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The PoArtMo Anthology Series: Interview with Lakshman Bulusu

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On November 18, 2021

In Inspirational Artist Series

Hello everyone!

Welcome to our PoArtMo Anthology Series, which celebrates the artists whose work appears in The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: 2021 Edition.

Today’s guest is Lakshman Bulusu, who contributed the poem titled “Sea in the Day” (A STAR poem) to our anthology.

Auroras & Blossoms: Hello Lakshman. Congratulations for being a featured artist in our anthology! How does a poem begin for you? Does it start with an image, a form, or a particular theme?

Lakshman: For me, a poem mostly begins with an image or a particular theme. And then I adapt the ideas to fit a particular form. Sometimes it is all the three – think of it like a triptych for a poem.

A&B: Tell us all about the inspiration behind “Sea in the Day” (A STAR poem), the piece that appears in The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: 2021 Edition.

Lakshman: The main inspiration behind this piece is nature and its beauty. And the way humankind can connect with nature. And this is all a positive experience, visiting the beach in early hours of morning, seeing the sun silk threads creating a gold rush, and so on. Additionally, my piece is written in the STAR poem poetic genre that I invented in 2016 and I wanted to see such a piece in this new form.

A&B: How important is accessibility of the meaning of your poems? Should we have to work hard to “solve” the poems and discover their deeper meanings?

Lakshman: To quote myself, (from one of my earlier book introductions):-

Poetry is the language of the heart.

Words voicing softly more than any art.

Most of my poems are straight forward and it should not take the reader more than reading two times to grasp the meaning conveyed. And I think I have done full justice to this aspect in my piece in this anthology. However, some poems like A MOONLIT NIGHT (published in my most recent collection of poems LOVE SCENE OR UNSEEN) might take a bit more reading to get into its theme.

A&B:Tell us the most positive and uplifting advice you have been given while working on your poetry.

Lakshman: The most positive and uplifting advice given to me while working on my poetry is:-

‘Read, read, write, read what you have written (sometimes at least twice), revise.’

Additionally, adhere to specific details in regard to content in a poem. The foundations don’t change, these being—

‘Show, don’t tell,’

and

‘No surprises to the writer, no surprises to the reader.’

Finally, I personally prefer to rhyme as much as I write free verse.

Bio:

Lakshman Bulusu is a Princeton, New Jersey, based poet and an IT professional. His poems have been published in The Villager, The Poets’ Touchstone and Poets International.  He created the STAR poem, a poetic form, in 2016. 

Lakshman is a Barnes & Noble Educator.

Lakshman, thank you for answering our questions and supporting Auroras & Blossoms! We know that people will love your poems as much as we do!

The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: 2021 Edition is available! Click here to purchase your copy.

Cendrine & David

The PoArtMo Anthology Series: Interview with Stacie Eirich

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On November 15, 2021

In Inspirational Artist Series

Hello everyone!

Welcome to our PoArtMo Anthology Series, which celebrates the artists whose work appears in The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: 2021 Edition.

Today’s guest is Stacie Eirich, who contributed the poem titled “Spring’s Essence” to our anthology.

Auroras & Blossoms: Hello Stacie. Congratulations for being a featured artist in our anthology! How does a poem begin for you? Does it start with an image, a form, or a particular theme?

Stacie: When I sit down to write verses, my inspiration comes first from emotion. If something has moved me, whether it be to contemplation or joy or tears, I seek to understand those feelings through the writing of a poem.

Often, my poetry comes from what I love: nature, music and the arts, my family. From what I see, hear, and know intimately. Sometimes, it comes simply from stopping to listen, paying attention to the moment, and letting my thoughts flow freely onto the page.

A&B: Tell us all about the inspiration behind “Spring’s Essence”, the piece that appears in The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: 2021 Edition.

Stacie: Thank you! I’m happy to share my work with Auroras & Blossoms and am looking forward to seeing the uplifting and artistic work from others in the anthology.

‘Spring’s Essence’ was written in response to William Wordsworth’s famous poem, ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.’ With my poem, I sought to convey a similar sense of linguistic style, as well as reverence for nature and its power to lift and heal our spirits.

A&B: What is your relationship with your speaking voice and your written voice?

Stacie: As both a writer and a singer, I feel that my voices are intimately connected into one artistic, unique voice. Whether I’m crafting verses or rehearsing a score, my experience of the story I’m telling, emotions I feel and the environment I’m in dictate how my voice sounds on the page or in the air.

I’m hyper-aware of how my mind and body feel, in relation to being ready to write or sing; the importance of feeling connected to your breath, your body, mind, and the space around you as an artist can’t be emphasized enough. For any creative practice, I believe, connecting yourself physically and emotionally to your craft is key to reaching your authentic self and true voice.

A&B: Have you considered getting other people to read your poetry or is it important for you to be the one to perform your poetry to an audience?

Stacie: I think it’s crucial for poets to get the chance to perform their own work; we can bring a level of authenticity to it that others could not. However, not every poet is comfortable performing, and it must be exciting to experience others reading your verses.

So, while I’ve never considered getting others to perform my poetry, I do think it would be interesting to see how my poems changed in others’ voices and through their performances!

