Several times a month we connect with our contributors showing where they have been, where they are now, and what’s up for the future.
Name: Kathryn Petruccelli
Title of Pieces Published in Sweet: “Alternative Healing Practices“
Issue: 14.2
Kathryn recently relocated with her family to the west of Ireland. You can find her soaking in the drama that is Galway weather. As we just recently went to Dublin, we concur, but thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and happy to go back! Be sure to see what else Kathryn is up to on her website.
What are some major accomplishments you have had since your Sweet publication?
Since my essay in Sweet, my work has appeared in over a dozen more different journals & anthologies. In additon, I got to teach a series of high school poetry workshop in Monterey, California (in person!!) and several of those students’ poems placed in a county-wide contest and were published in an anthology. I spent an extremely fulfilling year researching Emily Dickinson and touring groups through the Dickinson Museum in Amherst, MA before moving abroad. It was a delicious combo of story, place, and poem. In April of last year, I was honored to be asked by the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College to introduce and curate a conversation with poet Danusha Lameris, someone I’ve known for years and studied with “back in the day.”
Can you tell us about a current/ongoing project that you’re excited about?
I’ve been in collaboration with visual artist Madge Evers for sometime now. She’s created art based on my poems and vice versa. Our work centers around the impact of war on women and children. Madge works a great deal in cyanotype.
Who is your favorite author?
So hard because for the poets expecially – I go to different poets for different things. Leila Chatti, Emily Dickinson, Marie Howe, Hanif Abdurraqib, Matthew Olzman, Ross Gay, Natalie Diaz…Other writers I adore include Elizabeth Strout, Margaret Atwood.
What is your favorite poem/essay/book?
Gosh. You like impossible questions. One poem that was an early influence and a perennial favorite is Li-Young Lee’s “Persimmon” also Ross Gay’s “To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian.” Apparently, poems about fruit–big with me. Well, they’re Sweet, right? 😉 Novels: Olive Kitterage is up there (Elizabeth Strout), also The Weight of Ink (Rachel Kadish).
What inspires you to write?
Reading, place and shifts in place, nature, images and thoughts that get stuck in my head, questions that won’t leave me alone, the struggle and beauty to communicate, and the insistence of society to fail to notice itself.
What are you reading right now?
Trying on contemporary Irish women — like Victoria Kennefick’s excellent poetry collection, Eat or We Both Starve, Órfhlaith Foyle’s story collection Three Houses in Rome. And just finished Mary Wilkinson’s novella in flash, Quotidian.
What is your favorite sweet? We would love for you to share a recipe or link to place that serves it. Pictures are great, too!
Creme Brulee! At the moment, my local source is La Pause Cafe in Athenry, Ireland (although their pistachio eclairs can make a person cheat on their gluten-free diet).
We’ll take one of each, please!
Thank you, Kathryn, for taking the time to reconnect with us again! We look forward to seeing more of your work in the future!
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