April 28, 2026 Guest Speaker: Liz Rhodebeck: Writer, Author, Poet
Liz Rhodebeck has an industrious background, and a purposeful presence, melding together different forms of creative expression with writing. Liz, once upon a time, was a magazine reporter and freelance journalist with community newspapers. After twenty years in that field, her current title is “an accomplished poet and freelance writer,” (https://waterwriter.com/about.html). She is well-published and award-winning, with well over 100 poems published in chap books (her third chapbook, What I Learned in Kansas, is now published from Port Yonder Press), and in state and national journals. Articles, study materials, blog posts, and facilitating creative writing workshops for youth and adults compliment her scripted repertoire.
From Pewaukee, she is active in the Pewaukee Area Arts Council (PAAC) and co-edits the project, “One Vision: A Fusion of Art and Poetry in Lake Country.” And she’s a regular attraction around these watery where-abouts. For two years, she’s rounded up poets to collaborate with PAAC artists to co-create: paintings inspired by poetry inspired by painintgs…. The poems and the visual pieces were displayed at the Oconomowoc Arts Center. Notecards of the poems and artwork were sold to raise funds. In it’s second year, the opening event was so popular, it was standing room only! Now in it’s third year, Liz is working to expand, not just for more seating room, but to create space that will incorporate a corporeal form of artistic expression: dance!
Liz enriched our October Guild meeting with her simple strategy of having one form of art stoke inspiration for another. She inspired us to:
- carry out an inquiry by comingling culinary concoctions to create caligraphic characters.
- dabble with dance that allows us to dream up a doodle.
- ponder on a painting that, perhaps, perpetuates your perception, then passes, then peaks, with a performance of a poem.
- seriously sculpt, surely enough to strike our senses whilst speedily sribbling out a story.
You see, for Liz, all forms of creative processes provoke a parallel purpose: Ekphrasis – the fusion of poetry and art, or art inspired by prose.
When we seek inspiration from integrating arts together, two things can be true at once.