A&B: How important is accessibility of the meaning of your poems? Should we have to work hard to “solve” the poems and discover their deeper meanings?

Stacie: I want readers to feel relaxed and in tune with my words as they read them, gathering whatever meaning the poem has for them with ease.

Therefore, I think it’s important for my verses to be accessible to readers in terms of meaning; they shouldn’t feel that they need to wrack their brains, mining the words for something hidden or unknowable. Instead, I hope my poems uplift them, move them, and inspire them in ways that are meaningful to them.

A&B: Has your own opinion or idea of what poetry is changed since you first started writing poetry?

Stacie: I began writing poems as young teenager, and at that time wrote mostly free verse to express my feelings and make sense of a changing body and a world I didn’t yet understand. Now, as a forty-something mother of two who are nearly the age I was then – I am still at times that young girl writing to understand both herself and the world. I still use poetry as a space to go when I need an outlet for emotions, I still seek out verses from others when I need comfort, solace, a friend.

What has changed perhaps, is what I’m writing about, as well as the lens I’m viewing the world through. Poetry is a larger field of words and experiences to me now than it was at 14; the world is still a large and scary place, but it also feels more tenable, more knowable, vast but beautiful, political, and ever-changing. Poetry, like the Earth itself, is constantly in-flux, yet will be ever-connected to time, our stories, and those of our ancestors. This is something I’m still learning, though the verses of contemporary poets like Joy Harjo, Ada Limon, and Mary Oliver.

A&B: Tell us the most positive and uplifting advice you have been given while working on your poetry.

Stacie: That if I allow myself the space to create and the time to be inspired, the verses – and joy – will come.

Bio:

Stacie Eirich is a writer, singer and mother who reads poetry by moonlight and dreams of traveling beyond the stars. She is the author of The Dream Chronicles, a fantasy series for middle-grade readers. Her poems and stories have been published in Scarlet Leaf Review, MUSED, Wee Tales, and Ruby Magazine. 

Stacie lives with her family and two feisty furballs—writing, singing, mothering, and dreaming.

Website: https://www.stacieeirich.com

Stacie, thank you for answering our questions and supporting Auroras & Blossoms! We know that people will love your poems as much as we do!

The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: 2021 Edition is available! Click here to purchase your copy.

Cendrine & David

The PoArtMo Anthology Series: Interview with Anna Sallee

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On November 11, 2021

In Inspirational Artist Series

Hello everyone!

Welcome to our PoArtMo Anthology Series, which celebrates the artists whose work appears in The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: 2021 Edition.

Today’s guest is Anna Sallee, who contributed the poem “Junebug” and short story “This Won’t Go Back To Normal (If It Ever Was)” to our anthology.

Auroras & Blossoms: Hello Anna. Congratulations for being a featured artist in our anthology! How does a poem or story begin for you? Does it start with an image, a form, or a particular theme?

Anna: With poetry in particular, it frequently begins when I am feeling extremely sad or extremely angry. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the saying that “your first draft is your barf draft, where you barf it all out” but that’s definitely how 99% of my poems come about. Not so much the poem featured in this anthology – because it’s a happy poem – but that is a commonality in most of my poetry.

As for stories, it changes every time. Sometimes I get one scene in my brain and have to extrapolate the rest of the story before and after that scene, sometimes – like poetry – I get very angry or upset about a certain topic one day and decide to rant about it, via story. It is not exactly the same as poetry, however, because I will continue working on the story, even when I am not in the midst of the anger/sadness. Even when I am happy or tired.

A&B: Tell us all about the inspiration behind “Junebug” & “This Won’t Go Back To Normal (If It Ever Was)”, the pieces of yours that appear in The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: 2021 Edition.

Anna: Thank you for accepting me. This is the first literary publication outside of my college campus that I have been a part of, so it’s an honor.

The inspiration behind the poem “Junebug” was that one day in Advanced Creative Writing class, our teacher assigned us a writing prompt where we wrote a love poem about something that wasn’t a romance. So, I decided to write a love poem about the love between human and cat. Junebug is a real cat, who is very fluffy, and I love her. I’m going to see her this weekend.

The inspiration behind “This Won’t Go Back To Normal (If It Ever Was)” is harder for me to pinpoint. I believe I was thinking of my late friend who I lost when I was sixteen and has stayed in my brain for over a decade since then. She has been inspiration for lots of different works of mine. Unlike the characters in question, I was never in love with my friend and my parents were actually good at listening to my grief. However, she was still the main source of inspiration for the story.

A&B: Who are your biggest influences in the writing/poetry world?

Anna: My answer to this one is always changing, but as of right now I am most inspired by Angie Thomas and C.B. Lee in the realm of fiction and Audre Lorde and Sonia Sanchez in the world of poetry (I just discovered Sanchez’s works last semester and have been in love with them ever since).

A&B: What is your relationship with your speaking voice and your written voice?

Anna: This is an interesting question; one I had not thought of before now. I have been told that I am very good at dialogue in my stories, and I believe that comes from my desire of communication in real life (my “speaking voice”). I have always been very blunt, from a young age, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten better at starting (at times difficult) conversations with my friends and family. I think my love and desire for communication in real life translates well into my dialogue, even dialogue between characters who are bad at communication.

