Investigate Solace

Beth and collaborative partner Claire Owen were featured as part of Bartram's Box Remix, a collaborative project between the Center for Art in Wood and Philadelphia's Bartram's Garden, home of famed 18th century explorer and botanist John Bartram.

The title of the exhibition references Bartram's boxes containing seeds, plants, and curiosities.  Brandt and Owen were among the artists invited to "remix" history, materials and inspiration from 13 trees felled from a 2010 storm. Owen created three boxes, each including a book of Beth's poems, inspired by the trees and linked with three themes: Journeys, Storms and Caretakers.

Read poems from Solace

Bartram’s Boxes

We travel at risk of health and untold loneliness
to uncover what has been seen only by Creek
or crocodile among the brambles.

How we love each fruit or flower for its singularity,
the way we love a wife’s touch, a son’s quick mind,
a daughter’s attentiveness.

Ours is the commerce of curiosity,  seeds gathered,
sifted, tenderly nestled in moss, until with sunlight
and breath, each will spark like tinder,

reveal its secret – beauty, fragrance, usefulness –
brilliant as sunset, dark as coffee, a balm –
sent to bloom across oceans like the children
who blossom in our absence.

We are men of science.  Men of faith.
This is our praise.

                             

Caretaking

we inherit
trees meadow
  a river
hewn stone home
  raised up
floorboards worn smooth
  with lullabies
magnolia
  more ancient than bees
dear --
  please send
  forgive
  remember me
generations
  of singular days
awakened
  laid to rest
passed
  hand
  to hand
this is
    is not
  history