Poet Spotlights

Poet Spotlight on: V.N.

Rarely do I get the opportunity to read poetry that sparks my soul as much as We Were Never Fireproof did. I had the pleasure of discovering V.N.’s poetry on the social media site Threads, and she is a phenomenal poet.

I often shy away from topics such as politics or current events, but V.N. tackles these hard-hitting topics with so much talent. Usually, I take my time and read poetry slowly, but I devoured We Were Never Fireproof in one sitting, reading through it hurriedly because I could hardly get enough of it.

Her poetry is an unflinching look at the world around us, whether it’s the male gaze, how women are exploited, the effects of politics and people in power, and more. V.N. is an extraordinary poet, and more people should read her book.

It exposed me to a world of free verse poetry that I, as both a writer and reader of poetry, needed to be exposed to.

How long have you been writing poetry?

I have been writing since I was a child. I first remember starting to write in 1st grade around age 6-7. I built a little fort underneath my bed and would spend hours there writing and re-writing short stories.

I started trying my hand at poetry later on around age 11. I never shared my poems with anyone, but writing has always been such a great outlet for all of the feelings I can’t name in the moment.

I deal with a lot of anxiety, and poetry has become a way to turn it into something that feels more useful than just allowing the thoughts and feelings to ruminate in my head.

What was the most meaningful poem for you to write in “We Were Never Fireproof” and why?

It is hard to choose, but I think “Metamorphosis” would have to be the most meaningful because struggling with a sense of true identity is something that has been front and center in my life in recent years.

I received a late ADHD diagnosis in my early 20’s and prior to that, I spent my entire childhood and early adulthood feeling as though there was something fundamentally wrong with me that I could not quite figure out. No matter what I did, I always felt like I was constantly getting it wrong and everything felt so much harder than it seemed to be for the other people around me.

I also spent most of that time people-pleasing to an extreme degree and just trying to find a way to fit in and avoid criticism.I developed really rigid coping mechanisms and dealt with extreme anxiety.

Those struggles among other things have led to a disconnect in terms of identity, which I am now trying to piece back together. “Metamorphosis” was my way of putting all of that to paper in a way that felt safe.

For the reader who hasn’t gotten the opportunity to read it, can you talk a bit about your poetry book? What inspired it? What are the general overarching themes? Was it difficult to write about such topics, considering your subject matter?

“We Were Never Fireproof” is a collection of poetry I have written over the past three years. Each poem has a different origin point; some past, some present, some were written as pieces for art therapy projects, but all of them stem from a need to put all of my jumbled emotions down somewhere.

At the start, they were just a random collection of poems, but current events, specifically the election night in Nov. 2024, inspired me to weave them together into something tangible I could hold. The general overarching themes revolve around social commentary, feminism, our current political climate in the US, and survival under systemic corruption.

I know I cannot be the only person holding all of these heavy, anxious, outraged etc. feelings in my body, so I hoped that maybe sharing my book would help another person out there feel seen in the mess of it. It is not difficult to write about the topics, but it is difficult to share. I was afraid to put it out there at first as it is hard to know what is and is not safe, but staying silent does not make anything safer for anyone.

What’s your advice to aspiring poets looking to do more with their writing?

My biggest piece of advice, which is also advice to myself, is share it. Even if you’re scared. Even if you don’t think anyone is going to read it. Even if you think people will hate it. Just share it, put it out there, because you never know who might need to read exactly what you have to offer, and even if it is not for everyone, it’s going to be for someone out there.

As a poetry writer, do you also read poetry? Which poets are your favorites, and does reading poetry affect your writing?

Yes! I love poetry and prose. When I was a kid I loved Shel Silverstien. I even did a spoken word performance of one of his pieces in elementary school.

I also really enjoy Rupi Kaur and Amanda Lovelace.

What I really love though, is reading the poems of strangers on social media. It has become one of my favorite things to see people put their work out there and share it.

It definitely gives me inspiration to write and seeing the ways others use and interpret poetry is always fascinating.

A poem can mean one thing to the writer, and mean something completely different to the reader, and that has always been something I appreciate about poetry.

Each word carries its own weight depending on who is reading it and through what lens.

And I think that art is one of the best ways to cope with difficult things. Right now especially, art can be a form of coping, soothing, truth telling, and resistance and I love that so many people are willing to share their voices through this medium.

We need it.

Where can readers find “We Were Never Fireproof”?

My book is currently available on the Lulu online bookstore – here – or I occasionally share writing on my Threads page: here.

