Ellen Kort, Wisconsin

Ellen Kort is Wisconsin's first poet laureate. She is the author of eleven books, including seven books of poetry. Her most recent book is Wisconsin Women and Their Quilts: Stories in the Stitches. In addition to awards that include the Pablo Neruda Literary Prize for Poetry, her work has achieved some unusual prominence. Her poems have been featured in a wide variety of anthologies, and architecturally incorporated in downtown Milwaukee's Midwest Express Center, the Green Bay Botanical Garden, and the Fox River Mall in Appleton, Wisconsin. Kort's writing has also been performed by the New York City Dance Theater, and recorded on audio cassette by Ellen Burstyn, Ed Asner, CCH Pounder, and Alfre Woodard, as well as included in the 1997 "Re-Membering" exhibit in Wichita Falls and the 1998 "Women and Their Work" exhibit in Austin. She teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and at the Renaissance Fine Arts Charter School in Appleton, and carries a bucket of glow-in-the-dark chalk in her car so she can write poems on city sidewalks.

Appointment: By governor, four years