Mid-Bloom

by Katie Budris

Available for pre-order now through Finishing Line Press.

Mid-Bloom, the second poetry chapbook release by Katie Budris, reflects on losing of her mother to cancer when she was 15, and then facing breast cancer herself at age 36. This shared experience resulted in an unexpected mother/daughter bond, even though mother is no longer living.

Praise for Mid-Bloom:
"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

"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

Paperback

First published August 13, 2021

About the author

Born and raised in the Chicagoland area, Katie Budris completed her undergraduate work at Hope College in Holland, Michigan and earned her MFA at Roosevelt University in Chicago. Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Albion Review, After Hours Press, From the Depths (Haunted Waters Press), The Kelsey Review, Michigan Avenue Review, Outside In Magazine, Temenos, Yellow Medicine Review, and the anthology Crossing Lines (Main Rag Press). She is at work on her first full-length collection of poetry, The Length of Distance, centered on the physical and emotional distances in relationships. Katie lives in Philadelphia where she is a professor of Writing Arts at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey and at Community College of Philadelphia. She also serves as Editor-in-Chief of Glassworks Magazine.

Reviews

[Dawn Colangelo Leas · Rating 5 out of 5]

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