Metamorphosis

Rude
Talking out of turn
Nosey
Loud
Attention-seeking

A little girl calculating words thrown her way
Using them to mold herself
Into the shape of acceptance and belonging
Hoping it will be enough
Mimicking the way others exist in the world
Hoping to find the correct way to be

You read too much
Too quiet
Too shy
Weird
Standoffish
Awkward

A teenage girl calculating words thrown her way, trying to reshape
Remold
With every disapproving glance and comment
Chisels and hammers
A constant metamorphosis
An ever evolving dance
Hoping to be loved, even if for the conformity
But still not enough

Too much
Too little
Too big
Too small
Too loud
Too quiet
Too smart
Too spacey
Too kind
Too cold
Too much too much too much
But never enough

Mold
Change
Evolve
Try to squeeze into the boxes
Take the right shape
Maybe from this angle
Under the perfect lighting
With careful curation
Maybe in this form —
Maybe

Who am I now?
What do I love?
What do I care about?
Is this even me?
Or just a lifetime of collecting harsh words
Assigning weight to their meaning
Calculating my worth by their utterance
Trying to check all the boxes
And contorting to avoid their sting

The mask I wear: the price of admission

A woman, unsure
Identity unknown
Too many boxes, never the right shape
Nothing of her own, to tell her who she is
The world already told her
Time and time again,
Yet still, never enough.

– V.N.

Isabelle Palerma

Poet Spotlight On: Alfred Gremsly

Alfred just recently shared with me a reader review which I feel entitled to share a part of with you all before including his interview. A reader of Alfred’s poetry had said the following:

The candor of this review honestly speaks volumes about Alfred Gremsly’s poetry, and while I am just starting to familiarize myself with his poetry, I can tell he has the same intentions I do with my writing and my day job – to provide a voice to communities normally stigmatized.

Alfred Gremsly is an American born poet who writes about mental health and the struggle that comes with it. A lifelong sufferer of anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses, Alfred began writing poetry at the young age of twelve as a means of escaping his own mind.

Whose poetry style is most like your own?

I don’t know if anyone’s poetry is like mine.
I don’t read a lot of poetry, and if I do read, it’s going to be something that’s complete opposite of what I write.

Have you received formal training for writing? If so, what’s your background? If not, what got you interested in poetry writing?

I started writing around age 12; I was a very depressed kid. We lived in the country and had nothing to do, and so, I would make homemade books for myself of my thoughts and feelings.

Who are some of your favorite poets?

Some individual poets I like to read are Jan Serene, Ashley Jane, Angie Waters, Margie Watts, and Sarah Kay Collie.

How do you feel when you’re writing a poem? Is it cathartic or do you find it draining? What types of emotions do you experience when writing poetry?

As I, myself, am a lifetime sufferer of depression and anxiety, I have extreme highs and lows. Unfortunately, it takes being in those extreme lows in order for me to get out what I’m needing to say.

I sometimes feel as if writing is a curse of sorts –
so horrible would be the feelings and emotions I’m under while writing.

A lot of my poetry features fractured versions of myself as a narrative voice. What subjects do you write about and how are they influenced by your own experiences?

I write about what I’ve been through in life’s journey – my struggles with mental illness, the feelings of being mentally ill. I have overcome a lot through in life through poetry. I now have a grasp on my depression and anxieties, and I’m now on a mission to help others suffering from mental illnesses.

Where can readers find more of your poetry?

https://instagram.com/poetalfredgremsly

http://www.alfredgremsley.com

https://a.co/d/5B8OkmR

I’ll Be Dead before I’m Better

Am I just pretending
there are voices in my head?
And can anyone else hear
a single thing they’ve said?
Am I really talking to someone
who has been talking back to me?
Or have I just become
a psychotic mystery?
Life’s no fun pretending
when you need a friend
and a therapist is not the answer
when you want the words to end.
Can anyone hear the voices
that are screaming from my head?
I’ll be dead before I’m better
if I’m not already dead

– Alfred Gremsly

Isabelle Palerma

Poet Spotlight On: Carol Goldstone Majola

Carol Majola is a trained ECD educator, business management student, self proclaimed poet and author, and aspiring entrepreneur. She is passionate about community building and helping youth tackle social ills affecting them. Majola is advocate for issues such as bullying, GBV, and substance abuse. She believes that her purpose is healing and that words written or spoken are powerful to break but also heal and she found healing in poetry. To Carol, the two most powerful things are Love and words.

When did you start writing poetry?

