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.
NaPoWriMo
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
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
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
Isabelle Palerma
Poet Spotlight on: J.G. Gibson
Dallas, Texas Poet J.G Gibson is a first time author with his debut book, ‘Feelings’. He is known among the poetry community as clever, poignant and creative in an original way. Most of his work, surrounds the themes of heartbreak, loss, depression, and death but are not limited to those categories.
Upon reading J.G. Gibson’s poetry, on first glance, I was deceived into thinking it was aphoristic writing – somewhat simple and with a clear message. Then, I read it again. And again. Until I realized there is so much more to his poetry than what appears.
What are three words you would you use to describe your poetry?
Clever, lyrical, and entertaining are usually three words that come to mind when I think of my poetry.
From quick wit to rhythm and rhyme, I tend to leave the reader entertained and amazed.
When did you begin writing poetry and what was the impetus?
At age 16. I like to blame music for me becoming a poet. I remember always searching for the lyrics of songs and reading them in my head, without the music playing in the background.
Some of my favorite artists today, are Taylor Swift, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar and The Weeknd.
What are some of your writing habits? How do they affect the content of your poems?
To say I have any writing habits would be a fib. I write sporadically, there’s no schedule or direct process. I do not write everyday.
All I know for sure is I write most frequently when I am emotional – good or bad.
With that being said, most of my themes surround relationships of all kinds – whether it’s death, the downfall of one, weddings, or meeting parents.
My choice of content allows me to highlight different moments and aspects of a relationship.
What is the most difficult part of the poetry-writing process?
For me personally, it is finding subjects I can personify or use as metaphors to elaborate the story that I’m trying to tell. It drives me insane trying to write the perfect-worded poem.
I find in my writing, I include little metaphors or references that only certain readers will understand. Having said that, do you ever include similar references?
Yes, in my upcoming book, “Feelings”, there will be references throughout the whole book that connect poem by poem. I like to think of it as, a loosely episodic structure of a poetry collection.
Why do you think so many readers find poetry inaccessible?
Actually, I do think it’s accessible, but I think it’s been watered down, or modernized. In today’s climate, I always see poems as a caption: it’s a one-line, witty attention grabber. Or it’s substance when posted in other places is cliché. So I do believe poetry is accessible, I just think the people who really love it, don’t really appreciate the statuses which are aka, “the new poetry.”
Carousel
Farewell, carousel
that takes me back to you.
Round after round thinking,
you’ll go around too
But you just add change,
and yet stay the same,
and around I move.
J.G. Gibson
Isabelle Palerma
Isabelle Palerma 