Woodland Pattern's Annual Poetry Marathon is a community fundraiser for the Milwaukee books store.
A quarter-century after its inception, Woodland Pattern’s Poetry Marathon is still going strong. For 15 hours straight starting Saturday, Jan. 26, at 10 a.m. and ending on Sunday, Jan. 27, at 1 a.m. (yes, a.m.), 150 readers will perform on stage for five minutes each. For a $10 fee, visitors can come in and out at their leisure during the entire marathon and enjoy the food provided by local businesses and restaurants. The event is a fundraiser as well as an important literary tradition in the Great Lakes region. Off the Cuff discussed it with Mike Wendt, literary program director and bookstore manager at Woodland Pattern Book Center (720 E. Locust St., 414-263-5001).
Are there specific rules regarding what can be read during the Poetry Marathon?
Not really; it’s pretty open, and we get all kinds of things. Most readers are presenting their own original work, and it ends up mostly being poets, which is great! Both in the bookstore at Woodland Pattern and in our gallery and performance space, we’re pretty heavily focused on poetry, many of the books that we have in the store are poetry books, so it tends to be the case that most of the performers are poets. But, we also have musicians and individuals performing short dramatic works, fiction, essays and all manner of other performances or other art forms like spoken word. It runs the gamut a bit.
Some hours on your schedule seem empty; what are you planning for those?
There are some hours that are specially organized and curated by certain individuals. For instance, we have one LGBTQ hour, starting at 9 p.m., organized by poet David Kruger; David has asked queer- and LGBTQ-identified poets, writers and performers to join him on stage. At 1 p.m., we have one hour sponsored by the Juneau Park Friends and Poetry in the Park, which is an outdoor poetry reading event that takes place monthly throughout the summer. Another hour, at 4 p.m., is going to feature current and former Wisconsin Poet laureates, including the incoming laureate, Margaret Rozga, along with the current one, Karla Huston.
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Another one that’s always really fun and interesting is the UW-Milwaukee Film Department one. In the past, there have been students who, in addition to being filmmakers, are also writers or poets—but there’s also been a fair amount of performative work, some interactive work with audience participation and some who’ve just read writings by others.
Can you tell me more about the fundraising aspect?
Individuals sign up to read with the understanding that, as part of that, they’re also raising funds on our behalf. They are asked to raise a minimum of $35 in pledges, ideally by asking friends, relatives or colleagues who might be willing to give a little bit. In addition to pledges, we also ask individuals, businesses and organizations to sponsor hours of the marathon, and we then advertise them. In this way, we manage to raise quite a bit of money, which is then used to support our programming throughout the rest of the year. We invite artists, have youth programs, after-school programs, summer camps for youth, poetry and inter-arts camps, music, film and other such programs. People can get involved by either sponsoring readers or by offering a general pledge, which will then find its way to a reader that might not be able to raise the full $35.
Are there any highlights you’re particularly looking forward to this year?
I’ll be biased and say the whole thing is wonderful. I’m always very excited about the hours that are organized by local artists and curators, like the Wisconsin Poet laureates hour and the film hour, which are both quite a bit of fun. Honestly, there are incredible poets reading throughout the entire day. It’s wonderful that there are so many people who have read for many of those 25 years; I suspect there may even be a couple who’ve read all of those years. Even after all this time, it’s still a very casual community event where people are just sharing this space, sharing their work, eating together and just having a good time that ends up being something of a 15-hour poetry party.
