Lorine Niedecker in Door County

The excellent Milwaukee bookstore Woodland Pattern is co-sponsoring a Lorine Niedecker seminar in Door County this August called Reading the Ridges: Lorine Niedecker and the Natural Worlds of Wisconsin.

This week-long summer seminar will explore the work of Wisconsin's greatest poet Lorine Niedecker, who wrote about her island home in southern Wisconsin as well as the Ridges Sanctuary in Door County and the Lake Superior region. An avid student of geologic, natural, and human history, Niedecker weaves imagery of Wisconsin's waterways, birds, and plants into her intensely personal and political poems. For much of her adult life, she lived in a small cabin with no running water located on a flood plain on the Rock River. Like Henry David Thoreau, she made her home in close proximity to the seasonal changes of the natural world and found in them a rich source of inspiration for her work. The course will offer an overview of Niedecker's life and writings as well as discussion of contemporary writers who influenced her work. We will focus in particular on three poems widely considered to be her finest: "Wintergreen Ridge," "Lake Superior," and "Darwin." In our discussions, we will examine her sources for these three poems, including her correspondence, the scientific and historical materials she read, and the natural surroundings of Door County. Students will explore how a place becomes a poem.

You can sign up here. Also of interest to Niedecker enthusiasts, the University of Wisconsin digital collection has hundreds of rare and fascinating photos and documents for Niedecker's life on Black Hawk Island (including the photo above). Peruse it here by putting "Niedecker" in the search field.