Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer reads “A Study in Gray” from Shō No. 3: Revival Issue.
“I was inspired to write the poem “A Study in Gray” after seeing photos of The Drake Shake my grandparents had taken on a cruise to Antarctica. My grandparents are avid travelers, and the poem came very naturally after seeing their posts; this trip also came after my grandfather had been in surgery for cancerous masses on his kidney. I was thinking a lot about human mortality and environmental catastrophe, and how we all are momentary in the world—“A Study in Gray” was my attempt at rebelling against that impermanence.”
– Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer
Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer is the author of the poetry collection Bad Animal (Riot in Your Throat, 2023), which won the 2024 Central New York Book Award in Poetry, and the chapbook Small Geometries (Ethel, 2023.) The recipient of a Pushcart Prize, her poetry has been published in The Missouri Review, The Adroit Journal, and others. Her fiction has been published/is forthcoming in Giving Room Magazine and The Masters Review. She is a graduate of Syracuse University’s MFA program in poetry and is a doctoral student in Comparative Literature at New York University.