Woodland Pattern Book Center is a

nonprofit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...

Milwaukee Milwaukee is the List of cities in Wisconsin, most populous city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Located on the western shore of Lake Michigan, it is the List of United States cities by population, 31st-most populous city in the United States ...

Wisconsin Wisconsin ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest of the United States. It borders Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michig ...

's Riverwest neighborhood that is dedicated to the discovery, cultivation, and presentation of poetry and the arts. The organization was founded in 1979 by Karl Gartung, Anne Kingsbury, and Karl Young, and was named after a passage in poet Paul Metcalf's ''Apalache'': "South of Lake Superior, a culture center, the Woodland Pattern, with pottery but without agriculture..." Founder Anne Kingsbury served as Woodland Pattern's Executive Director until her retirement in March 2018. The organization is currently co-directed by poets Jenny Gropp and Laura Solomon. Woodland Pattern is a founding member of th
Poetry Coalition
a national alliance of more than 25 organizations dedicated to working together to promote the value poets bring to our culture and the important contribution poetry makes in the lives of people of all ages and backgrounds.

Programs and services

Woodland Pattern's gallery space houses regular readings by

small press A small press is a publisher with annual sales below a certain level or below a certain number of titles published. The terms "indie publisher" and "independent press" and others are sometimes used interchangeably. However, when a distinction ...

poets and writers,

visual art The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, image, filmmaking, design, crafts, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and texti ...

exhibitions, experimental films, and new and improvised music concerts. Annually, the center hosts a Poetry Marathon, featuring 150 poets and welcoming hundreds of community members throughout the day. The organization also delivers literary arts education to all age groups, promoting a lifetime practice of reading and writing. Nationally recognized and up-and-coming writers and artists offer workshops and craft talks for adults, and several book and writing groups also meet at the center. Woodland Pattern's Youth Literary Arts Program is award-winning and includes summer poetry camps for youth in grades 6–12 and year-round creative writing and multi-arts classes for youth in grades 2–12. Woodland Pattern's book center holds a carefully curated and nationally recognized collection of over 25,000 titles of poetry, small press literature, and literary ephemera, including broadsides, chapbooks, and zines—often published in conjunction with the center's programs and spanning nearly four decades. Their Native American literature section is the largest in Wisconsin, and their selection of small-press poetry is the largest of its kind in the country. While books from the center may be purchased, the space also serves as a neighborhood reading room, and people are encouraged to browse and study at their leisure. Woodland Pattern is known for its community alliances, its efforts to bridge cultural and genre divides, and the diversity of its offerings, as well as its emphasis on new (experimental) writers and writing."Cultural Institutions: Woodland Pattern Book Center" in Sisson, Richard & Andrew Robert Lee Cayton. ''The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia'' Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2007; p. 681 Poet

Jerome Rothenberg Jerome Rothenberg (December 11, 1931 – April 21, 2024) was an American poet, translator and anthologist, noted for his work in the fields of ethnopoetics and performance poetry. Rothenberg co-founded the method of ethnopoetics with Dennis T ...

has praised Woodland Pattern's reputation as "national in scope, and I know of no other center - anywhere in the U.S. - that has carried on a more intricate and demanding program in the literary arts". Since opening its doors, the organization has presented a long list of seminal figures in contemporary literature, music, film, and art, including Guggenheim fellows, Pulitzer Prize winners, Poets Laureate, and Nobel Laureates in Literature.

Laurie Anderson Laura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson (born June 5, 1947) is an American avant-garde artist, musician and filmmaker whose work encompasses performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and sculpting,Amirkhanian, Cha ...

John Ashbery John Lawrence Ashbery (July 28, 1927 – September 3, 2017) was an American poet and art critic. Ashbery is considered the most influential American poet of his time. Oxford University literary critic John Bayley wrote that Ashbery "sounded, in ...

Margaret Atwood Margaret Eleanor Atwood (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian novelist, poet, literary critic, and an inventor. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of nonfiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight chi ...

Amiri Baraka Amiri Baraka (born Everett Leroy Jones; October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014), previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka, was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism. He was the author of numerous b ...

Stan Brakhage James Stanley Brakhage ( ; January 14, 1933 – March 9, 2003) was an American experimental filmmaker. He is considered to be one of the most important figures in 20th-century experimental film. Over the course of five decades, Brakhage cr ...

William Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist. He is widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular culture and ...

Wanda Coleman Wanda Coleman (November 13, 1946 – November 22, 2013) was an American poet. She was known as "the L.A. Blueswoman" and "the unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles". Biography Wanda Evans was born in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, whe ...

Robert Creeley Robert White Creeley (May 21, 1926 – March 30, 2005) was an American poet and author of more than 60 books. He is associated with the Black Mountain poets, although his verse aesthetic diverged from that school. Creeley was close with Charle ...

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 ...

, Joy Harjo,

Juan Felipe Herrera Juan Felipe Herrera (born on December 27, 1948) is an American poet, performer, writer, cartoonist, teacher, and activist. Herrera was the 21st United States Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017. He is a major figure in the literary field of Chicano ...

, Myung Mi Kim, Joanne Kyger,

Nathaniel Mackey Nathaniel Mackey is an American poet, novelist, anthologist, literary critic and editor. He is the Reynolds Price Professor of Creative Writing at Duke University and a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets. Mackey is currently teachi ...

Eileen Myles Eileen Myles (born December 9, 1949) is an American poet and writer who has produced more than twenty volumes of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, libretti, plays, and performance pieces over the last three decades. Novelist Dennis Cooper has des ...

Pauline Oliveros Pauline Oliveros (May 30, 1932 – November 24, 2016) was an American composer, accordionist and a central figure in the development of post-war experimental and electronic music. She was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center ...

Evan Parker Evan Shaw Parker (born 5 April 1944) is a British tenor and soprano saxophone player who plays free improvisation. Recording and performing prolifically with many collaborators, Parker was a pivotal figure in the development of European free ja ...

Pedro Pietri Pedro Pietri (March 21, 1944 – March 3, 2004) was a Puerto Rican poet and playwright and one of the co-founders of the Nuyorican Movement. He was considered by some as the poet laureate of the Nuyorican Movement. Early years Pietri was bor ...

Claudia Rankine Claudia Rankine (; born September 4, 1963) is a Jamaican-American poet, essayist, playwright, and the editor of several anthologies. She is the author of five volumes of poetry, two plays and various essays. Her book of poetry, '' Citizen: An A ...

Leslie Marmon Silko Leslie Marmon Silko (born Leslie Marmon; born March 5, 1948) is an American writer. A woman of Laguna Pueblo descent, she is one of the key figures in the First Wave of what literary critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renais ...

, Cecilia Vicuna,

Anne Waldman Anne Waldman (born April 2, 1945) is an American poet. Since the 1960s, Waldman has been an active member of the Outrider experimental poetry community as a writer, performer, collaborator, professor, editor, scholar, and cultural/political acti ...

, and

John Zorn John Zorn (born September 2, 1953) is an American composer, conducting, conductor, saxophonist, arrangement, arranger and record producer, producer who "deliberately resists category". His Avant-garde music, avant-garde and experimental music, ex ...

are just a few of the more renowned artists who have performed in the Woodland Pattern gallery over the years.

References

{{Authority control 1979 establishments in Wisconsin Arts organizations based in Wisconsin Literary societies Organizations based in Milwaukee Poetry organizations Non-profit organizations based in Wisconsin Independent bookstores of the United States