McCullough named poet laureate of Winona

BY LAUREN ROTHERING
Arts and Entertainment Editor

Recently, Ken McCullough, assistant director of Academic Advising and director of the Path to Academic Success (PASS) program, was chosen by the Winona Fine Arts Commission as the new poet laureate of Winona.

According to McCullough, the poet laureate is “more than anything, the person who is supposed to be an ambassador for poetry.” As poet laureate, McCullough will work to “demystify” poetry for residents of Winona through various presentations, visits to local schools and collaboration between Saint Mary’s University and Winona State University.

McCullough also wants work closely with Project FINE, a local non-profit organization that helps immigrants assimilate to the Winona community. When families move to Winona from other countries, said McCullough, their natural impulse is to move away from their native culture. McCullough believes that with the encouragement of a local oral history project, these families will feel a greater sense of pride in their heritage, which would in turn enrich the culture of the Winona community. Poetry has been an integral part of McCullough’s life for many years. While studying biological sciences, McCullough took some classes in creative writing, which eventually led him to earn a Masters in Fine Arts, from the Iowa Writers’Workshop at the University of Iowa. “It is a strange circumstance to have an advanced degree in something that gives (one) a great deal of pleasure,” said
McCullough.

McCullough believes that Winona is uniquely situated for “wacky” people such as himself because it embraces the arts so strongly. Over the last few years, said McCullough, events such as the Minnesota Beethoven Festival, Great River Shakespeare Festival and Frozen River Film Festival have made Winona their home, promoting its rising status as a city of the arts. As a river town, McCullough said that it is “part of (Winona’s) character” to have “a large percent of (artistic) people who are not frowned upon by the community.” Winona, McCullough said, is a “good environment to be such a person.”