{"id":15207,"date":"2015-01-07T09:50:07","date_gmt":"2015-01-07T15:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/?p=15207"},"modified":"2015-11-12T08:20:43","modified_gmt":"2015-11-12T14:20:43","slug":"uwms-blaeser-named-wisconsin-poet-laureate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/news\/uwms-blaeser-named-wisconsin-poet-laureate\/","title":{"rendered":"51ÁÔÆæ\u2019s Blaeser named Wisconsin Poet Laureate"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Kim<\/a>
Kim Blaeser<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

English professor Kimberly Blaeser has been chosen as Wisconsin\u2019s new poet laureate by the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters and will serve a two-year term promoting poetry throughout the state.<\/p>\n

Blaeser, who has written three poetry collections and had her worked translated into multiple languages, succeeds Max Garland, a professor at University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. We talked to Blaeser about her poetry and her new position.<\/p>\n

How old were you when you got interested in poetry and what sparked your interest?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In my family, poetry, storytelling and a lot of the oral arts were just a part of everyday life. My father could recite poetry at the drop of a hat. If you said the word \u201calone,\u201d he\u2019d say \u201calone, alone on the wide, wide sea. And never a saint took pity on my soul.\u201d So, he was quite a poet-recitation person. When I was in grade school, we learned to recite poetry; I wrote very bad poetry my whole life from the time I could write. Our family would use great, long narrative poems as something to pass time on road trips. Poetry has just been part of my life since I was a child.<\/p>\n

\n
Video by Sara L. Nelson
\n<\/span><\/div>\n