Synkroniciti is thrilled to welcome Bostonian poet Kathy Whitham. “Sitting at the Foot of My Bed” remembers Kathy’s father, a scientist at Los Alamos who worked on the atom bomb. She creates a captivating ambience, part admiration for the science and part menace stemming from the deadly thing released into the world. “The sound is what followed him./ Decades later as his grandchildren listened/ entranced by his eyewitness account/ of the first atomic bomb test blast,/ his hands slowly mushroomed/ the unholy roar shuddering from his core.” Knowledge, like technology, is ambivalent: it can be used for good things and bad, and it enlarges the capacity for both. Kathy’s alliterative and assonant poetry has a music which begs to be read, carefully curated, intelligent and resonant.
Read “Sitting at the Foot of My Bed” in Synkroniciti’s “Family” issue, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Kathy Whitham, an active member of the Boston writing community, has worked with leading teachers in the area, including Barbara Helfgott Hyett, Tom Daley and Eric Hyett. A registered nurse turned Parenting Coach, focusing on non-traditional families, her poems explore human connection in its myriad forms.
For bedtime stories, her dad used to tell her about atoms, ESP, and the solar system. One night, he introduced her to poetry. She recently finalized a chapbook collection, Drawing The Big Dipper, and current work has appeared in what the poem knows: A tribute to Barbara Helfgott Hyett; Alchemy and Miracles: nature woven into words and Thriving: An Anthology. She can be found at parentingbeyondwords.com.