Laura Ulewicz (May 18, 1930 – October 5, 2007) was an American poet.

Biography

Born in

Detroit Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

to Polish-American auto workers with strong union ties, she lived in

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

and

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before moving to

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

in 1950. There, she soon discovered the literary scene in North Beach, where she became friends with many of the area's

Beat Beat, beats, or beating may refer to: Common uses * Assault, inflicting physical harm or unwanted physical contact * Battery (crime), a criminal offense involving unlawful physical contact * Battery (tort), a civil wrong in common law of inte ...

poets, including

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of th ...

Kenneth Rexroth Kenneth Charles Marion Rexroth (December 22, 1905 – June 6, 1982) was an American poet, translator, and critical essayist. He is regarded as a central figure in the San Francisco Renaissance, and paved the groundwork for the movement. Althoug ...

, and Ruth Weiss. She was also in a significant long-term relationship with poet

Jack Gilbert Jack Gilbert (February 18, 1925 – November 13, 2012) was an American poet. Gilbert was acquainted with Jack Spicer and Allen Ginsberg, both prominent figureheads of the Beat Movement, but is not considered a Beat Poet; he described himself a ...

during the latter part of that time period. Ulewicz was a great influence on his early work; in fact much of his characteristic style for which he was later well-known came directly from her, and his acclaimed first book ''Views of Jeopardy'' was dedicated to her. Ulewicz refused to ever be branded a Beat herself. In 1955, at the height of media attention on North Beach and the Beats, she left for

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

to study with

Stanley Kunitz Stanley Jasspon Kunitz (; July 28, 1905May 14, 2006) was an American poet. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress twice, first in 1974 and then again in 2000. Biography Kunitz was born in Worcester, Massac ...

where her work took on a more formally structured approach. In 1960 she traveled in Europe, eventually moving to

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

where she met with THE GROUP at

Edward Lucie-Smith John Edward McKenzie Lucie-Smith (born 27 February 1933), known as Edward Lucie-Smith, is a Jamaican-born English writer, poet, art critic, curator and broadcaster. He has been highly prolific in these fields, writing or editing over a hundred ...

's and joined with other members to give public readings of their work. She won the

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Poetry Award at the

Cheltenham Literature Festival ''The Times'' and ''The Sunday Times'' Cheltenham Literature Festival, a large-scale international festival of literature held every year in October in the English spa town of Cheltenham, and part of Cheltenham Festivals: also responsible for th ...

in 1964. Her chapbook ''The Inheritance'' was published by Turret Press in 1967. In 1965, Ulewicz returned to live in San Francisco's

Haight-Ashbury Haight-Ashbury () is a district of San Francisco, California, named for the intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets. It is also called the Haight and the Upper Haight. The neighborhood is known as one of the main centers of the countercultu ...

district, the new

Hippy A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the mid-1960s to early 1970s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States and spread to different countries around the w ...

neighborhood, where she opened and managed the I-Thou Coffee House. There, she organized

poetry readings A poetry reading is a public oral recitation or performance of poetry. Reading poetry aloud allows the reader to express their own experience through poetry, changing the poem according to their sensibilities. The reader uses pitch and stress, an ...

, art exhibits and folk concerts. Shortly after her return, a

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editor wrote to propose a volume in which her work would be joined with

Denise Levertov Priscilla Denise Levertov (24 October 1923 – 20 December 1997) was a British-born naturalised American poet. She was heavily influenced by the Black Mountain poets and by the political context of the Vietnam War, which she explored in her p ...

and

Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath (; October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet and author. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for '' The Colossus and Other Poems'' (1960), '' Ariel'' (1965), a ...

. Six months later he wrote back to say that he could not get his fellow editors and marketing to support a book of three women poets. During the late 60s, she hosted a radio program on

KQED-FM KQED-FM (88.5 MHz) is a listener-supported, non-commercial public radio station in San Francisco, California. It is simulcast on KQEI-FM (89.3 MHz) in the Sacramento metropolitan area. The parent organization is KQED Inc., which also owns tw ...

in which writers read and were interviewed. In 1968, while she continued to publish in magazines, she was the recipient of an NEA grant to "assist gifted but unrecognized writers".Stevens, Roger L
"National Endowment for the Arts Annual Fiscal Report 1968"
1969-01-15. Retrieved on 1020-02-09. Ulewicz withdrew to the delta town of

Locke, California Locke, also known as Locke Historic District, is an Unincorporated area#United States, unincorporated community in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta of California, United States. The was first developed between 1893 and 1915 approximat ...

in 1973. Initially, she worked at a local tomato cannery, but was later employed with Child Protection Services in the county's

Social Welfare Department The Social Welfare Department () is a department of the Hong Kong Government responsible for providing welfare services to the community. Responsibilities The department provides services to families and children, the elderly, recovering crimin ...

. After retirement, she managed an

art gallery An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The long ...

in Locke. Always an inveterate gardener, she raised various kinds of garlic and everlasting flowers to sell at farmers’ markets. During the last thirty years of her life, she continued to write but published little after 1975. She died on October 5, 2007, aged 77, after a short illness. The local community commemorated her in its memorial site. Stephen Vincent, poet, editor, and artist, is the executor of her literary estate.

References

External links

*
"Stephen Vincent's Blog, upon Laura's death"Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library
Emory University
Laura Ulewicz papers, 1951-2010
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ulewicz, Laura 1930 births 2007 deaths American women poets 20th-century American poets 20th-century American women writers Writers from Detroit Poets from Michigan Writers from San Francisco People from Sacramento County, California Poets from California 21st-century American poets 21st-century American women writers