I fell in love with poetry when we were learning about the history of our country when we were in school, when whites and blacks were separated during the apartheid era. And I fell in love with how expressive the writers of the “struggle” were and how they used the art to cope with their pain and loss, to communicate their feelings more eloquently. But it was when I lost my father at the age of nine, that I wrote my first poem.

What are your favorite words?

I am a lover so my favourite word is “love”.

My name “Carol” because it means “a joyful song”. I feel it explains why I love music so much.

Do you have a particular style of poetry you write? Have you ever experimented with form poetry? What were the results?

I do not think I have a particular style of writing my poetry, although most of my poems are in a similar structure. They are more expressive than rhythmic though.

I love words and playing around with words and therefore experimenting with form poetry was inevitable. My first exposure to poetry was form and studying poetry. With my work, I feel that form gave it more structure and allowed me to experiment with my rhyme scheme. Although the consideration of my lines and stanzas made it seem limiting in how I could express in depth, it did teach me careful consideration of my word choice.

April is Global Poetry Writing Month. Who are some of your favorite poets from around the world?

One of my memorable olden day favourite poet together with the likes of Charles Causley, would be a South African Poet by the name of “KEORAPETSE WILLIAM KGOSITSILE” who was not only a poet but a social and political activist who lived in Exile in the US in 1962. I love how he encouraged interest in Africa, African poetry and the practice of poetry as a performance art. Origins and Santamaria are some of my favorite works by him.

Maya Angelou has always been my favorite, as well as Rudy Francisco. I have my recent favourites who I have experienced through social media – Yaw Osafo (KINGYAW FROM GHANA) residing in the states and Hafsat Abdullahi (HAVFY FROM NIGERIA)…such powerful young poets.

A Conjugal Suicide

Floating, barely breathing
beneath the waters,
In a bottomless ocean.
Drowning, for I sold myself
at the price of trust
I recklessly handed over.
Sun rays cast between my fears,
Water covering my stream of tears,
My wails muffled in the deep,
Not even those shoring at sea
Can see me, nor my weeps hear.
I am dazed swimming in agony,
In a sea a path to which I built
With brick and mortar with which
I tried to build my home
That now lies desolate and forgone.

– Carol Goldstone Majola

Isabelle Palerma

Poet Spotlight on: Eryn McConnell

Eryn lives in South Germany with their family but is originally from Oxford, UK. They work freelance as a translator and a teacher. When not writing, they’re out on their bike in the forest or dreaming up new ideas to write about. They are obsessed with vinyl, fountain pen ink, dragons and cheese. Preferably not all together.
Their current favourite thing is spring blossoms against the white clouds.
They are working on two new poetry collections which will be released this year, Masquerade Me and Death by Sugar, and two fiction works, a Dystopian Scifi novella called The Dust Collector and a Gothic Horror called The Black Cat Bookshop.

As a huge fan of your book, which features illuminating poetry on PTSD, I feel like I have to address that. How did you overcome your initial fears and write about a topic that is still so taboo in so many places?

I didn’t want to write something hard, or dark, and I really didn’t want to write a poetry collection that is largely autobiographical. But I found that on occasion when I shared an individual poem, that people really resonated with it. I saw that there’s a lot of poetry about anxiety and depression, but hardly anything for PTSD. And ultimately, sometimes, it is on you to begin it. It was on me to say, this is what PTSD looks like. So it became a collection. It was, and I think will remain, the most difficult collection for me to complete and publish. But I don’t regret it.

Do you sit down with a poetry idea in mind or does it slowly develop as you sit in front of the page or monitor? In other words, what is your process?

I should probably mention that I am an aphant, which means that I have no visual landscape. I cannot conjure a memory and play it back as if it is in glorious technicolour. If someone asks me to imagine a box, I cannot see the colour or texture. I see a nondescript box. So when it comes to poetry, you could say that I am a blind poet.

My visual landscape is layered with music notes and quantum physics. I hear a concept of a poem, a shiver of something, and I have to follow it through to the end. It happens a lot with a phrase, an overhead conversation, perhaps, and then I have to chase the thread to the end. I do not always know where it will turn up.

It’s cliché, but each person’s answer is uniquely their own: what is the best writing advice you have received?

Don’t lose your own poetic voice.

What are three words you would use to describe your poetry?

Lyrical
Layered
Whimsical

Why do you write poetry?

I have been writing poetry since I was 16, and really, have never stopped. I never intended to make something from it, I never intended to call myself a poet. I studied both poetry and playwriting at University but poetry was the one that survived the grind of assignments, of life getting in the way, and it kept coming back. I write poetry because I need to write it. It is cathartic, somehow.

