Workshop Series: Over the Prairie//Under the Prairie with Lily Lalios

Wed. May 6 | 6–8 pm CDT @ Woodland Pattern: The Paved Prairie

In this ecology-focused workshop, we’ll observe the plants around the Woodland Pattern building for ideas about character, categorization, and conflict, casting the plants that poke up through the sidewalks as heroes against seemingly insurmountable odds. Is a Prairie still a Prairie if there’s a City on top of it? Who decided the difference between “flowers” and “weeds”? Participants will peek beneath the Urban Overlay for inspiration. We’ll write poems that consider the relationship between the land and those that walk on it, discussing things like city planning and landscaping, the prioritization of roads and cars, and sources of noise, air, and soil pollution.

For full series details visit: https://woodlandpattern.org/events/workshop-series-…with-lily-lalios

*****

Lily Lalios is a writer based in Milwaukee who has been published by #EnbyLife journal, Pitymilk Press, and VA Press. They also produced Apagimeni Literary Magazine, a compilation of poetry, essays, and visual art by and about the queer Greek American experience. Lily’s work made the long list for the 2024 SmokeLong Quarterly Award for Flash Fiction, and they were a finalist for the 2025 Genrepunk Haunting Award. Currently, Lily is also a member of the writing team for Cabaret Milwaukee, a theatre troupe that performs radio dramas about Wisconsin history.

Lily’s project Over the Prairie//Under the Prairie is a yearlong series of free community poetry workshops, culminating in a print anthology. These generative workshops, designed for Milwaukee residents and writers of all experience levels, will explore one or more of the project’s four major themes; Grief and Death practices, Local Eco-Writing, Interfaith/Intercultural Memory-Keeping, and Ekphrastic Poetry. Workshops will be held at various locations around the city in order to offer site-specific inspiration related to the theme, as well as to allow participants to explore their city and meet neighbors they might not otherwise encounter.

Workshops are free and open to the public, and participants are welcome to come to as many or as few as they like. Please register for each session in which you plan to attend. While these themes are sure to inspire highly personal and vulnerable work, participants are welcome to submit their generated works to the community anthology, which will commemorate the project and serve as a testament to the importance of collective grieving and the cathartic power of poetry.

Lily will receive administrative support from our staff, along with a $1,500 project budget to carry out their vision.

*****

About the Milwaukee Emerging Poet Fellowship program: Drawing inspiration from both the Mary L. Nohl Fund Emerging Artist Fellowship and the Poetry Project’s Emerge Surface Be program, Woodland Pattern established the Milwaukee Emerging Poet Fellowship program in 2022 to bring greater visibility and much-needed early support to Milwaukee poets through mentorships, access to opportunities that encourage a poet’s practice and development, and investment in literary projects for which younger poets frequently lack resources. The Milwaukee Emerging Poet Fellowship program also seeks to make available alternative avenues of support for emerging poets outside traditional academic-track poetry programs and environments. This initiative is open to Milwaukee poets between the ages of 20 and 35, who are not currently enrolled in an MFA or PhD program.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Woodland Pattern Book Center