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Wisconsin People & Ideas – Summer 2025

In this issue: In this issue: We explore how and why to rewild your lawn with Amy Yocum and the Wild Ones. Wisconsin’s natural and creative abundance. Discover a program that is part Indigenous language course, part poetry workshop founded by Anishinaabe writer and Academy Fellow Dr. Kimberly Blaeser. Enjoy the musical musings of nationally renown luthier Todd Cambio, travel great distances on the wings of a plucky bobolink, and treat yourself to Wisconsin’s trinity, served up in restaurants, breweries, and cheese chalets around the state. Additionally, you'll find our new regular feature, Shelf Life, about our state’s independent bookshops, meet two Wisconsin artists exhibiting at the Watrous Gallery this fall, and enjoy plenty of fiction and poetry.

Volume:

Issue Number:

From the Director

By:

Erika Monroe-Kane

We move into the summer, a season cherished for a slower pace, reveling in the outdoors, and leisure time with those we love.

Editors Note

Editor's Note

By:

Sandra Barnidge

In this issue, we’re giving a fresh voice to Wisconsin’s landscapes, traditions, and cultural communities.

Wisconsin Table

Beer, Brats, and Cheese

By:

Al Dickenson

Heather Kerrigan traveled more than 2,600 miles across Wisconsin to sample as many of the state’s beer, brat, and cheese delicacies as her stomach could handle.

Amy Yocum sitting in her garden. Photo by Beth Skogen

Feature

How to rewild your lawn

By:

Jacqueline Houtman

In midsummer, Amy Yocum’s Madison garden is a riot of color. The blues and purples of the wild geraniums, anise hyssop, blue sage, and violets contrast with the bright orange of the butterfly weed...

Todd Cambio, center, with two of his sons at Fraulini Guitars in Madison.

Essay

Playing it forward

By:

Todd Cambio

Madison-based luthier Todd Cambio crafts guitars that echo the past while carrying traditional music into the future

Essay

Bobbi’s Migration Journal

By:

Andy Bingle, Jenni Foshey

A look at the Southern Driftless Grasslands through the eyes of a Bobolink

Cetonia Weston, founder of Niche Book Bar in Milwaukee.

Essay

Bridging and bonding

By:

Kim Suhr

With their varied selections of books and eclectic events, indie bookstores across Wisconsin have the potential to build bridges between groups that may not realize they have shared values

Essay

#LanguageBack

By:

Halee Kirkwood

We rolled into the College of Menominee Nation in Keshena on a Friday night, as the setting sun broke through the clouds and cast the campus in peaceful purple and grey light.

The Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets was founded in 1950 by a small group of poets who met at the Memorial Union Terrace in Madison.

Essay

Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets turns 75

By:

Christina Kubasta

Sometimes non-poets wonder what poetry is for—and there are as many answers to that question as there are poets.

Liz Bachhuber and Jill Sebastian, Eat My Words, 2021, aluminum, worm-box (wood, worms, paper, table scraps), snow peas planted in worm-made compost, clay pots, growlights, plywood, shredded paper, handmade pea papercups.

@ the Watrous Gallery

Waste Not: Art in an Age of Environmental Reckoning

By:

Jody Clowes

Liz Bachhuber and Jill Sebastian first met in art school in the 1970s and reconnected during the pandemic, when they embarked on a transatlantic collaboration.

Fiction

Complications From A Fall

By:

Linda Falkenstein

I go by Hortense. At group, last names don’t come up. It’s not officially anonymous, but there is a sense of confidentiality. Unspoken, but understood.

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Wisconsin People & Ideas – Summer 2025