Founded by poets and artists in 1979, Woodland Pattern is a nonprofit book center, gallery, and performance space in Milwaukee, WI, where poetry, sound works, film, and visual art coexist on a daily basis.

Our goals are to promote a lifetime practice of reading and writing; to serve as a forum and resource center in our region; to encourage exchange across the visual, sonic, and literary arts; and to act as a bridge between local and national communities of poets and other artists.  

Each year, Woodland Pattern offers over 400 activities and events for people of all ages—including writing workshops, poetry performances, concerts, art exhibitions, film screenings, and literary and interdisciplinary arts programs for children and youth. We are also home to special initiatives such as the Milwaukee Youth Poet Laureate program and the Milwaukee Emerging Poet Fellowship, and serve as the fiscal receiver for Indigenous Nations Poets.

In addition to our programming efforts, the dissemination of independent literature—particularly poetry, unconventional texts, works that honor bookmaking as a visual art, books by small- and micro-press publishers, and literature by writers from historically marginalized backgrounds—has been central to our purpose since our founding. As a result of more than four decades of mission-driven inventory decisions, Woodland Pattern is home to the largest collection of haiku in North America, the largest selection of Native American literature in Wisconsin, and our collection of contemporary poetry is one of the most comprehensive of its kind in the United States. Woodland Pattern also houses a sizable collection of works by writers from Wisconsin and throughout the Upper Midwest. Unlike a commercial bookseller, our acquisitions are not based on profitability but on mission fit, which also means we hold on to titles indefinitely, as we believe in their permanent value.

Woodland Pattern

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