Poets laureate excited for the opportunity

As they discussed who was trying out for the team, Skillings, a Horlick Spanish teacher, said she planned to go to the games to offer support.

“Sometimes your presence says so much more than anything you could say,” Skillings said. “Just my being there is meaningful.”

Cameron Jones is Horlick’s leading scorer. He was surprised Skillings planned to attend the basketball games but appreciates her encouragement “no matter if we win or lose.”

“It’s a great feeling to look up in the crowd and have somebody there, a consistent face, a familiar face to sit there and watch, and know that somebody has your back,” Jones said.

Jones said Skillings is a friendly, welcoming teacher who often has snacks in her classroom and checks on students.

“She makes you feel like you’re at home,” he said. “She’s just a really great person.”

Students initially being taken aback by her basketball attendance gave Skillings the idea for a poem called “Sons.”

“It was this innocence of ‘You’re going to come watch us play?’ like they weren’t worthy of it,” Skillings said. “I think they’re short-changed often on what they know, what they’re capable of and their value.”

Jones thought “Sons” was great and said it illustrated her care for him and his peers.

In the poem, Skillings writes that, by going to games, she knows her “tryhardness is obvious/my out-of-placeness awkward.”

“I’ll take whatever I can get, though,” the poem reads. “I’ll love them as my heart is called to do./I won’t feel embarrassed or ashamed of the love I give my sons.”

Poets laureate program

Skillings was one of three people selected for the 2025-27 Kenosha/Racine Poets Laureate Program. She is a Racine poet laureate.

The Kenosha/Racine Poets Laureate Program, which began in 2011, aims to recognize local poets and increase community engagement with poetry.

Skillings grew up in Kenosha and taught there for a couple years. She then moved to Oregon, teaching in the Pacific Northwest for about two decades before returning to the area last year.

“I’m back to my roots in many ways, but … I’m also seeing things anew,” Skillings said.

A colleague encouraged Skillings to apply for the program. She was surprised to be chosen but is excited for the new opportunity.

Thomas Carr was also surprised to be selected as a Racine poet laureate.

Carr thought he blew the in-person interview, believing he was too hyper and detail-oriented while answering questions.

That was not the case, however.

There is usually one poet laureate from Racine and one from Kenosha, but Kenosha/Racine Poets board members were enthusiastic about the different skills of Carr and Skillings.

“We thought that it would be beneficial to Racine County and also to them to be able to work together and learn from one another and grow,” said Jennifer Kozelou, Kenosha/Racine Poets board president.

Carr and Skillings will grow alongside Nico Moore, the Kenosha poet laureate.

Moore felt like an unofficial Kenosha poet laureate for years, so he applied to the program to try to make it official.

For the first time, the two Racine poets laureate will both receive annual stipends of $250 thanks to a donation from the nonprofit Friends of the Racine Public Library.

“We are beyond thrilled to be able to bring the gift of poetry to the citizens of Racine County,” said Autumn Latimore, Friends of the Racine Public Library board president, in a news release.

Moore will receive an annual $250 stipend from Kenosha/Racine Poets.

Kozelou said the laureate program wanted to pay previous poets but did not have the funding, so she is grateful that Friends of the Racine Public Library is helping do so.

Community projects

As part of the two-year positions, poets laureate need to work on a community project.

Skillings intends to compile a collection of high school student poems about grief, which she is also experiencing.

She is still mourning the death of her mother 11 years ago; Skillings does not have children.

“I want to give (students) a venue to express that grief through the written word,” Skillings said. “It’s amazing how much students walk around carrying every day. … There’s nothing I can do to solve it, but to share it with someone and know that you’re not alone is important.”

Moore plans to collect writings from multiple generations based on answers to open-ended questions, such as asking senior citizens what advice they would give their younger selves and asking youth what type of older people they want to be.

Carr, who is a Carthage College associate professor of biology and Carthage Institute of Paleontology director, is running a “dinosaurs for poets” program intended to inspire new art.

