Synkroniciti is excited to announce our “Family” poetry contest winner, northern California poet and writer Annette Boushey Holland. “Picking Blackberries” reminds us that all beings (not only humans) are attracted by sweetness, nurture and pleasure, here symbolized by the blackberry. “Always chancing fate when we pick berries/ wandering on down the lane that leads/ into the forest.” This desire for sweetness is risky at times–those vines have thorns and there are predators–but it also builds ecosystems and relationships, including her own: “and when I turned and offered/ you a handful, you put on your/ brakes and stayed for/ the rest of our lives.” Family begins and continues by means of a relationship between previously unrelated people, and when that relationship works, there is nothing sweeter. Annette creates a complex and beautiful allegory for intimacy, full of delightful grace, delicacy, wonder and innocence. The music of her language is laced with sibilants and fricatives that beg to be read aloud.
Read “Picking Blackberries” in our upcoming “Family” issue, available for pre-order here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/. We are pleased that the poem will be presented alongside a watercolor of blackberries painted by Annette herself.
Though she delights in picking berries — especially with daughters and grandsons — and in making berry pies and jam, Annette Boushey Holland is less enthused about dealing with the encroaching vines that threaten to take over their pasture and trails. She lives with her husband, two horses and a dog on a scrap of second and third-growth redwood forest in Northern California. When not battling invasive plants, Annette enjoys writing, painting, hiking, puttering in the garden, and hosting meditation retreats in a remodeled barn. She has done fundraising and public relations for several conservation groups, taught English composition, and helped establish two land trusts. Her publications include articles on environmental issues, short memoirs, and poems.