Bramble Fall 2023 print issue is now available.
Editor’s Note
As I watch the golden sweep of October on our farm, I can’t help but wonder if each season holds ripening as do many moments within our lives. The gold and ocher in the leaves and stems wax, then wane, and I wonder at the peak of color—is this moment a kind of ripeness before the colors deconstruct? Or is ripe the fullness of fermentation, a continuous state wondrously constructed by microbes in the aging vinegars and cheeses and soil?
In this issue you’ll find rich images of ripening. Yes, here ripening brings sweet, nectarous blackberries and peaches staining hands. It also brings the speckling on a ripening banana peel resembling a grandmother’s age-spotted skin. You’ll find ripe love, puberty, tomatoes, motherhood, baby turtles, and the coming of age on a generational farm. Descending twilight and darkness have their own blossoming shadows in a valley as it ripens into night. You’ll even find the ripening of meta words and meta-poems. The issue’s journey begins with a cormorant pair breasting the height of summer and ends with soaring gladiolus breathlessly blooming “bottom up” and “skyward.”
Thank you to each poet for your contributions. I loved them all. Your poems do what all art does best: reframe the view so that ever afterwards we see anew. Please keep submitting your poems to this journal.
Many thanks to the steady work of Christina Kubasta and Tori Grant Welhouse for their shepherding of Bramble.
Catherine Young
Fall 2023
Catherine Young
Catherine Young is a writer and performing artist whose work is infused with a keen sense of place. She is author of the eco-poetry collection Geosmin (Water’s Edge Press, a Midwest Book Awards Silver Medal winner) and the environmental memoir Black Diamonds: A Childhood Colored by Coal (Torrey House Press). Catherine’s poetry was solicited for Wisconfluence, a collaborative piece for the Midway Atlas and was selected for the AGU22 video Dear Sky, Dear Blue Planet. It also appeared in The Ekphrastic Marathon Anthology, Fermentation Fest Farm/Art Tour and Madison Metro Buslines. Her work appears internationally and nationally in literary journals.
Catherine worked as a national park ranger, farmer, educator, and mother before completing her MFA at the University of British Columbia. She holds degrees in Environmental Science, Physical Geography, and Education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Rooted in farm life, Catherine lives with her family in Wisconsin’s Driftless Area where she is totally in love with meandering streams. She holds concern for water and deeply believes in the use of story and art as tools for transforming the world. Catherine leads writing workshops and records the weekly Landward podcast for WDRT. More at: catherineyoungwriter.com
Floral Wall Plate
Katie White
Artist Statement
As a ceramic artist, I create sculpture, pottery, and jewelry primarily from porcelain clay. I use the potter’s wheel as well as hand-building techniques before intricately carving my work. The patterns I incorporate are heavily influenced by those found in the natural environment. I have always been fascinated by the spirals formed with the growth of repetitive leaves such as in succulents, flower petals, and pinecones. The beautiful order in mapping and carving these botanic designs is a mediative process for me. Wood-firing is my preferred method of firing due to the unique results that occur in the atmosphere of the kiln. Natural glazes and flashing are produced by the wood ash and the raw flame that converge with the surfaces of the clay. The many factors that go into wood firing, such as length of firing, type of wood used, and placement in the kiln ensure that each piece is one of a kind.
Artist Bio
Katie White
Katie White grew up on a farm in Northern Illinois in the small town of Stockton. She took an interest in art at a young age, but it wasn’t until college that she took her first ceramics class and fell in love with clay as a material.
She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ceramics in the Spring of 2012 from Northern Illinois University. She attended various artist residencies such as The Cub Creek Foundation in Appomattox, VA and The Red Lodge Clay Center in Red Lodge, MT.
White has been showing and selling her ceramic sculpture, jewelry, and functional ware in galleries, shops, and craft shows across the country. After moving to Mineral Point in 2017, she was introduced to the late Bruce Howdle. She and her twin sister, Joelle, became Howdle’s studio assistants. Katie and Joelle worked alongside Bruce in his historic downtown studio and gallery until he passed unexpectedly in August of 2018.
The White sisters have since created their own partnership business, The Globe Clay Center, in their late mentor’s space where they continue to create ceramic art as well as offer pottery workshops to the public. Katie’s work can be found at the gallery at 225 Commerce Street in Mineral Point, Wisconsin, as well as online at www.theglobeclaycenter.com.
Essay
When is a Poem Ripe?
C. Kubasta & Poet Friends
At the height of summer there is always
some sense of tipping, of downslope. Some
afternoons the wind rushes the season,