Exhibition: A Homecoming Farewell Weekend—Sunday *IN PERSON*
In person at Woodland Pattern
A Homecoming Farewell—A Weekend of Readings and Reunions in Riverwest
Sun. May 24 | 2–5 pm CDT
Closing Reception for Art That Keeps on Singing: Work by Anne Kingsbury: An open house and toast to Anne and her art, and to all the Woodland Patterning that has been done on Locust Street over the years. See you there! View the exhibition here: woodlandpattern.org/art-that-keeps-on-singing
ATTENDRelated Event:
Fri. May 22 | 7 pm CDT | In person & Online ($Give What You Can)
We kick off our final weekend of programs on Locust Street with a celebration of Soham Patel’s The Daughter Industry (Nightboat Books), alongside readings from Mauricio Kilwein Guevara and Wisconsin Poet Laureate, Brenda Cárdenas.
A former Woodland Pattern volunteer and reading series curator, Soham Patel is the author of The Daughter Industry (Nightboat, 2026), as well as all one in the end—/water (2022), ever really hear it (2018), winner of the Subito Prize, and to afar from afar (2018).
Current Wisconsin Poet Laureate and former Milwaukee Poet Laureate Brenda Cárdenas has authored Trace (Red Hen Press), winner of the 2023 Society of Midland Authors Award for Poetry and silver winner of Foreword Review’s Indie Poetry Prize; Boomerang (Bilingual Press); and three chapbooks as well as editing two anthologies. Her poems have also been published in literary magazines and anthologies such as Poetry, American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, and the Library of America’s Latino Poetry anthology among many others. Cárdenas is Professor Emerita of English at UW–Milwaukee and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee where she lives with her husband, the poet Roberto Harrison, and their dog, Maya.
Mauricio Kilwein Guevara was born in Boyacá, Colombia, and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. He retired as Professor of English at UW–Milwaukee, where he taught creative writing and contemporary literature for many years. He had the privilege of directing Soham Patel’s doctoral dissertation, titled The Daughter Industry. A longtime friend of Woodland Pattern, Mauricio is the author of four poetry collections, a book of translations published in Spain, and a play performed Off-Broadway. His novel, The Thieves of Guevara, a road novel set mostly in Ecuador, is forthcoming.
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Related Event:
Sat. May 23 | In person & Online ($Give What You Can)
1 pm CDT: Bryon Cherry, Siwar Masannat, and Bethany Price—We begin a tremendous final day of programs on Locust Street with three inimitable poets, each of whom have been steady fixtures of Woodland Pattern’s programming and community for many years.
Bryon Cherry is a poet and musician. He is the author of two chapbooks of poetry, death moan (Aquarius Press/Willow Books, 2023) and Funeral Journey (The Quail Press, 2019), and a full-length collection of poems, Ruins, Ruminations, and Rituals (Anarcho Welfare Press, 2019). His work was also featured in Return to the Gathering Place of the Waters anthology (VA Press) and South Florida Poetry Journal. Born and raised in Milwaukee, he is of and shaped by his evolving home city. He is guided by what he considers the magical forces of listening and love.
Jordanian writer Siwar Masannat is the author of cue (Georgia Review Books, 2024) and 50 Water Dreams (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2015). A former Woodland Pattern volunteer, Masannat holds a PhD in English from UW–Milwaukee, where she was a Distinguished Dissertation R1 Fellow and a Distinguished Graduate Student Fellow. Masannat now lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where she works as Managing Editor of the Caribbean Poetry Book Series: Calabash and Assistant Director of the African Poetry Book Fund. She teaches Literary Arts at Brown University.
Bethany Price is a woman of many hats, just like everyone. She is from Wisconsin, but currently lives in upstate NY. Find her work through the small publishers Papeachu Press, VA Press, and pitymilk press. She feels most at home around palm trees.
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3 pm CDT: Small-Press Appreciation: pitymilk press—For our final installment of Small-Press Appreciation on Locust Street, we could not be happier to feature the fearless and homegrown-in-Riverwest pitymilk press for Pitymilk Presents: a History. To celebrate Woodland Patterns’ move from Riverwest, Pitymilk is excited to present an adjacent history - with performances, storytelling and archival footage of some of the moments that formed Pitymilk itself alongside founders Chelsea Tadeyeske and Edie Roberts. Small-Press Appreciation is an ongoing series celebrating publishers doing passionate and exemplary cultural work outside the mainstream.
