IN DARK TIMES WE GATHER LIGHT    December 9, 2021 

IN DARK TIMES WE GATHER LIGHT by Catherine Young is from her poetry collection Geosmin. The poem is a hybrid prose poem about bees and nuns, darkness and light, and the ceremonial procession of St. Lucia Day, December 13th as well as spring’s promise of renewal.

Smoke, Part II    November 18, 2021   

The essay “Smoke” by Catherine Young is reaction to and experience of the wildfire ash that began to cover our Midwestern skies in the fall of 2020 against the background of having grown up in the smoke of the largest coal mining valley in the world.

Smoke, Part I    November 11, 2021   

The essay “Smoke” by Catherine Young is reaction to and experience of the wildfire ash that began to cover our Midwestern skies in the fall of 2020 against the background of having grown up in the smoke of the largest coal mining valley in the world.

FARMER / JANUS & BARN ELEGIAC    November 4, 2021

Catherine Young reads 2 poems from her poetry collection Geosmin that address the loss of farming in Wisconsin’s Driftless Region. The Janus in FARMER / JANUS refers to the two-faced Roman god of beginnings, doorways, passages and endings. The farmer looking forward...

GATHERING ACORNS, HOARDING WORDS    October 28, 2021

Catherine reads GATHERING ACORNS, HOARDING WORDS from her poetry collection Geosmin. In his piece, “The Word Hoard” British writer-naturalist Robert MacFarlane noted the proposed removal of words about the natural world in the children’s Oxford Dictionary—and this led...