Bramble Winter-Spring 2023 print issue is now available.
Editor’s Note
I picked the subject of dreams for this issue because dreams were what I wanted to read about. I am fascinated by their inexplicable synthesis of thoughts, emotions, beliefs and experiences, which also―coincidentally―is my favorite kind of poetry.
Dreams often dismiss temporality and rationality. They disregard chronology and beginning middle end. They reinvent memory to tell an impact truth.
Dreams also defy science. I mean, we have some understanding. That they occur during the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep, but there’s no scientific consensus about why we dream. We can only hypothesize.
Dreams are evidence that our mind likes to play. That sense-making might require mental calisthenics.
Lastly, dreams manifest a “collective unconscious.” I was intrigued to discover that I chose eight poems with blue images―blue dress, blue blanket, blue pants, blue heels, blue sheets, blue sky, a “blue-eyed darner,” a blue horse, a blue hand. Are blue images part of a dream symbology? A color we associate with night and the unconscious?
The cover image by Mauree Childress is also thick with cobalt and indigo. Perhaps we can’t help our cohesive-seeking minds and hearts?
I hope you enjoy reading this issue as much as I enjoyed putting it together. The poems are beautifully strange.
Tori Grant Welhouse
Green Bay
Winter 2023
Tori Grant Welhouse
Tori Grant Welhouse’s poems have appeared most recently in Half Mystic, The Woolf, and Sweet: A Literary Confection. She earned an honorable mention in the 2021 Hal Prize and was a runner-up in the 2020 Princemere Prize. She won Etching Press’s 2020 poetry chapbook competition for Vaginas Need Air and Skyrocket Press’s novel-writing contest with her YA fantasy The Fergus. Learn more on her website www.torigrantwelhouse.com
There’s People in them thar City
Acrylics on Procion-Dyed Canvas
30” w x 24” h
Mauree Childress
Artist Statement
With There's People in them thar City, I considered the visual shapes in an urban landscape—the rectangular repetition of the buildings and the patterns of the windows. The people in the city are dreaming, watching, working, walking, talking, moving, sleeping, smiling, and living their lives. Millions of human mysteries.
Artist Bio
Mauree Childress
Mauree Matelski Plumb Childress holds a degree in Art / Art Education and was a textile artist for years. She taught Art, spent 30 years in television advertising, and finished her career working for non-profits. In 2013, she had a spinal cord injury caused by an autoimmune neurological disorder called Transverse Myelitis. She could no longer manage the physicality of textiles, so she returned to painting. Mauree is now retired, living in an accessible home in Milwaukee, and is a docent at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Website: www.maureechildress.com
Poem Broadside
Essay
Out of Poetry of Dreams
Tom Davis
<Click Image>
When
I was a child,
I would disassociate from my body