Denise Sweet

Denise Sweet is an Anishinaabe poet and Professor Emerita at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay. From 2005 to 2008, she served as the second Wisconsin Poet Laureate. Sweet is the author of several poetry collections, including Songs for Discharming, which received the Council for Wisconsin Writers’ Posner Award in 1998.

Background Sweet grew up in Minnesota and is an enrolled member of the White Earth Band of Minnesota Chippewa Tribe.

Career Sweet was educated at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and taught creative writing, literature, and mythology at University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. She also taught a travel seminar in the Yucatán Peninsula and Guatemala where she did fieldwork among the Mayan peoples.

Sweet has given nearly one hundred poetry readings in the United States, Canada, Mexico, London, and Guatemala, and has held poet‑in‑residence roles at the Grand Marais Art Colony, the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, and the Split Rock Arts Program in Duluth, Minnesota. Songs for Discharming, (Greenfield Review Press, 1997) Days of Obsidian, Days of Grace, (Poetry Harbor Press, 1994) Know By Heart, (Rhiannon Press, 1990) Stories Migrating Home: Anishnaabe Prose, (Loonfeather Press, 1999) Reinventing the Enemy's Language: Contemporary Native Women's Writing of North America, (W.W. Norton, 1997) Returning the Gift: Poetry and Prose from the First North American Native Writers' Festival, (University of Arizona Press, 1994) Women Brave in the Face of Danger, (Crossing Press, 1985)