In January 2026, beloved poetry book center and experimental music venue Woodland Pattern announced its plan to move to 347 E. Ward Street in Bay View. Community reaction was initially mixed, many grieving while also excited for the potential of the new space. By now, co-executive directors Laura Solomon and Jenny Gropp feel they’ve earned the blessing of the overwhelming majority of the Woodland Pattern community.
The couple moved from Athens, GA in 2018 to take up the reins from Anne Kingsbury and Karl Gartung, co-founders and owners for more than 40 years. Solomon and Gropp brought important changes to the book center during their Riverwest tenure. They initiated a complete tech overhaul, developing a new website, digitizing their entire book collection and incorporating hybrid event programming—the latter sparked due to the confluence of the 2020 and ‘21 Poetry Marathons with the Covid pandemic.
Wrapping up at the Locust Street location was both a homecoming and farewell. Woodland Pattern still ran their usual summer events, such as Poetry in the Park and Poetry Camp. They ran special programming in the building, including celebratory events looking back on the organization’s history. Kingsbury, an accomplished visual artist, displayed her work as the final exhibition in the Riverwest space.
Perhaps unexpectedly, Woodland Pattern has definitively placed Milwaukee on the poetry map. Uniquely poised to offer ample space, niche focus and a passionate community to invest in poetry and book arts, the city has been a more hospitable and sustainable setting for the non-profit book center than a denser or more costly city. Solomon and Gropp say that poetry nerds from far and wide travel to browse their collection. “We have people coming from New York all the time…[saying] ‘‘we have nothing like this in New York.’”…