Kimberly Blaeser, Wisconsin Poet Laureate

Of Anishinaabe ancestry and a native of White Earth Reservation in northwestern Minnesota, Blaeser appreciates the opportunity to live with her family in the woods and wetlands of rural Wisconsin. Blaeser works as Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where she teaches Creative Writing, Native American Literature, and American Nature Writing. When she isn’t busy transporting her daughter to sporting events or tracking her son’s college career, Blaeser’s interests include wilderness expeditions and wildlife and nature photography. Her current creative project features “Picto-Poems” and brings her poetry together with nature and wildlife photography to explore intersecting ideas about Native place, nature, preservation, and spiritual sustenance.

Blaeser’s three published poetry collections have earned critical acclaim for their ability to refresh our vision of the world we live in. Of her 2002 collection Absentee Indians and Other Poems, poet and musician Joy Harjo writes “These poems are small sure lights in the darkness—poems to lead us home.” And, “this is a gorgeous book,” says author and filmmaker Sherman Alexie of Blaeser’s 2007 collection, Apprenticed to Justice.