Bramble Winter/Spring 2022 print issue is available now.

Editor’s Note

Food is an expression of the earth and of culture. This truth is embedded in the word “cultivate,” which is to care for something, as farmers care for their crops. Food represents a refined dialogue between earth’s life-giving promise and human craft. It plays an important role in cultural traditions that forge community, and it bonds families across generations and continents. Families are the essential building blocks of culture, with food serving a vital, unifying function. Poems about food might be thought of as reduction-sauce.

Bramble received many wonderful submissions on the theme of food. I thoroughly enjoyed reading all of them. Wisconsin is rich in its many and varied poetic voices, which made it challenging to narrow the field. The poems I chose for this issue represent the many ways in which Wisconsin poets place food within the abundant cornucopia of earth and culture.

These poems contextualize food in time, relationships and life’s phases. The first one begins with an excerpt from a mother’s cookbook that blurs the boundaries between food and ordinary, yet universal human endeavors, such as naming. In other poems we encounter strife, sex, and a ticket stub. Some poems sing with Jesus or wallow in the gross. We find death, sickness, and the withholding of food’s pleasures. The fecundity of nature is celebrated. Perhaps best of all, there is mystery—the unknowable, the questions implied but not asked or answered. The poems in this issue, like a screen door in summer, open themselves to the world, inviting readers to pull up grandma’s old chair and take a seat at the table.

Sylva Cavanaugh
March 2022

Sylvia Cavanaugh has an M.S. in Urban Planning, teaches a high school course in African and Asian Culture and is the school’s Poetry Club advisor. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has published three chapbooks and her poems have appeared in various periodicals and anthologies. She is a Contributing Editor for Verse-Virtual: An Online Community Journal of Poetry and is English language editor for Poetry Hall: A Chinese and English Bilingual Journal. She serves on the board of the Council for Wisconsin Writers and her work has received awards from The Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, Wisconsin People and Ideas, The Poetry Society of Michigan, Milwaukee Irish Fest, the Hal Prize, and others.

Artist Bio

Frank Juárez is an award-winning art educator, artist, author, presenter, arts advocate, and former gallery director. Juárez brings two decades of art education and arts management experience organizing local and regional art exhibitions, community art events, supporting artists through grant programs, and facilitating professional development workshops for artists. This has placed him in the forefront of promoting Wisconsin artists, networking, and attracting regional, national, and international artists to collaborate and exhibit in Wisconsin.

Frank Juárez is the art department chair at Sheboygan North High School, contributing editor of SchoolArts Magazine and publisher of Artdose Magazine.

Juárez has exhibited throughout North East and South East Wisconsin including the Museum of Wisconsin Art, Thelma Sadoff Center for the Arts, Carroll University, Cedarburg Cultural Center, Brickton Art Center, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Anderson Art Center, Rahr-West Art Museum, and Var West Gallery.

Please visit this gallery to see more work and information about a recent show at UW-Oshkosh.

Uncle Barb’s Philadelphia-Style Regret

Recipe Generator

B.J. Best

What was that meal you loved that Uncle Barb used to make? Was it honey-dipped tilapia heart? Did he use his recipe for kickass hopelessness? Did it call for 12 molecules of almond milk and maybe even 10 kilograms of freeze-dried eel pâté? Well, whatever it was, you’re hungry for it now. A somewhat-steerable surreal recipe generator. Bonus points if you actually make one of the recipes and report back.

Click to Try