This month the BONK! Poetry and Music Series will host another virtual event, taking place on Saturday, January 30th, at 6 p.m. It will feature 4 poets: Madison Poet Laureate Angie Trudell Vasquez, former Wisconsin Poet Laureate Kimberly Blaeser, former Chair of the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission William Stobb and recent Racine Writer-in-Residence Kelsey Marie Harris. All four poets have featured at BONK! in years past, but all four have also recently released new collections of poetry, and BONK! Is very excited to bring them back to read from their new works.. This event will be live streamed via the BONK! Facebook page. To join as an audience member and participate in the comment thread, visit https://www.facebook.com/BONK-51655071250
Angie Trudell Vasquez is a Mexican-American writer and holds an MFA in poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Finishing Line Press published her third collection of poetry, In Light, Always Light, in 2019, and recently accepted her fourth collection, My People Redux, for publication. Her poems have appeared in the Yellow Medicine Review, The Slow Down, the Raven Chronicles, The Rumpus, on the Poetry Foundation’s website, and elsewhere. She is the current poet laureate of Madison, Wisconsin and the first Latina to hold the position. She recently co-edited a poetry anthology entitled, Through This Door – Wisconsin in Poems, with current Wisconsin Poet Laureate, Margaret Rozga, and released it through her small press, Art Night Books, in November 2020. With poet Millissa Kingbird, she co-edited the Spring 2019 issue of the journal the Yellow Medicine Review. Angietrudellvasquez.com.
Kimberly Blaeser, Wisconsin Poet Laureate 2015-2016, is the author of five poetry collections including Copper Yearning, Apprenticed to Justice, and the 2020 bi-lingual Résister en dansant/Ikwe-niimi: Dancing Resistance. An Indigenous activist and environmentalist from White Earth Reservation, she also edited Traces in Blood, Bone, and Stone: Contemporary Ojibwe Poetry. Her book Copper Yearning won the Edna Meudt Poetry Book Award and was named one of the best Native Books in 2019 by the Tribal College Journal. Her photographs, picto-poems, and ekphrastic pieces have been included in exhibits such as “Ancient Light” and “Visualizing Sovereignty.” A Professor at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and MFA faculty for the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, in 2020 Blaeser founded the literary organization In-Na-Po—Indigenous Nations Poets. She lives in rural Wisconsin; and, for portions of each year, in a water-access cabin near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota.
William Stobb‘s most recent poetry collection is You Are Still Alive (2019 42 Miles Press). He is also the author of Absentia, and the National Poetry Series selection, Nervous Systems, both from Penguin Books. Stobb works as Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse, and Associate Editor at Conduit magazine and its book-publishing arm, Conduit Books & Ephemera.
Kelsey Marie Harris is a gardener, artist, poet, and pessimist; in no particular order. She has two chapbooks, “The Jolly Queef” and “Bury Your Horses” as well as a full length poetry book, “Spit (verb) in my mouth” published by Vegetarian Alcoholic Press. She also self published a chapbook, “Sex Wound”. Kelsey is an assistant Curator for the BONK! Poetry and Music Series, and an editor for Really Serious Literature. She was also 2020’s Racine Writer In Residence. Her poetry is fueled by anxiety, self loathing, and chronic over-thinking. She has been published in The Rust Mill, TLDR, Horror Sleaze Trash, Forklift Ohio, and Dreginald.
BONK! 