountains Moving, Gargoyle, Blackbird, Shenandoah, and elsewhere, and most recently won the 2010 Poetry Prize from Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built and Natural Environment. She teaches at Randolph College in Lynchburg, VA.
Judy Swann lives in gorgeous Ithaca, NY in a small house painted in Frida Kahlo colors. Her poetry has appeared in Lilliput Review, Verse Wisconsin, Soundzine and other places both in print and online. She is an Iowan who often visited Wisconsin in her youth.
Nancy Takacs lives in Wellington, UT, and in Bayfield, WI. Her third book of poetry, Juniper, was published by Limberlost Press: www.limberlostpress.com. A former wilderness studies instructor and creative writing professor, she has done poetry workshops in prisons, schools, and senior citizen centers.
Nancy Ellis Taylor is an L.A.-based writer who gives readings locally several times a year. She is active with the Southland Poets of the Fantastic (science fiction, horror and fantasy) and Poets on Site (group giving poetry performances focusing on art in galleries and museums.) Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including STAR*LINE, Tales of the Talisman, and the anthologies Best of Strange Horizons and RetroSpec. In addition, she has been nominated for this year's Rhysling Award (short form) given by the Science Fiction Poetry Association.
Ken Tennessen lives in a corner house around which many poems pass but few are latched onto. An entomologist, poet, Vietnam veteran, whittler, daydreamer, Tennessen explores the hidden relationships between living things and their struggles with the natural world. His poems have appeared in Free Verse, Arbor Vitae, WFOP Museletter, and various newsletters and technical journals.
Don Thackrey likes Wisconsin so much that he has asked his wife to launch his cremation ashes into the West Wind, which will carry him to, and sprinkle him over, that great state.
Diane Unterweger lives and writes in Nashotah, Wisconsin. Her poems have appeared in Sugar House Review, Luna Creciente, the 2012 Wisconsin Poets' Calendar, and Verse Wisconsin
Wendy Vardaman, author of Obstructed View (Fireweed Press 2009), is co-editor of Verse Wisconsin and Cowfeather Press. Visit wendyvardaman.com.
Philip Venzke grew up on a dairy farm near Colby, Wisconsin (where Colby Cheese was invented). A fervent zymurgist, his fermentations take many forms. His most recent poems have appeared in Echoes, Sheepshead Review, Illumen, and Right Hand Pointing.
Lisa Vihos’s poems have appeared previously in Verse Wisconsin, and in Free Verse, Lakefire, Wisconsin People and Ideas, Seems,and Big Muddy. She is an associate editor of Stoneboat. She resides in Sheboygan with her 13-year-old son. http://www.lisapoemoftheweek.blogspot.com/.
John Walser is an associate professor at Marian University in Fond du Lac. He is a founding member of the Foot of the Lake Poetry Collective. (www.lakepoets.com) He has lived most of his adult life in the upper Midwest, where he has loved the fruits and flowers that grow in our backyards.
Timothy Walsh’s awards include the Grand Prize in the Atlanta Review International Poetry Competition. He authored The Dark Matter of Word: Absence, Unknowing, and Emptiness in Literature and two chapbooks, Wild Apples (Parallel) and Blue Lace Colander (Marsh River). He is an Assistant Dean at UW-Madison.
Molly Weigel is a previously unpublished poet and fairly widely published poetry translator with recent versions in the Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry and S/N: New World Poetics, among others. She also writes poetic essays that use floods as a central organizing principle or motif.
Tad Phippen Wente lives with her surfer husband in Port Washington and teaches creative writing at The Étude High School in Sheboygan. Her work has been animated for Poetry Everywhere and also appears in Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar: 2010.
Marie Sheppard Williams’s mentor for poetry is Thomas R. Smith, a WI poet and essayist. She has had poems published in The Sun, Poetry East, in Ted Kooser's newspaper column, and in another issue of Verse Wisconsin. She has published seven story collections, and has won the Pushcart Prize twice.
Marilyn Windau was nurtured on Big Bend farms, in raspberry patches in Fremont, by blue gills from Green Lake and books in Madison. Graduating from UW- Madison, she married a civil engineer from Wauwatosa and raised three daughters in Appleton and Sheboygan Falls. She taught art for many years to elementary school children in Oostburg.
Koon Woon has published two full-length books of poems from Kaya press in New York, NY. He was born in China and has been an advocate of Seattle poetry since the 1980s. He was a frequent contributor to Free Verse.
Yvonne Yahnke has published two chapbooks with Fireweed Press. Her poems have appeared in local publications and in almost all of the WFOP calendars. She is on the shady side of eighty and is constantly surprised that her heart still has something to say.
Changming Yuan, author of Chansons of a Chinaman (2009) and Politics and Poetics (2009), is a three-time Pushcart nominee who grew up in a remote Chinese village and published several books before moving to Canada. Currently Yuan teaches writing in Vancouver and has had poems appearing in Barrow Street, Best Canadian Poetry, Exqusite Corpse, London Magazine, Verse Wisconsin and more than 300 other literary journals/anthologies worldwide.
Since 2004 Mark Zimmermann has lived with his wife in Milwaukee where he teaches writing and humanities courses at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. Before that they spent a year in northern Poland, nearly three years in Budapest, and eight years in Japan.
