Bramble Fall 2021 print issue is available now.

Editors’ Note

In late spring of 2021, when we thought we were at the end of a year-long pandemic, we three editors ruminated about a theme for the Fall edition of Bramble. Candidates included “Closings and Openings,” “Lost and Found,” “Re-entry” and “The Masks We Wear.” When COVID-19 infection rates dropped dramatically, and we all were fully vaccinated, we unmasked and embraced friends, took trips and visited family. We abandoned some safety protocols that had become ritual during the siege of a deadly virus. To celebrate this return to normal, we chose the theme of “Re-entry,” hoping our poets would write about reveling in a bright, COVID-free world.

Then came the summer. The pestilence surged back with a new variant. We put our masks back on and adjusted to a less hopeful world. “Re-entry” didn’t seem right anymore. We weren’t re-entering; we were adapting once again to uncertainty. In light of this, we changed our theme to “Transformation,” that astonishing ability to adapt and change, even when facing a crisis.

Our poets responded with a rich array of poems that ranged from re-birth to aging to death, from the changing of the seasons to the changing of the self to speculation on the afterlife. Poets encouraged us to peer into a chrysalis, put on costumes, misread Chinese poetry, become a peony, a pregnant woman and a fetus. They urged transformation through forgiveness, music, old home movies, oatmeal and melting snow. As readers, we were encouraged to transform into nurse logs, merhags, violins and paper clips. We communed with ancient bucks, conversed with monarchs, and practiced murmurations with starlings. We even learned to fly.

As we re-read and re-evaluated, we deepened our appreciation of the poems we chose; in a way, the poems, too, transformed as we more fully understood their depth, craft and originality. The prose pieces continue the exploration of this process of change. Alice D’Alessio’s excerpt from her memoir Tending the Valley introduces us to a deep-rooted desire to transform an abandoned farm into a thriving prairie. Keesia describes the transformations she, and many of the rest of us, underwent, and continue to undergo, during a plague.

Throughout all phases of our work, Christina Kubasta proved invaluable in her guidance, assistance and editing. (We wonder how she does it all—and teaches as well.) We’d also like to thank Tori Grant Welhouse for her skillful design and layout and the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets for its support of this literary magazine. We are grateful to Katrin Talbot, poet and photographer, who took wonderful pictures for us during a raucous photo shoot in Nancy’s drought-stricken garden. We extend a big thank you to Paula Nees, artist extraordinaire, who created the perfect artwork for our cover. And, of course, we thank all of you who submitted your work. We hope our readers experience as much pleasure as we have reading these poems and essays. May we all continue to wonder, as Keesia does at the end of “Pandemic,” at the miracle of transformation.

Gillian Nevers, Keesia Hyzer, Nancy Jesse
October 2021

Keesia Hyzer, Gillian Nevers, and Nancy Jesse began working together as a team when they taught creative writing workshops for Road Scholars at Green Lake from 2015 to 2018. Later they branched out to editing with the 2021 Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar. All three are published poets who hone their skills in a poetry critique group that has met once a month for over 20 years. In non-pandemic times, they revel in Iowa City at the Iowa Summer Writers’ Festival. The rest of the year, they live within walking distance of each other in Madison.

Artist Bio

Paula Nees was born and raised in Middleton, Wisconsin and began her work as an artist while attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she received her BFA in 1973. She went on to earn her Master of Fine Arts degree in 1977 from the University of California, Davis. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Chicago Art Institute, the Madison Art Center in Wisconsin, and the Butler Art Institute in Ohio. Her paintings and drawings are part of numerous corporate collections in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, and California.

After moving to Columbus, Ohio in 1992, Nees was active in the art community and exhibited throughout the region. She was an instructor at Otterbein University, Westerville, Ohio from 1993 to 2014, where she taught studio courses and global art history. Travel has influenced much of her work. Her current studio activities build on these experience as she creates works incorporating materials acquired from trips to India and Mexico.

In July of 2017, Paula Nees along with her husband, Joe Wheaton, moved to Oregon where they live and work in east Portland surrounded by Douglas fir and cedar trees. Exploring the diverse Oregon terrain has influenced her subject matter, which currently is devoted to animal life and the natural habitat. Using natural dyes and pigments, her work emphasizes the fragility of the natural world.

Managing Editor: C. Kubasta
Layout/Design: Tori Grant Welhouse
Bramble Logo: Bobbie Lovell