Landward
with Catherine Young
Thursdays around 8:25AM
Catherine Young is a performing artist and writer whose life is devoted to protecting water. Trained in fluvial geomorphology, Catherine worked as a national park ranger, naturalist, educator, farmer, and mother before completing her MFA in creative writing in British Columbia. Her prose and poetry has been nominated for Pushcart Prize and Best American Essays and is published internationally and nationally, including in the anthologies The Driftless Reader and Contours. She is the author of the memoir of place, Black Diamonds: A Childhood Colored by Coal (Torrey House Press)and the ecopoetry collection Geosmin (Water’s Edge Press, Midwest Book Awards Silver Medal).
Rooted in farm life, Catherine lives with her family in Wisconsin’s Driftless bioregion. Her podcasts and writings can be found at: www.catherineyoungwriter.com/
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.
LIGHTING THE MENORAH December 2, 2021
LIGHTING THE MENORAH by Catherine Young was published in Cricket Magazine.
As the sun sets across the world, people light up the darkness. In each hour, the menorah candles are lit, prayers are sung, and candlelight steadily progresses in homes across the planet as the sun leaves them behind. LIGHTING THE MENORAH honors Hanukkah, one of many celebrations of creating light in the darkness.
IN THE ANTIQUE MALL & ART GOES UNBIDDEN November 25, 2021
IN THE ANTIQUE MALL and ART GOES UNBIDDEN by Catherine Young from her poetry collection Geosmin.
Perhaps you’ve have the experience of walking into an antique store to find objects and tools that you’ve grown up with are now antiques. That’s where IN THE ANTIQUE MALL started.
The second poem, ART GOES UNBIDDEN is an observation from my rural neighborhood in Southwest Wisconsin where, it is said, we harbor creative, eccentric people.
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 and back while letting go. BARN ELEGIAC focuses on the empty barn and all it once held.
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 to an outcry across the English-speaking world. GATHERING ACORNS, HOARDING WORDS asks if children do not know the words describing land, how will they know land?
AND NOW IT’S OCTOBER & THE VAST HOUR October 21, 2021
Catherine reads 2 poems to celebrate October: Barbara Crooker’s AND NOW IT’S OCTOBER and Genevieve Taggart’s THE VAST HOUR.
The Crystalline Bed of St. Peter, Part II October 14, 2021
The Crystalline Bed of St. Peter, Part II, by Catherine Young
Smitten with the layers of limestone and sandstone that line these Wisconsin hills, these loveliest of golden layer cakes, how does one person dwelling in the Driftless Area protect the land and waters?
The Crystalline Bed of St. Peter, Part I October 7, 2021
The Crystalline Bed of St. Peter, Part I, by Catherine Young
Smitten with the layers of limestone and sandstone that line these Wisconsin hills, these loveliest of golden layer cakes, how does one person dwelling in the Driftless Area protect the land and waters?
INVOCATION: CALL IT HOME September 30, 2021
INVOCATION: CALL IT HOME by Catherine Young is from the poetry collection Geosmin.
Begun in 2007 in response to the first wave of devastating floods in our Driftless region, the poem is a way to speak what is beloved and why we stay. INVOCATION was published as a poster with artwork by Stephanie Motz to celebrate and uplift the place where we dwell, and to ask everyone who reads it to respond with art and poetry.
STIPPLED PASSING
STIPPLED PASSING September 23, 2021
Catherine reads STIPPLED PASSING from her poetry collection Geosmin.
The poem is response to the Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem PIED BEAUTY and its “rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim” as well as the trout in a farm’s creek and the change of season slipping into autumn.