I remember a photo I saw of a two-hundred-year-old
cherry blossom tree.
I imagine the events it must have borne witness to:
births, deaths, tsunamis, the rise and fall of empires,
but still its branches spread with pink and red blooms.
I wake up some mornings, an elegy for self
on my cracked lips, gazing upon my scars
and wondering why I’m still here.
But to some, I’m still blooming and they don’t see
the fractures I think define me.
Perhaps I still have some life in me.
If a tree can withstand two-hundred years
of storm and sun,
I, too, can live and love a little longer.
mental health
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
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: 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
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
An Illness: a Poem
A poem written by me, inspired to share by the poet and author, Nicole Lee (@nicoleleepoetry|Scorpio Skin).
This monster reigns as king,
as heavy as an anvil
(as visible as air).
It begs a fight,
fists clenched,
battle-scarred and ready,
when all I’ve wanted is
tranquility.
The bruises it leaves
rot
from the inside out.
The pain sears,
yet the beast hides
(cloaked in shadows).
It might lie dormant
for centuries.
Undisturbed,
it slumbers.
But when it wakes,
blood trickles from its fangs
as it snarls & seethes.
(Searching for a captive.)
It takes & holds me hostage.
It is as toxic as fumes and as haunting as nightmares.
Isabelle Palerma
Isabelle Palerma 