An acclaimed TV reporter is also a poet and Port is her muse

Roseann St. Aubin has had a decorated broadcasting and communications career, with her work spanning multiple decades across the nation and the world.

But what she recently accomplished provided a new form of excitement.

St. Aubin published a book.

“Blue Boat: Story Poems from the Midwest,” was released in August.

St. Aubin remembers holding a copy the first time at her Port Washington home.

“I couldn’t open that box quickly enough. So much of my writing, while working in the media, was broadcast on air. It was seen, heard and then gone into the stratosphere,” she said.

“This book that has my name on it, has my words in it, is different. And I like the weight of that.”

St. Aubin wrote most of the poems in the past couple of years, but inspiration comes from much further back in her life. The title poem is a tribute to her late father, who built a boat, painted it blue and took his children on the water near the family’s vacation spot in Oconto Falls. It was a touchpoint of her childhood.

“I do draw a lot from memory,” St. Aubin said.

“You can experience something that’s within you, but you can’t write about it right away. It takes time to know what you experienced.”

She has plenty to tap into.

St. Aubin was raised in Little Chute, one of the oldest of eight children.

“I grew up being able to herd people,” she said.

The family used to sit down every night together in the living room and read the Appleton Post-Crescent newspaper.

“I started to like words,” St. Aubin said.

She often sought privacy by crawling into a small attic off of the girls’ bedroom, dragging in a lamp and pillow where she could write in quiet. The only way anyone could tell she was there was by the lamp cord stretching from the outlet on the wall.

Her father, who worked as a bricklayer, could play guitar and make toys and other items from wood. St. Aubin keeps a bucket of several of his beloved walking sticks, including one that has symbols to tell the story of her career path.

St. Aubin planned to be an English teacher, but she liked storytelling so much that she switched to a hybrid English and communication arts major at St. Norbert College in De Pere.

Then came her award-winning career in news that earned her induction into the Milwaukee Press Club Hall of Fame.

St. Aubin started her 14-year TV broadcasting career for a Green Bay station in 1976. She then worked for a station in Buffalo before returning to Milwaukee. Back then, she said, most TV reporters moved to bigger roles at different stations every few years.

Her work in Milwaukee was with WITI channel 6. One of her favorite stories took her across the Atlantic. The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra was touring Europe for the first time, and it was St. Aubin’s first trip abroad as well. She loved sending stories back from places like Germany, the Netherlands and England.

Closer to home, another highlight was covering the story of spearfishing and walleye fishing rights of Native American tribes that pit the group against white landowners in northern Wisconsin. During one Native American boat launch at night, St. Aubin got hit in the head with a rock. She didn’t think she was the target, but she knew people were upset.

That type of story hasn’t made it into her poetry. St. Aubin has written an unpublished piece about being a reporter, but she doesn’t want to wax poetic about riveting and traumatic stories.

“I want poetry to be accessible, and I want you to read it out loud,” she said.

“I call them story poems. Catching fireflies or a man who’s always on the rail fishing. I choose it to be, sit back and here’s something I saw and the way I saw it.”

After leaving the news world, St. Aubin worked for the City of Milwaukee in multiple roles, including assistant to Mayor John Norquist, liaison between the city and business community and spokesman for day-to-day issues of snow plowing and garbage pickup in which she loved getting to know the drivers.

“It was really nuts and bolts stuff,” she said.

St. Aubin then became the director of communications for Milwaukee Public Schools, where she employed interpreters to communicate in Spanish, Mong and Somali to reach the diverse population. She even did media training in Bhutan.

Now retired for several years, St. Aubin has found the ideal spot to craft her poetry since moving to the city in 2008.

“Port Washington’s a good place to write. I love the harbor. I love the water,” she said. “You go down there and there are so many stories.”

The backyard of her condo is full of trees, plants and a trail. She has seen mink, possum, deer, fox and coyotes. 

Even when St. Aubin lived and worked in Milwaukee, she loved coming to Port Washington. She remembers the coal plant spewing thick smoke and eating at Harry’s diner.

“I always wanted to be in Port. It’s a good place to reset your clock,” she said.

St. Aubin spends part of each day writing in her office downstairs, utilizing something called a treadmill journal. The program calls for setting the date, time, duration and subject matter for writing, then analyzing how it went and scheduling the next session.

When she’s not writing, she’s reading. St. Aubin volunteers to read books for Audio and Braille Literacy Enhancement (ABLE).

She did the audio for her book as well and is doing her best to keep her voice authentic. In a sign of the times, St. Aubin’s book includes a disclaimer that doesn’t allow any of the publication to be used to train artificial intelligence technology.

It might not be the only time she uses that disclaimer. St. Aubin has long-form pieces in the works.

For now, poetry is her forte.

“Poetry is a quicker outlet for me. I like being able to start and finish something in a day,” she said.

“Blue Boat: Story Poems from the Midwest” is available at multiple retailers online, as well as Verbosity Bookhouse on Franklin Street in Port.