Copyright @2022 Katie Budris. All poems here have been published in literary magazines as indicated.
Chapbooks
artwork by Linnea Broling
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Rich with both lyricism and story, Mid-Bloom is a gorgeous collection about how we fuel ourselves in the face of grief. How do we keep ourselves not just living but truly alive in the midst of life’s great, tragic promise: that all this must end? Potatoes, canoe rides, cigarettes, family, memory—the poems examine delightfully surprising specifics, showing the tender bravery required in our courage to keep on. By turns accessible and awe-inducing, Budris’s collection illustrates that poetry itself is prime sustenance for us all.
-Heather Lanier, author of Raising a Rare Girl and The Story You Tell Yourself With imagery that ignites the imagination and memories that map the mud and muck of loss, grief, and illness, Mid-Bloom takes its readers on a journey in and through, to and from the past and present until the two coalesce in a moment of understanding as a daughter fights cancer two decades after she loses her mother to it. Budris questions her green thumb in several poems, but I hope she doesn’t doubt her poetic prowess. She nimbly wields her pen poem after poem to breathe life into a collection that isn’t “mid-bloom,” but one that is beautifully and heartachingly in full-bloom.
-Dawn Leas, author of A Person Worth Knowing, Take Something When You Go, and I Know When to Keep Quiet Katie Budris’s poems explore seemingly ordinary moments--a family’s weeknight dinner, catching snowflakes, a mother caring for her daughter’s scraped knee--through the twin lenses of grief and memory. After Budris’s mother died young, “mid-bloom,” of cancer, these moments become anything but ordinary. Together, they weave a backdrop for the magical, dreamlike space in the final poem “If Things Were Otherwise,” where mother and daughter once again share morning coffee and soothing conversation, understanding each other more deeply than they ever did in life. These perceptive and tender poems resonate with love that abides, even after loss.
-Kathleen McGookey, author of Instructions for my Imposter, Heart in a Jar, and Stay |
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"Budris has a remarkable ability to make us see just one moment incredibly vividly, and then she trusts us to deduce the rest, the waves of grief and love behind it all... it’s Budris’ very concreteness and groundedness that end up giving her poems their dreamy quality, and that make them ultimately affirming, despite their painful subjects. The message is that life needs no elaboration; it is beautiful enough." -Review by Grace Fisher, Write Now Philly |
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"Katie Budris’ recent chapbook, Mid-Bloom, is about survival—survival of the narrator when, as a young teen, she loses her mother to cancer, and survival of the narrator herself when she too faces a cancer diagnosis. In this 19-poem collection, South Jersey resident Budris explores the shape of loss and change brought about by disease, in part by looking to the natural world." -Review by Abbey J. Porter, The Mad Poets Society |
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Prague in Synthetics (2015)
available from Finishing Line Press and through Amazon The narrator in Katie Budris’s Prague in Synthetics is no tourist snapping pictures then heading on to the next sight. In these finely wrought poems, Budris “will spread [her] hands/ and let bone and ash mingle/ with grass, water, air.” You will wander in language rich with the complex textures of this landscape, one that merges legend with fact, loss with now, rubble with renewal, war with dance, Budvar, bridges, the Holocaust, stained glass, a single red begonia, and most deeply the realization that this culture not only preserves but also never separates sorrow and delight.
-Jack Ridl, author of Practicing to Walk Like a Heron Don’t expect travelogues when you read these densely textured poems which explore the wonders of Prague. Be prepared for some interrogating travel in the human mind and heart.
-Peter Cooley, Senior Mellon Professor of English, Director of Creative Writing, Tulane University |
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Additional Publications
"Waiting for the Blue Line, Chicago" | Crossing Lines | Main Street Rag, anthology | April 2015
"Za Zrcadlem" | Crossing Lines | Main Street Rag, anthology | April 2015
"Chance of Rain" | Temenos Journal | April 2014
"After the Iron Curtain" | Yellow Medicine Review | Fall 2009
"Relapse" | The Kelsey Review | Fall 2009
"On Burning Children Instead of Paper" | After Hours Press | Summer 2008
"The Road" | After Hours Press | Summer 2008
"Leaving Home" | After Hours Press | Summer 2005
"Za Zrcadlem" | Crossing Lines | Main Street Rag, anthology | April 2015
"Chance of Rain" | Temenos Journal | April 2014
"After the Iron Curtain" | Yellow Medicine Review | Fall 2009
"Relapse" | The Kelsey Review | Fall 2009
"On Burning Children Instead of Paper" | After Hours Press | Summer 2008
"The Road" | After Hours Press | Summer 2008
"Leaving Home" | After Hours Press | Summer 2005
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After the Iron Curtain
His wife grows flowers: geraniums, begonias, and daisies, in terra cotta boxes hanging from their second story blue windowsill. In the morning, she tucks one into his lapel as he leaves for work, nearly retired, running late. Two blocks down Devijcka-- Praha district seven—his fingers still wrap the key ring in his pants pocket. He lets go, holds the rail, and descends to the metro. Pats his pocket for keys. Still there. But boarding the metro, his freckled hand in tweed left pocket finds no ticket. He sits, rides backwards, avoids eye contact and with bent elbows and both hands he clutched black leather briefcase, compressing the crinkled fabric. He flinches, clings to the window. He watches for inspectors—for secret police-- hides behind a soft smile and a red begonia. Yellow Medicine Review | Fall 2009 Relapse
Behind closed doors, she is 19 again. Cracks a window and breathes suburban air-- fresh, deep, easy. Props an elbow against crisp eggshell walls, bare tows crinkling around powder blue bath rug. Lights. Drags. Ashes in the toilet. Forgets her smooth scalp, swollen calf. Eyes closed, she remembers her first apartment, above the Blue Moon Cafe, Friday nights with her baby spinning her polka dot skirt silly across the dance floor, his fingers catching the love bug all over again in her short red curls. She flicks. Unaimed ash finds her knee, early 50’s, carrying the weight of children, cancer, the cha-cha. Putting out the cigarette she zips up evidence. Tucks away worn cloth makeup case in the middle drawer. Pops a mint. Heads down the hallway. Takes the stairs one by one. Slowly. Aching. The Kelsey Review | Fall 2009 The Road
after Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Kansas” We close the atlas, follow the sunset across Kansas and reminisce about childhood, puppy love, regret—don’t mention yesterday, when you left him at the altar, begged me to go with you, turned our talk westward. Two cups of coffee, black, at an all night diner, and back on the road our cigarettes glow midnight. We've got mountains to see in the morning, baby, but this is the flattest night in the world, and yesterday's city still flickers in the rearview mirror. When dawn breaks, you pull over, turn up the radio and lean forehead on the wheel, sing so the odometer vibrates. You don’t know where you’re going, but we know this song. I sing harmony, turn the key to idle. We roll down windows and climb onto your car roof, red, 1988, stick shift. After Hours Press | Summer 2008 |
Faculty Reading at Rowan University Art Gallery | Glassboro, NJ | Fall 2018
Philadelphia Stories reading at Fergie's Pub | Winter 2016
Faculty Reading at Rowan University | Glassboro, NJ | Fall 2011
Roosevelt University MFA Graduate Reading | Chicago, IL | Fall 2006
Writing in Rathaus Park | Vienna, Austria | 2003
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