Lorine Niedecker Wisconsin Poetry Festival announced

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September 1, 2009  
Filed under Around Town

The Friends of Lorine Niedecker have announced the creation of the first Lorine Niedecker Wisconsin Poetry Festival for October 3 and 4, 2009. This event will be the first Wisconsin Poetry Festival and plans are to make this a biennial event.

The Festival will offer an opportunity for poets and those who appreciate poetry to gather, share, read poetry and raise awareness for the poetic in our culture. “Wisconsin is rich with great literary history,” said Ann Engelman, President of the Friends of Lorine Niedecker. “This festival is overdue and Fort Atkinson, along the banks of the Rock River, is the perfect place to host this event.”

Fort Atkinson was home to poet Lorine Niedecker, a significant 20^th century poet. She is known nationally and international but has yet to be recognized in her home state. Last year Niedecker’s poem “Wilderness” was chosen to travel on the buses and subways in New York City as part of the Poetry In Motion project. In an interview, British poet Basil Bunting compared her with Emily Dickinson: “Dickinson is good much of the time, but Niedecker is good all of the time.”

The two day festival will include workshops, poetry readings, presentations and films.

A writers workshop will be held on Blackhawk Island at the cabin of Niedecker.

Wisconsin’s current Poet Laureate, Marilyn Taylor and other invited poets will read during an evening event “Wisconsin Poetry.” Filmmaker Cathy Cook will show her recent film “The Immortal Cupboard” about Lorine Niedecker.

A final schedule is available on the Lorine Niedecker Web site at http://www.lorineniedecker.org. Current partnerships include the Dwight Foster Public Library, the Hoard Historical Museum, Woodland Pattern Books and the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. This program is funded in part by a grant from the Wisconsin Humanities Council, with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the State of Wisconsin. For more information about the Poetry Festival, contact Ann Engelman 920-563-0416 or Amy Lutzke 920-563-7790.

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