Early in fall 2023, my friend Nick Gulig asked me if I would like to accompany him and other writers on a road trip around Lake Superior. His hope was that I could gather video footage for a documentary project he envisioned about a Fort Atkinson poet, and I enthusiastically signed on.
A resident of Fort Atkinson himself, Gulig had recently been named to a two-year term as the Wisconsin Poet Laureate. He was taking this trip to pay homage to the late Lorine Niedecker.
Not knowing much about Niedecker, I wasn’t sure what form the documentary would take, but I was interested to go along for the ride and see what we’d find. I understood the trip would retrace the vacation route Niedecker had taken in 1966 with her husband, Al Millen – a trip which formed the basis of her poem, “Lake Superior” – but I didn’t know how we would translate this into a documentary.
Over the course of a short week, we circumnavigated the lake, retracing Niedecker’s path guided by her notes and verses. I shot hours of footage of the changing landscape of the water and the plants, rocks and freighters she mentioned in her poem. I also tried as best I could to discern the visual meaning of Gulig’s journey, but it wasn’t until the last day of our trip that I understood its fuller significance.
Gulig told me about the first time he ever drove into Fort Atkinson. Having spent several years living in his mother’s country, Thailand, after his father died, he decided to move back to Wisconsin in the summer of 2016, bringing his immigrant family with him. But as his car turned down Fort Atkinson’s Main Street, a sign tempered his anxiety. This sign — hanging marquee-style above the door of a small local diner — read, “Welcome Poets.” On the brick wall of that same building, the following words were laid out in a bright mural:…