This past week was an exciting one as Writer-in-Residence. Over the last month I received submissions from nineteen poets in the area, created the website and Soundcloud account, and posted all the submissions I had so far. Then, after a fun open mic at the Racine Transit Center (shoutout to Nicholas Ravnikar & The Poetry Movement!), I spent Saturday afternoon at Vintage & Modern Books recording last minute submissions to the archive from people who had either found out too late to submit back in April or preferred to have someone else record them. I consider it a great success as we added roughly 50% to the number of submissions (although I am still currently waiting for emails from most of them with the written versions of their poems.)

Anyway, I will be adding those additions this week and as I receive them after that.

For anyone reading this who is unfamiliar with my project, I created another blog-based site with an archive of poems from Racine/Kenosha writers in both written AND audio form. I thought it would be interesting to have a record of poems by local writers where we could hear the poems in their own voices.

The site has technically been live a few days, but this is the official announcement. So, without further ado, here is the Racine/Kenosha Poetry Archive!

You can also find a link to the Archive at the top of the Artroot Writer in Residence homepage.

Even after my term is done at the end of June, I will maintain control/access to the archive, so if people want to submit in the future, I can still add posts down the road, although my period of actively, publicly soliciting submissions is now over.

Now that that work is done, I’m looking forward to getting back to one final month of posts as your Writer-in-Residence!

Jay Mollerskov, ArtRoot Writer-In-Residence – 6/1/26