Bloodroot
I come from a huddle of islands,
cloud-cobbled, channel strung,
crowded with accents and tongues,
where the sky is milk-soft and mutable,
unpredictable, tight-fisted.
Where no talk is innocent.
Where speech sets each apart,
indelible marks of class, war,
clan. The weight of history.
Woad. Whisperings.
Bloodroot (2016), Catherine’s first full-length poetry book, explores the concepts of home, migration, roots and uprooting. It won the Settlement House American Poetry Prize, awarded annually to a collection of poems by a first-generation American. It also won the 2016 Council for Wisconsin Writers Edna Meudt Award and an Outstanding Work of Poetry award from the Wisconsin Library Association.
