Bramble Summer 2024 print issue in full color is now available.

Editor’s Note

One of the joys of being part of Bramble is sharing work by poets. For some poets, we were their first publication—and sometimes the first place they sent their work. As the journal of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, part of our mission is to foster greater appreciation of poetry throughout the state, and our primary mechanism is fellowship. That fellowship occurs in face-to-face form when we gather, and also through virtual interactions. When Tori and I began Bramble as an online and print journal, we hoped to create a platform for voices writing all different kinds of poetry in all different ways; that's one of the reasons we have a guest editor for each issue: to ensure a variety of aesthetics. Because I also love to work collaboratively with artists and be informed by creativity in other forms, highlighting artists on our cover has also become an important part of what we do. I discovered Andy's work at the arboretum in Madison and fell in love immediately.

In this issue of Bramble we had no thematic or content-driven focus, but asked for your weird (weird with all its wonderful connotations). Thank you for sending those poems—the gut-wrenching funny, the untidy questions, the language that loops into open space and visuals. Some poets sent poems unsure if they fit or not. I hope some poets sent poems they were unsure where to send elsewhere. Yes to quizzes and multiple choices and sprawling lines that make formatting and copyediting all the harder. We contain multitudes as it were. We cannot be contained.

I hope you find something strange that brings you joy. I hope you find something that unnerves you. I hope you read an uncanny little line that inspires you to write.

C. Kubasta
Summer 2024

C. Kubasta founded Bramble, working with the wonderful Tori Grant Welhouse, in 2018, to create a platform for Wisconsin poets and further the mission of Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, where she serves as Vice President. She writes poetry, fiction, and hybrid forms. Her most recent book is the short story collection Abjectification (Apprentice House, 2020), and her next book of poetry Under the Tented Skin will be out in 2025. She is the Executive Director of Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts in Mineral Point, a non-profit arts & craft school that offers workshops for adults and youth, including robust literary programming from staged readings to workshops to residencies. Find her at ckubasta.com and follow her @CKubastathePoet

Artist Bio

Andy Kraushaar was a freelance photographer for many years, and the visual materials curator at the Wisconsin Historical Society. Since his retirement in 2018, he has pursued alternative photographic processes, including cyanotype and the gum bichromate process. In addition to working with alternative printing processes, Andy has been a long-time collector of historic photographs. A recent project has involved combining his contemporary bird photographs with the background image of a 19th century cabinet card. These are combined conventionally in Photoshop and re-mounted on vintage cabinet cards. See more of his combination prints at his Instagram @andykraushaar