by Cathy Cain

Cathy Cain, like a bee to flower, gathers thought from one encounter with nature to another. She speaks from many perspectives — as herself, as tree, as mushroom, or as goddess-hero. Sometimes playful, even mystical, Cain is deeply honest as she confronts the state of our relationship with the natural environment, with technology, and with what it means to be human.

About the Author

Poet and artist Cathy Cain​’s honors include the Kay Snow Paulann Petersen Award for Poetry​ ​and the Edwin Markham Prize for Poetry. ​She is the author of Empty Space Places You (Finishing Line Press, 2018). Her poetry has appeared in Reed Magazine, VoiceCatcher, The Poeming Pigeon, and Verseweavers.

Cain holds degrees in literature and visual art from Lewis & Clark College, MAT; Oregon State University, BFA; and University of Washington, BA, Phi Beta Kappa. She has studied at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters, and with Portland’s Mountain Writers Series.

The mother of two sons, Cain taught in the public schools for over thirty years. She lives with her husband near Portland, Oregon.

What They’re Saying…

Thrumming with a wise and generous curiosity, the poems in Cathy Cain’s Bee Dance are bright signposts pointing a way forward through a difficult age. Whether about lichen, lava, or driving through a long tunnel, Cain’s poems show us the pleasure of pattern and the possibility of imagination, of living with both grace and alarm. This book beautifully does poetry’s steadfast work of naming and knowing the lives all around us. Here, the natural world meets the human over rich, porous boundaries: trees speak of long affection, stones quiet the mind, brushed hair sends off shooting stars. The poems in Bee Dance are blessings for the reader, as Cain’s poem “Small Blessings” states so well: “One for each of us / so we know we’re not alone.”

— Annie Lighthart, author of Lantern and Iron String

The energetic dance of bees at the hive focuses on describing a roadmap to abundance. Cathy Cain’s poems in Bee Dance explore expanses of a world filled with animal and vegetative creatures. She describes the wordless comfort of holding a rock while acknowledging the spirit spaces between words. Her poetry expresses the impulse to reinvent ourselves outside of cyber noise and instead define ourselves within the boundaries of sentiencies around us. Her poems suggest trail guides through the perils of today’s world that threaten lichens and suffocate us with plastics, moving us to landscapes of morning mist that say yes! and reveal honey in the communal hive.

— Tricia Knoll, author of How I Learned to be White
and Broadfork Farm

Book Launch Readings:

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