Voices of the North: An Evening with the U.P. Poets Laureate

Jesse Koenig, the current U.P. Poet Laureate, lives in L’Anse, in Baraga County, with his wife, Karina. He taught writing and literature at Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa Community College and Central Michigan University. He now works at Northern Michigan University as Senior Success Advisor. He has a BS in Philosophy and an MA in English. He has been published in regional anthologies, magazines, and newspapers. His UPPL Project is to foster and connect UP writing communities. For 30+ years, he’s been active in writing communities: Writers’ Guild, Pure Words, Poets’ Collective. He’s run Life’s Stage and Talk Show open mics and assisted Robert Fanning with the Wellspring Literary Series. He’s a proud member of Marquette’s Poets’ Circle, Baraga’s S.N.O.W.S., and Houghton’s UP-Write. You can join the movement by Engaging with Words!

Beverly Matherne is  professor emerita of English at Northern Michigan University, where she served as director of the Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing and poetry editor of Passages North literary magazine. The author of seven books of poetry, she lives in Ishpeming, far from Grand Point, her birthplace on the Mississippi near New Orleans. She is inspired by both the wealth of her Cajun and Creole heritage and the natural and cultural bounty of the Upper Peninsula.

M. Bartley Seigel is the author of In the Bone-Cracking Cold (Wayne State University Press, 2025) and This Is What They Say (Typecast Publishing 2013). A former poet laureate of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, his poems have appeared in literary journals such as Poetry Magazine, Michigan Quarterly Review, About Place, and Fourth River, among many others. He is Writing Center Director, Professor in the Department of Humanities, and Affiliated Professor in the Department of Visual & Performing Arts at Michigan Technological University.

Marty Achatz is a two-time U.P. Poet Laureate and a Contingent Professor in the English Department at Northern Michigan University for close to 30 years. Prior to that, he taught at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. He grew up in Ishpeming and got his Master’s Degree in Fiction and MFA in Poetry from Northern Michigan University. Marty’s most recent publications include poems in The Other Journal and Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice.

Andrea Scarpino is a writer, teacher, editor, disability activist, foodie, yoga student, wellness enthusiast, middle grade reader, kitty foster mom, and Women’s World Cup fanatic (among other things!). She is the author of four poetry collections: Once Upon Wing Lake (Hoot ‘n’ Waddle Press, 2017); What the Willow Said as it Fell (Red Hen Press, 2016); Once, Then (Red Hen Press, 2014); and the chapbook The Grove Behind (Finishing Line Press, 2009). She co-edited with Ron Riekki the anthology Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice (MSU Press, 2019) and is co-editor of Nine Mile Magazine. Andrea earned her PhD in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University and was the 2015-2017 Poet Laureate of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Russell Thorburn was the first U.P. Poet Laureate. The Marquette resident and Northern Michigan University professor has also been honored by the National Endowment for the Arts, and is the author of several books of prose and poetry. His newest poetry collection is called Somewhere We’ll Leave the World (Wayne State University Press, 2017).