Is there a common motif in your writing that you find yourself returning to?

There are a few, yes.

In Of Swans and Stars I explored the ideas of my own North Star, that place that calls you home, the direction on the compass that we follow. So swans and stars, are very important to me, and you see amber, being cast in amber, featuring often. I write a lot about Druidry, mythology and folklore. Dragons will always be in my poetry. But at the heart of it all, is always love. Love for who we are, for where we have been, and where we are going.

If you could attend a poetry writing conference taught by any author, lyricist, poet, etc., living or dead, which two to three people would you choose and why?

Larkin. I love him, I love how he writes, his raw energy.
Peter Gabriel. His wordsmithery is without equal.
WH Auden. I want to hear him read and see how it is reflected in his eyes. I want to see how he writes.

Where can readers find you?

https://linktr.ee/Eryn.McConnell

https://amzn.to/3KIwYTe

Origami Cranes

A thousand cranes
Paper art flying
For peace in the world
A thousand cranes
Countless painstaking
Paper folds
For peace in the heart
A thousand cranes
Flying their dance
On white string
For peace in the eyes
A thousand cranes
Quiet time
Each repetition
A healing caress
For peace in the soul
A thousand cranes
Origami sorcery
Peace in the world
Starts with ourselves.

– Eryn McConnell

Isabelle Palerma

Poet Spotlight On: ML Stevens

This weekend, I’m interviewing author and poet ML Stevens. She is extremely talented and kind. When I told her it was my birthday, she gave me an autographed copy of her poetry book “Caged Heart”.

When she’s not writing, or listening to the characters that live in her head rent free, ML Stevens can be caught with her nose in a book or running when the weather permits it. She wrote her first “novel” at a young age after looking out her window one summer day and deciding it would be cool to write a book. Since then she hasn’t been able to put the pen down. She has many more projects planned, including (hopefully) more poetry to come.

Why do you like writing poetry, and how is it different from writing fiction?

It’s where I go to when I need to get something out then and there without writing a novel. Often times, it’s where I go when I’m upset about something that has been weighing on me. Secondly, it flows easily. It’s never hard for me to know what to write into a poem.

Poetry for me is easier than writing fiction. I can whip out a poem anytime and anywhere while with fiction, I can come up with an idea like that, but it takes a lot more time and work to get it written on paper.

Where is your ideal writing space?

I have always felt weird about this question because I don’t have one ideal writing space. I enjoy writing in a coffee shop or at my desk just as much as I enjoy writing on my couch or even outside.

If you ever were to hold a poetry reading, where would you hold one?

I never have held a poetry reading but would love to do one in a cozy library like the library rat I am.

What is your biggest inspiration?

I think for poetry my biggest inspiration is life. the ups and downs of it as well as the people who are part of it. Life itself is artwork, much like poetry, and and there’s so much that I draw from it when I’m writing a poem.

Specific scenarios of hate, anger, sadness, happiness, love, friendship – even nature and all it has to offer can be found in my poetry.

What’s your favorite thing about writing poetry? Your least favorite?

My favorite thing is how quick it is for me. It’s something I can turn to when I’m in a meeting and struggling to stay awake. It looks like I’m taking notes. It’s also there when I want to write something but I am not sure if I want to start a novel or a short story.

If I had to pick a least favorite part about writing poetry, for me personally, it would be how damn personal it comes out ninety percent of the time. It’s a little more difficult for me to write a poem that isn’t personal in at least some way.

When did you begin writing? How has your poetry evolved since then?

In general, I have been writing since I was eight. I didn’t writing poetry until I was twelve or thirteen. In fact, I had never even read a lot of poetry until my middle school Creative Writing teacher made an assignment for us to write thirty different types of poems. I enjoyed writing poetry after that.

My poetry then was simplistic and not as deeply personal as it is now. As I continued to write poetry, it became more complex for me and much more personal. Many of my poems are based on my own experiences and emotions.

What’s your favorite word? Least favorite?

I can’t say I have a favorite word, but I am fond of the words scintillating and surreptitiously. I really don’t know why. For my least favorite words, I have a few that make me cringe. Gyrating is one of them.

Where can readers find more of your writing?

https://twitter.com/MLStevens13

https://www.instagram.com/mlstevens13

https://tinyurl.com/yc53y8rp

All Was Lost

Something long gone
That can’t be recovered
A broken world
Filled with greed
A shattered soul
The pieces scattered
A dreadful tempest
Roars inside
A tender heart
That barely beats
A soft voice whispers,

“I was here.”

– ML Stevens