Active Voices: Poetry and Social Justice

This event is the Nadine St. Louis Memorial Poetry Conversation 2019. Two Wisconsin Poets Laureate, Kim Blaeser (2015–2016) and Margaret Rozga (2019–2020) will read from their recent work and engage in dialogue about their poetry, its sources, and the roles they see it enacting in the world. They will welcome questions and comments from the audience. >> Our book sales committee will have copies of Copper Yearning (Blaeser) and Pestiferous Questions: A Life in Poems (Rozga) available for purchase at this event. Please join us for an autographing session following the presentation. KIMBERLY BLAESER, writer, photographer, and scholar, is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Apprenticed to Justice and editor of Traces in Blood, Bone, and Stone: Contemporary Ojibwe Poetry. She served as Wisconsin Poet Laureate for 2015-16. Blaeser is Anishinaabe and grew up on the White Earth Reservation. A professor of English and Indigenous Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Blaeser is also on the faculty for the Institute of American Indian Arts low residency MFA program in Santa Fe. Her fourth collection of poetry, Copper Yearning, will be published in fall 2019. MARGARET ROZGA, current Wisconsin Poet Laureate, has published four books of poetry, including Pestiferous Questions: A Life in Poem. This book, written with support from the American Antiquarian Society, looks at issues of women’s roles, western expansion, and race as they are woven through the life of politically-active and well-connected Jessie Benton Frémont (1824-1902). Rozga also served as editor of the poetry chapbook anthology Where I Want to Live: Poems for Fair & Affordable Housing, a project for the 50th anniversary of Milwaukee’s fair housing marches. She participated in those marches and helped organize 50th anniversary events.