Woodland Pattern is continuing to do their annual Poetry Marathon in a hybrid format – for 2026, it will be available online and also, like last year, you can attend in-person at Saint Kate – The Arts Hotel, which is in Milwaukee. It’s 10am-10pm each day; this year, I’m reading during one of the community blocks, so I will be in the 3pm-4pm block on Sunday.
If you’re in Milwaukee, I have to say that Saint Kate is a very cool hotel; there’s a pretty large gallery space downstairs that you can walk through when you’re feeling full up on poetry (or if you’re in the area some other time). You can also get a room there at a discount for the marathon (check out Woodland Pattern’s website below for details).
Tickets are pay-what-you-can (suggested donation is $10), and it’s totally free to stream online. There will be meals provided, too. Honestly, this is just such a neat event… you will hear people with MFAs, people with multiple books, people who are just starting out, people who work teaching poetry, people who work in totally different fields and write poetry in their spare time because they love it, people who write rhyming verse, slam poets who memorize and perform their work… the variety is amazing.
You can find more information on their website here: https://woodlandpattern.org/poetry-marathon. And I’d be remiss not to note – this is also a fundraiser for Woodland Pattern, which in addition to being an awesome bookstore, does a ton of literary events in Milwaukee. So if you feel so inclined, you can also sponsor a poet (a specific poet or more generally)… or even underwrite an entire hour, if some random rich person is somehow reading my website!
