My Sister and I, by Katy Z. Allen

Poetry, chapbook, 40 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

My Sister and I celebrates the complexity of our human relationships with the world outside our doors. Allen invites the reader to join her on a journey of exploration of our interconnectedness, beginning with the mystery and wonder around us, capturing at times a specific moment of amazement and at times the overall splendor around us.

Lyrically and gently yet with brutal honesty, Allen’s poems grapple with the pain of environmental degradation and anthropogenic climate change, taking the reader from joy to tenderness to deep grief and despair. In the end, the poet reminds us of the healing power of nature and the relationships we can continue to build with the world’s nonhuman inhabitants, ultimately reflecting on the unity and mystery of all. Allen has lived close to and deeply loved the natural world all her life, and her heart-felt sense of connection shines through in her poetry.

Katy Z. Allen (she/her) began her career as a high school science teacher and worked in educational publishing before becoming a rabbi. She served as a healthcare chaplain, and, taking on the role of eco-chaplain, started an outdoor Jewish congregation, led interfaith outdoor experiences, and co-founded a Jewish climate organization. She has been writing in one context or another since the age of eight. Now retired and having added poet to her list of titles, her poetry has appeared in print and online in numerous journals, including Amethyst Review, The Bluebird Word, Cosmic Daffodil, The Soliloquest Magazine and Art on the Trails: Number 9. She has two micro-chapbooks from Origami Poems Project and was awarded Honorable Mention in The Prose Poem’s 2025 Prose Poetry Competition. Her poetic book on the journey through trauma to healing, A Tree of Life: A Story in Word, Image, and Text, which includes stunning black-and-white photographs by her mother, Mary North Allen, was published by Strong Voices Publishing. Her work can be found at www.katyzallen.com.