Poets from Wisconsin cities have a free three-hour experience at the Institute of Paleontology at the Kenosha Public Museum. They tour a bird evolution exhibit that Carr designed, tour the institute’s lab and collections and then can explore the museum, writing about what they see and sharing their writing if they want.

Those poems will be exhibited at the museum, according to Carr.

Racine poets participated last month, and Kenosha poets will later this month.

“This is the most tangible thing I can do to give back to the poetry community,” Carr said. “Since they’ve been so good to me, I’d like to offer this experience.”

His project will focus on adult poets from Wisconsin this year. Next year, high school and college students will take part in “dinosaurs for poets.”

He hopes to have a public reading of the program-inspired poetry and create a book of the writings.

Carr wants to combine art and science, saying that creativity and rigor are indicators of a healthy society.

“I view it as part of what should be expected in a civilizational project,” Carr said. “Artists shouldn’t be excluded from science, shouldn’t avoid it, and scientists shouldn’t avoid or be excluded from art. I think there’s a mutual benefit of insight and expression to be gained.”

‘Work that makes people swoon’

Carr grew up in Toronto and moved to the area in 2004.

He became interested in poetry in high school and has tried to continually hone his craft, seeking inspiration and instruction from poets like Langston Hughes, Anne Sexton and Derek Walcott.

Skillings began seriously writing poetry in college. She had not typed a poem until recently, though, in part because of self-doubt.

She often reminds herself that the writing process is valuable in and of itself, even if no one else reads her work.

Skillings sometimes has a poetry idea while driving and pulls over to make a note so she doesn’t forget it.

She appreciates the creative freedom of poetry and capturing a thought in writing.

Poetry can also evoke emotion or an image, like when she recently saw icy Lake Michigan waves crashing “like little bits of clear glass.”

“I love the taking of a visual image or a sentiment and putting it to letters and words,” Skillings said. “Or a sentiment that you feel in your soul, but, ‘How do you put words to that?’ fascinates me.”

Moore similarly enjoys poetry because it “gives life to emotions.”

Moore graduated from high school in Kenosha and started writing poetry in his early 20s around the time his first child was born as a way to process emotions.

“I needed an outlet,” Moore said. “Writing helps me not to let things fester inside. … It became more of a therapeutic necessity than anything, and it built from there.”

He writes when inspired, which could be any time of day.

“It’s riding a wave of a thought, but, especially after 20 years of writing … it feels more like a churning of something inside of me that I need to give space to,” Moore said.

Carr likewise has an impulse to write once he has an idea.

“It’s like an unstoppable torrent that blasts from below a glacier,” Carr said. “I have to get it down.”

Carr said it can be difficult to sustain an idea, which he hopes to improve at in the next two years.

“It is gratifying to write something that is coherent and can carry a thought,” he said. “I want to produce good work that makes people swoon.”

Forming connections

In addition to their projects, the poets laureate will engage with community members by reading at open mics and writing a poem that reflects their communities.

Kozelou believes an increased understanding of poetry can provide catharsis and connection.

Carr enjoys the relationships that can form at community events.

“Part of art is enriching one’s own life and other people’s lives,” he said. “It’s not just a self-gratification sort of thing, although that’s a big part of it, but it’s one of those connectors between the artist and society.”

Moore appreciates that art can be “a way to bridge divides.”

“The agenda is to express you, to express what’s coming out of you, your human experience,” he said. “It gives an opportunity to relate to anyone and everyone, and we all need time and space to be able to do that and share that. I think that’s how a community becomes close and is built stronger.”

Moore finds it deeply meaningful “when someone comes and says they needed to hear what I said, or the thing that I shared was important for them in the moment or confirmed something in their lives or opened them up to want to write and share their own experiences,” he said.

Ideally, more people will connect to what Moore, Carr and Skillings write in the next two years.