Featured Poets 2017

MIKEY CODY APOLLO is a spoken word artist who was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Much of her work revolves around her experiences as a Black woman and an intersectional feminist. Apollo has been writing since the second grade, and is passionate about both art and education. Her favorite film of all time is “Moonlight”, and her favorite poet is Kendrick Lamar.

ANN-MARIE BLANCHARD is originally from Lakesland, Australia, and is currently pursuing her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In 2016 she was awarded commendations in the Peter Porter Poetry Prize. Publications have appeared and are forthcoming in Bat City Review, Sycamore Review, Westerly, Cordite Poetry Review, Bone Bouquet and elsewhere.

AE HEE LEE is South Korean by birth but Peruvian by memory. She has recently graduated with her MFA from the University of Notre Dame and is now a PhD candidate in Poetry at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is winner of the 2016 Billy Maich Academy of American Poets Prize. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming at the Denver Quarterly, Hawai;i Review, and The Margins, among others.

KRISTIN PETERSON is a poet and filmmaker currently living in Milwaukee, WI.  She makes films under the production company Media Schmedia.  Her poetry has been published in the Great Lakes Review, Burdock ’12, drupe fruits and by pity milk press, as well as with Rogue Agent, ICHNOS and Flag + Void.  Her first chapbook “and she couldn’t help it” will be published by Dancing Girl Press in Chicago this Fall.

RYAN J. BURDEN is a graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and the current Managing/Fiction editor of Four Way Review. He is the winner of Redivider’s 2016 Beacon Street Prize for short fiction, with work appearing in or forthcoming from Crack the Spine, Foundling Review, Gulf Stream, and JMWW, among others. He is currently a doctoral candidate at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

FREESIA MCKEE is a working poet. Her words have appeared in the Huffington Post, Gertrude, Painted Bride Quarterly, Burdock, and Sundress Press’s Political Punch anthology. She co-hosts The Subtle Forces, a weekly morning show on Riverwest Radio in which two of Milwaukee’s wittiest, devilish non-men explore a “subtle force” that messes with every aspect of their lives.

CALEB NELSON is a first year PhD student studying Poetry at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His work has appeared in Prick of the Spindle, Stoneboat, Storm Cellar, and elsewhere. He grew up hiking and fishing in the mountains of Montana.

CAITLIN SCARANO is a poet in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee PhD creative writing program. She was the winner of the 2015 Indiana Review Poetry Prize, judged by Eduardo Corral. Her poem “Mule” was selected for the Best New Poets 2016 anthology. She has two poetry chapbooks: The White Dog Year (dancing girl press, 2015) and The Salt and Shadow Coiled (Zoo Cake Press, 2015). Her debut collection of poems will be released in Fall 2017 by Write Bloody Publishing.

FRANKLIN K.R. CLINE’s poems have been featured in Banango Street, Cleaver, Matter, Word Riot, and elsewhere. He is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, a PhD candidate in English—Creative Writing at the University of Milwaukee-Wisconsin, a member of Woodland Pattern Book Center’s Board of Directors, and the book reviews and interviews editor of cream city review. He lives in Milwaukee with three cats and his wife, Rachel Kincaid.

TYLER FARRELL was born in Illinois, grew up in Milwaukee, WI, was educated by the Jesuits at Marquette High School and Creighton University, and by layfolk at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He has published poems, essays, and reviews in many periodicals and anthologies and a biographical essay for James Liddy’s Selected Poems (Arlen House, 2011). Farrell (whose name is Irish for “courageous”) is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Marquette University and teaches writing, poetry, literature, and drama. He also leads a summer study abroad program to Ireland and currently lives in Madison, WI with Joan, Holden and Linus. Farrell also has two collections of poems published by Salmon Poetry (County Clare, Ireland), Tethered to the Earth (2008) and The Land of Give and Take (2012) and a forthcoming collection entitled Stichomythia (2017).

ALESSANDRA SIMMONS is a poetry editor for cream city review and likes orchards.

PETER BURZYNSKI is a fourth-year PhD student in Creative Writing-Poetry at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He holds a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a M.F.A. in Poetry from The New School University, and a M.A. in Polish Literature from Columbia University. In between his studies, he has worked as a chef in New York City and Milwaukee. He is an assistant poetry editor for the cream city review and Graduate Assistant Coordinator for Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming from The Best American Poetry Blog, Thin Air, Prick of the Spindle, Working Stiff, Thrush Poetry Review, Your Impossible Voice, RHINO, and Forklift Ohio, amongst others.