Poetry advocate Benka praises the work of Woodland Pattern
Returning to Milwaukee to speak at Woodland Pattern Book Center’s annual gala on Nov. 17, Jennifer Benka will tell folks that today is both a good time and a necessary time for poetry.
She’ll also celebrate an arts center that was crucial in her own development as a writer.
“There are few, few cities that have a nonprofit organization with a physical space doing weekly programming year round devoted to the literary arts,” said Benka, executive director of the Academy of American Poets, one of the world’s largest organizations that champions poetry.
Woodland Pattern “is without a doubt on our nation’s poetry map,” Benka said. “It is a destination for poets and poetry publishers. It’s particularly important, I think, because it’s in the Midwest. It really provides an opportunity for us to make sure that we don’t think about poetry as only existing in cities on the coasts.”
The Woodland Pattern gala, which will take place at the Cooperage, 822 S. Water St., also will feature a performance by poet Nathaniel Mackey and pianist Marilyn Crispell.
Born in South Milwaukee, Benka graduated from Marquette University in 1990 with a journalism degree. During the decade that followed, while she worked for local nonprofits, Benka plunged herself into the local literary scene. During any given week, she was either at a reading at Woodland Pattern or at Geo Kiesow’s poetry slam at the YNot II, or both. Her books include “Pinko” (2011) and “A Box of Longing With Fifty Drawers” (2005).
Through its website Poets.org and its Poem-A-Day email program, the Academy of American Poets has become a major poetry publisher, too.
“We are putting into the world around 260 new poems (a year),” Benka said. “We are publishing more poems than The New Yorker, for example.”
Benka said it’s “a good time for poetry in the sense that more people are reading than ever.” While she’s been saying that for years based on what she’s observed, she can now also point to data. According to a National Endowment for the Arts survey, nearly 12 percent of adults 18 and older read poetry during 2017, up 5 percentage points from the 2012 rate. “This poetry readership is the highest on record over a 15year period of conducting” the survey, wrote Sunil Iyengar on the NEA Art Works blog.
Benka believes poetry is benefiting from the digital age and social media. “Anyone who is on Instagram or Twitter knows that people love sharing poems on those social media platforms,” she said. “And that’s really helped poets build audiences … “
Saliently, she also sees poetry as necessary today. “We are living in a moment where language is being battered, where meaning is being manipulated,” she said. Poetry “creates an opportunity for readers to reflect on language having meaning, and for meaning to be restored.”
Also, in poems “we have an opportunity to hear another person’s voice in a very intimate way. By so doing we gain an understanding of that person’s life,” Benka said. She cited the work of Hmong-American poet Mai Der Vang, whom Benka accompanied on a reading visit to Milwaukee in 2017.
“I knew nothing about the Hmong tradition,” Benka said. “By reading her poems, I got to learn about her family and their journey. opening my eyes to a part of the world and to a community
IF YOU GO
Woodland Pattern Book Center's 38th anniversary gala begins with a 5 p.m. reception Nov. 17 at The Cooperage, 822 S. Water St. The program begins at 7 p.m. For ticket and other info, visit woodlandpattern.org or call (414) 263-5001. that I didn’t know before … “
I put Benka on the spot by asking her to recommend a poem that anyone could read right now. Replying the day before the Nov. 6 elections, the first poem that came to her mind was Elizabeth Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day,” which Alexander read at President Barack Obama’s inauguration. “I think that’s an incredibly uplifting poem that calls us and our country to be our own best self,” she said.
Similarly, she also recommended Langston Hughes’ “Let America Be America Again.” Over the past several years, it’s been read by hundreds of thousands of people on Poets.org, she said.
Beyond those choices, Benka recommends exploring Poets.org and the Poem-A-Day project: “I firmly believe there is a poet for everyone. There are poems for everyone. And you just need to have a little curiosity and a little willingness.”