Poet and long-time creative writing lecturer Ken Mikolowski retired from the RC and from U-M at the end of the Winter 2015 semester.
Ken taught poetry at the RC for nearly 40 years, since 1977 (full-time since 1988), and is only the second poetry instructor since the Creative Writing Program began in Fall 1970 (after Warren Hecht’s arrival that Winter). Andrew Carrigan taught poetry at the RC 1971-75. Ken taught an introductory poetry class, typically with 15-18 students, and then tutored selected students. Even in his introductory class, Ken says he didn’t try to “teach students how to write poetry” but to help them with their own writing, by encouraging them to read, grow, and develop.
Ken plans to remain in Ann Arbor, to travel, and to write. Ken’s newest book of poems, That That, was published this April by Wayne State University Press. Ken has also published four other books of poetry: Remember Me, Thank You Call Again, little mysteries, and Big Enigmas, and has been widely anthologized. He has recently collaborated on projects with RC music professor Michael Gould, and on a jazz recording (released on CD last year). A multimedia presentation of Remember Me was staged last year in the RC Gallery, and has traveled to New York, Nairopa, Berlin, and Poland.
Ken credits the Artists’ Workshop in Detroit’s Cass Corridor in the 1960s as his greatest creative influence. A native of Detroit, Ken attended Wayne State University with the plan to get an engineering degree. Over Ken’s seven years at Wayne (he was paying his own way) he turned to poetry, and under poet W.D. Snodgrass edited WSU’s Wayne Review.
In the 1960s, Mikolowski founded the Alternative Press in Detroit’s Cass Corridor with his late wife, the painter Ann Mikolowski. As the press’s editor for 30 years, Mikolowski published—as unbound letterpress-printed mail art—the work of local Detroit poets as well as nationally recognized Beat and Black Mountain poets, including Amiri Baraka, Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, and Anne Waldman. The Press was celebrated in a 30-year retrospective exhibition and symposium at the Hatcher Graduate Library in 1999.
Aside from the RC, Ken also taught at Macomb Community College and at Wayne State.