Fort resident, UW-Whitewater associate professor named Wisconsin Poet Laureate

The Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission (WPLC) announced earlier this week that Nicholas Gulig, a resident of Fort Atkinson and associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, has been selected as the state’s poet laureate. 

According to the release, Gulig began his two-year term Saturday, and will serve until the end of 2024. 

In the release, Gulig is described as a Thai-American poet and a “Wisconsinite dedicated to his craft and passionately committed to further cultivating his state’s literary community, his poems and literary history.” 

He stood out to the WPLC as exceptional, the release stated. 

About Gulig

According to the release, Gulig studied literature at the University of Montana, the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and the University of Denver. 

In 2011 he received a Fulbright Fellowship to Bangkok, Thailand during which he completed his first book “North of Order.” Cutbank Books published his second collection, “Book of Lake.” In 2018, his third collection, “Orient,” was a finalist or semi-finalist in 6 national book contests, eventually winning the coveted CSU Open Book Poetry Prize. 

As stated within the release, Gulig has been invited to give numerous readings, talks, and lectures across the country by such institutions as Naropa University, Cleveland State University, and the Association of Asian American Studies, among others 

Locally, he has twice won the “Wisconsin People and Ideas” poetry award: once in 2017 for a poem titled “The New American Nostalgia,” and this year for a poem titled “Of Genesis.” Gulig has given talks and readings across the state, including for the Chippewa Valley Writer’s Guild where he spoke alongside former Wisconsin Poet Laurette Max Garland. 

At the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater he works with young Midwestern writers daily in the classroom. 

“With the essayist Barrett Swanson, (Gulig) runs ‘The Muse,’ the campus literary journal, which recently collaborated with the Black Student Union to publish a portfolio of Black student responses to our nation’s persistent racial turmoil,” the release stated.

In addition, Gulig guides the “UWW Creative Writing Festival,” an event that brings more than 600 students annually to the UW-Whitewater campus to take workshops with other students from around the state, and the “Growing Writers Summer Camp,” which focuses on providing middle and high school students access to college-level writing instruction and community, the release noted.  

He also founded and curates a variety of reading series, including “The Warhawk Reading and Lecture Series,” “The Lamplight Reading Series,” and the “Faculty Spotlight Reading Series.” 

Gulig received a FIRE grant to study the poetry of Lorine Niedecker, conducting research on and recreating Niedecker’s 1966 trip circumnavigating Lake Superior, the release read.  

As state poet laureate, Gulig plans to curate a monthly online column devoted to Wisconsin poetry, and curate a “Letters to a Young Poet” program in the spirit of Rainer Maria Rilke. A “welcoming” poetry reading will be open to the public; date and time has yet to be announced, according to the release.