Poetry Reading: Poetry in the Park *IN PERSON*

Bring your blankets and chairs, snacks and drinks, and friends, and join us at the Solomon Juneau statue for this beloved summer reading series, now entering its tenth year. Poetry in the Park takes place in Juneau Park on the second Tuesday of the summer months (with rain dates on the second Wednesday of the month (except for June's event: see below). July 9, August 13, and September 10 lineups are to be announced. This season’s events are made possible with support from Juneau Park Friends, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Village Church. 

In person at Juneau Park, 900 N. Prospect Ave.

(IN CASE OF INCLEMENT WEATHER: This event will be moved to Woodland Pattern)

June's Poetry in the Park features readings from Stacy Szymaszek, Kimberly Alidio, Lewis Freedman, and Oliver Antoni Krawczyk

Stacy Szymaszek is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently, The Pasolini Book (2022) and Famous Hermits (2023). Their book Essay will be published in 2025. They are the recipient of a 2014 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, a 2019 Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant in poetry, and are a 2024 MacDowell Fellow. They have served as a mentor for Queer Art Mentorship and the Project's ESB Fellowship. Szymaszek worked at Woodland Pattern Book Center (1999-2005) before moving to NYC to work at The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church, where they were the Artistic/Executive Director from 2007-2018. With her partner, the poet Kimberly Alidio, they live in New York’s Upper Hudson Valley on the sacred homelands of the Munsee and Muhheaconneok people, who, due to forced removal, reside in Northeast Wisconsin as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. Szymaszek is the Development Director for a small organic farm where they are also a volunteer cow groomer.

Kimberly Alidio is a person in the literary arts who supports collective resistance, collective refusal, and collective flourishing to dismantle settler colonial states everywhere. She is the author of four poetry books, Teeter, why letter ellipses, : once teeth bones coral :, and after projects the resound, as well as ROOM TONE: Belladonna* Chaplet 297, and The Girls and a Joke: 1080 Press Newsletter #19. Her essays appear on The Poetry Foundation and e-flux. She lives and works on unceded Munsee-Mohican and Lenape lands along the Mahicannituck River, otherwise known as New York’s Hudson Valley.

Lewis Freedman is a poet and person who is the author of Residual Synonyms for the Name of God and I Want Something Other Than Time (both from Ugly Duckling Presse) as well as many chapbooks of poetry, including Am Perhaps Yet (Oxeye) and most recently, Eternal Balsamic Contract (Spiral Editions). In addition, he has authored several experiments on the form of the book including Solitude: The Complete Games (Troll Thread), a collaboration with Kevin Rydberg that will take several years for your computer to read, and the book within a book, Hold the Blue Orb, Baby (Well-Greased Press) which interleaves notebook facsimiles with poems on the practice of notebooking. He has taught writing at Bard College, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Oklahoma State University, and has served as Visiting Writer-in-Residence at Carthage College. (He is also Woodland Pattern’s Book Center Manager!)

Oliver Antoni Krawczyk is a poet who grew up in Milwaukee. He was a guest literary judge and current interviewer for Table///Feast literary magazine. He's published in the West Review, Lullwater Review, and elsewhere; as well as Hope Is The Thing and Listen To Your Skin anthologies. He enjoys participating in karaoke when he's not at work.