Campus Connection

Oral history project seeks original poems about La Crosse’s downtown

The iconic landmarks of La Crosse are well known to its inhabitants, but individual stories make them more interesting. An award-winning oral history project run by UWL professors is seeking to capture more of those stories, but in a poetic form. The Hear, Here Project is looking for original poems to add to its collection of personal histories about the city’s downtown. Hear, Here started as a project in one of Ariel Beaujot’s history classes in 2014. Beaujot, an Associate History Professor, and her class have collected more than three-dozen stories. The project has received the Leadership in History Award from the American Association for State and Local History. She is now teaming up with William Stobb, an Associate English Professor, to gather energized, focused poems in a contemporary style to share with the community. An example is Stobb’s poem, “Fun,” about an eerie experience he had last summer in Riverside Park. Poems must be submitted online by March 17.