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Hello everyone!

Welcome to our PoArtMo Anthology (Youth Edition) Series, which celebrates the talented young creatives featured in The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: Youth Edition.

Today, Raj Ratan Mala and Sara Weinstein are telling us what inspired the poems they sent us

Raj Ratan Mala

Raj Ratan Mala (Bokaro Steel City, India) likes writing, cooking and singing. He wants to become a writer. “My role model is my father. He taught me my worth and he set an example for how other men should treat me. He was a gentle person with an astounding personality. I wish I could be half as good as him when I grow up.”

Raj sent us the poem titled Chiselled Maiden:

I’d love to give a little backstory behind the reason for carving those verses. My mother is one of the prettiest women I’ve ever known and it might be same for most other people as well! When I was little, it might sound insolent, but the ten year old me always got envious when my father called her pretty; or maybe I might’ve felt betrayed since I wanted to be his only princess. One good winter night, I asked him who’s prettier and being brutally honest, it was on a witty remark. I’ll save his words since that’s all portrayed in the poem and even though he’s gone, his words shot my heart like a dart (in a good way, of course).

All women are goddesses and my mother is the goddess who created me. In the poem, there’s a description of a painter, painting a middle aged women on his canvas and she’s trying her best to look as young as she can, covering up her stretch marks, tightening her corset, holding her breath.

The more she asks the artist to paint her prettier, the more details he adds to his piece. He painted the women with all her flaws, all those details she didn’t want to be seen. Little did she know, or I must say, little does every woman know, that they’re a work of art and art is not supposed to fit into any beauty standards, it’s a creation that’s one in the whole world and perfect in every term. The flaws are the details that need to be embraced, not stroked with the colour white. 

Raj Ratan Mala

Sara Weinstein

Sara Weinstein (Rockville, U.S.) enjoys writing, debates, reading, and exercising. She would like to become a politician or a civil rights lawyer. “I greatly admire Lucy Stone, because she was unconventional and stood up for the rights of herself, others, and others like her, in a time when that was not conventional and accepted, and she paved the way for future generations of women to have more rights, even though she did not live to see her efforts come to fruition.”

Sara sent us the poem titled Lavender’s Green:

I wrote this poem in a time when I was really struggling with social anxiety, and I felt really alone at the time. I felt like this poem really expressed how I was feeling, because I felt really alone, and like I was the only one feeling left out and uncomfortable with the social atmosphere that everyone else seemed to love. I felt like I had to keep these feelings to myself because no one else would understand them, and that if I just pretended that I felt “normal” and happy around other people, then maybe the anxiety and feelings of being overwhelmed and out of place that I got from the big crowds and loud music would eventually just go away and I wouldn’t feel them anymore after a while. They didn’t go away, and I still get them, but I have developed comforts (such as the smell of lavender) in places and things that feel familiar and at peace and help me feel less uncomfortable during and after social events that I wouldn’t have been able to handle even a year better. My social anxiety is by no means gone, but this poem sort of speaks to how I felt out of place, and how certain comforts were able to help me tolerate and get through these feelings!

Sara Weinstein

Raj and Sara, thank you for sharing what inspired your poems. We know that people will love your work as much as we do!

Cendrine & David