Bramble Fall 2022 print issue is available now.
Editor’s Note
Welcome to the fall issue of Bramble, an exploration of “kinship” and the many ways we experience connection to each other and the wider world.
Here you will find poems that reflect family, community, and the human relationship to plants, animals, and the Earth itself. There are reflections on bonds that are sometimes supportive and sometimes not, connections that are authentic and others that are misunderstood, and elusive connections to people we have never met. Yet are there truly any strangers?
At a time when our world seems to grow ever more divisive, let us be mindful of the words of ecofeminist botanist, Donna J. Haraway, “In the end, all earthlings are kin in the deepest sense.”
The essays in this issue add another layer of meaning to kinship and the special connections that poets have to one another as we bring our communities together through shared words.
I hope these poems and the two essays will remind you of the interconnectedness of all people and things across time, space, and difference.
It was a joy to work on this issue.
Lisa Vihos
Sheboygan, WI
Fall, 2022
Lisa Vihos
CREDIT: Mike Huibregste
The poems of Lisa Vihos have appeared in many poetry journals, both print and online. With four chapbooks to her name, she has two Pushcart Prize nominations and numerous awards from the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters. She is the Sheboygan organizer for 100 Thousand Poets for Change, and in 2020 she was named the city's first poet laureate. Her first novel, The Lone Snake: The Story of Sofonisba Anguissola, was just released in May, 2022 from Water’s Edge Press.
In My Father’s Footsteps
Assemblage made from found objects, approx. 16” x 11” x 3”
Lorraine Reynolds
Artist Statement
I seek out the cast off, the unwanted, the lost and forgotten. My subjects are steeped in nostalgia and speak to the past. I am attracted to decaying landscapes and spaces where metaphor and myth dance together. I look for the place where dreams, memory, and trauma intersect. My work is about exploring the location in the mind between seeing and knowing. My aim is to uncover the stories deep within ourselves and use the artistic process as a transformative experience.
Artist Bio
Lorraine Reynolds
Lorraine Reynolds is a mixed media artist who works in fiber, assemblage, collage, video, and installation. A storyteller by nature, she uses reclaimed materials to help further the narrative in her work. She holds an MFA in Visual Art from Vermont College of Fine Art. Lorraine has taught and exhibited her work regionally as well as nationally. When she is not working in her studio or teaching, she is employed as a Design Consultant in the Apparel Industry. She lives in Mineral Point with her husband and her enormously affectionate German Shorthair Pointer. She has served on the board of Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts since 2015.
Building a Sense of Place: Poets Laureate in Wisconsin Communities
Margaret Rozga
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The Particular Kinship of Writers
Sarah Sadie
with a Featured Poem by Robin Chapman
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And what of me
as whales sing to each other
in the deep, secret sea?