Pitymilk Press and Bathmatics are sister presses from MIlwaukee, WI and Detroit, MI respectively. They each focus on publishing poetry, micro-fictions and essays in small, handmade chapbook formats. Their catalogs lean heavily on queer and femme voices producing work that is direct and demanding. Most of the books they produce are text forward but include a visual response to the written word.
edie roberts is a gender mess blessed with excess anxiety and midwestern disposition. They currently live in Detroit, MI, where they curate events and conversations, always dreaming up fully-automated leisure utopias and the end of scarcity. Their books include Everywhere You Go (2019), Ain’t Life Grand (2020), WHAT IF LOVING YOU WASN’T ABOUT ME (2022 w/ Chelsea Tadeyeske), Thank You (2023), If You Need It (2024) and All Of The Sudden Vol. 1 and 2 (2024, 2025) - among others. They are co-editor at Pitymilk Press and run a hapdash production and event-planning outfit called Bathmatics when there is time and purpose bubbling. Follow along at https://edieroberts.wordpress.com/ - IG @squabtastic or where the sky is blue @edieroberts.bsky.social
Chelsea Tadeyeske is a poet and bookmaker from Milwaukee, WI where she co-edits pitymilk press and curates poetry readings in her apartment, The Bell Tower. She is the author of several chapbooks including If You Bend It Backwards Nothing Really Happens (Rabbit Catastrophe Press, 2017), Princess Diana (Bathmatics, 2019), What If Loving You Wasn't About Me w/ Edie Roberts (bathmatics, 2022), Island Weather (pitymilk press, 2022), Orange Poems (pitymilk press, 2024) and It Probably Won't Work, But It's Good To Have A Theory (pitymilk, 2026). She is a Virgo sun, Libra rising and Aquarius moon born in the year of the Snake.
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5 pm CDT: Old School “Poetry Marathon” Potluck—Bring a dish, share a dish. We’ll provide utensils, bowls, and plates, and we’ll have some beverages on hand. Crockpots galore and Locust Street lore, in memory of so many Marathons past.
7 pm CDT: Native Writers in the 21st Century—Befittingly, Woodland Pattern’s longest-running reading series will close out this special weekend and represent our final curated program on Locust Street. Please join us for readings by Sherwin Bitsui, Kimberly Blaeser, Franklin K.R. Cline, and Jake Skeets—all returning writers of this series, which has featured more than 100 Indigenous writers—both emerging and established—since 2007.
Sherwin Bitsui is originally from White Cone, Arizona, on the Navajo reservation. He is of the Bįį’tóó’nii’ Tódi’chii’nii clan and is born for the Tlizilłani’ clan. He is the author of Dissolve (Copper Canyon Press, 2018); Flood Song (Copper Canyon Press, 2009), which received a 2010 PEN Open Book Award; and Shapeshift (University of Arizona Press, 2003). Of his work, Joy Harjo says, “His poems are wide and deep arroyos and mesas of human perception, conceptual word paintings born of agony and joy.” Bitsui is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a Native Arts & Culture Foundation Arts Fellowship, a grant from the Witter Bynner Foundation, and a Whiting Writers’ Award. Bitsui has taught in the low-residency MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts and is currently an associate professor in creative writing at Northern Arizona University.
Kimberly Blaeser—founding director of Indigenous Nations Poets, a past Wisconsin Poet Laureate, and a longtime collaborator with Woodland Pattern—is the author of six poetry collections including Ancient Light, Copper Yearning, and Résister en dansant/Ikwe-niimi: Dancing Resistance. Blaeser’s honors include the 2026 Science and Literature Award from the National Book Foundation, 2025 Poets & Writers’ Writer for Writers Award, Hayden’s Ferry Review’s Indigenous Poets Prize, the Masters Review Short Story Award, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. An enrolled member of the White Earth Nation, Blaeser is an Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist, a Professor Emerita at UW–Milwaukee, and an MFA faculty member at Institute of American Indian Arts. She lives in the woods and wetlands of Wisconsin and, for part of each year, in a water-access cabin near the Boundary Water Canoe Area Wilderness where she follows poems, photos, stories, and river otters—sometimes all at once. Her debut collection of fiction, Red Ants, is forthcoming from Counterpoint Press in October 2026.
Franklin K.R. Cline, a former member of Woodland Pattern’s Board of Directors, is the author of So What and The Beatles’ Second Album, both published by VA Press. An enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, he is a graduate of UW–Milwaukee’s Creative Writing Program. He is based in Kansas City, Missouri, where he lives with Six and Olivia.
Jake Skeets is the author of two books of poetry, Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers (Milkweed Editions, 2019)—winner of the National Poetry Series, an American Book Award, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and a Whiting Award—and his highly anticipated second collection, Horses (Milkweed Editions, 2026). His work has appeared in journals and magazines such as Poetry, the New York Times Magazine, and the Paris Review. Other honors include an NEA Grant for Arts Projects, a Mellon Projecting All Voices Fellowship, and the 2023–24 Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi. He is the third Navajo Nation Poet Laureate and teaches at the University of Oklahoma.
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