A&B: Has your own opinion or idea of what writing is changed since you first started writing?

Anna: In some ways it has, and in other ways it has not. I always say that I’ve been writing since before I knew how to write; when I was a child, I would draw books and staple them together. I knew what story was being created there, but nobody else who tried to look at the book would know what the story was. The story was always one of fun, usually of princesses and/or magic powers. As a child, then, my idea of writing was to create a fun story for people to enjoy and express my active imagination of what I wanted to be (a princess with superpowers).

I don’t write as much in the Fantasy genre as I did then, but I definitely still want to create a fun story for people to enjoy, to express my imagination and what I want to see in the world. Simultaneously, however, I am now writing about more serious issues and about the world as it is. In that sense, ‘what writing is’ to me has changed from escape from reality to a reflection of reality (but still with a happy ending).

A&B: Does your work have any specific themes or social commentary we should identify with?

Anna: “Junebug” is definitely not social commentary, as its theme is love for cats. “This Won’t Go Back To Normal (If It Ever Was)”, is about suicide, but from the perspective of the one who lived having to grapple with the idea that she can still be happy without her best friend. I was also trying to comment on parents who don’t know, necessarily, how to help their child with such large grief and only know how to help her with her high school GPA.

A&B: Tell us the most positive and uplifting advice you have been given while working as a writer.

Anna: One year when I failed NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and thought about giving up on NaNoWriMo altogether, someone told me, “One failure does not dictate future success.” I have failed NaNoWriMo a lot of times at this point, but there was something about that particular year that made me want to give up completely. However, I didn’t give up. I still continue doing NaNoWriMo every year, even when I know I will probably not reach 50,000 words, and I keep that advice in my head for everything in all the writing I do.

Bio:

Anna Sallee is a Junior at Hollins University, Virginia. She is majoring in both Creative Writing and Gender & Women’s Studies, and hopes to write Young Adult novels afterwards.

Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-sallee-a7b083204

Anna, thank you for answering our questions and supporting Auroras & Blossoms! We know that people will love your writing as much as we do!

The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: 2021 Edition is available! Click here to purchase your copy.

Cendrine & David

The PoArtMo Anthology Series: Interview with J.W. Wood

By

On November 8, 2021

In Inspirational Artist Series

Hello everyone!

Welcome to our PoArtMo Anthology Series, which celebrates the artists whose work appears in The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: 2021 Edition.

Today’s guest is J.W. Wood, who contributed flash fiction titled “Merry-Go-Write” to our anthology.

Auroras & Blossoms: Hello J.W. Congratulations for being a featured artist in our anthology! How does a story begin for you? Does it start with an image, a form or a particular theme?

J.W.: There’s no set pattern – it could be anything. Usually if an idea is strong enough, it survives. It starts by writing down a line and can go on for months or years after that, shaping the idea and trying to find the right way of expressing it.

A&B: Tell us all about the inspiration behind your piece “Merry-Go-Write” that appears in The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: 2021 Edition.

J.W.: It comes from my many years of writing copy and journalism to earn my living. In this piece, Charlie Merry realises he can change the world by writing for others.

A&B: Who are your biggest influences in the writing world?

J.W.: Far too many to list, but to give the first ones that come to mind – John Donne, Garcia Marquez and Orwell. I try to read the bible and Shakespeare every day.

A&B: What is your relationship with your speaking voice and your written voice?

J.W.: Great question. Friends who read my first published novel said it was like going out for a drink with me for four or five hours. Other than that, I’ve no idea how the two are linked. I do find it extraordinarily difficult to talk about my creative interests to friends – and as anyone who’s read a biography of Dylan Thomas knows, there is very often very little relationship between a writer’s voice on the page, and how they express themselves personally.

A&B: Has your own opinion or idea of what writing is changed since you first started writing?

J.W.: Infinitely. I did the whole “English Literature” thing for four years, and I think it’s only in the last four years that I’ve started to think in terms of plot, character, and narrative drive, rather than the technical mechanics of language – though obviously the two are linked.

A&B: Does your work have any specific themes or social commentary we should identify with?

J.W.: In particular, I am concerned about the over-reliance on technology which we currently see in so-called “developed” societies; and the concomitant ignorance of both matters spiritual, and other forms of knowing. If the so-called “Dark Ages” were over-reliant on a vague perception of a deity, then current scientistic, or science-worshipping attitudes are no less catastrophic. To an extent, you can see this point reflected in the short piece you’ve included in this anthology; my “Selected Poems”, and my most recent work with Swiss Artist Cyrille Saura, explore this point in much greater depth.

A&B: Tell us the most positive and uplifting advice you have been given while working as a writer.

J.W.: My old English teacher used to tell me “Never give up” and after 35 years it’s no exaggeration to say that his words have stayed with me. In another life, I remember Derek Walcott telling me never to end a line of poetry on a plural or a pronoun, which was helpful if not exactly uplifting. Perhaps the most uplifting advice is the advice I give myself every day – that materiality, and “success” as the world measures it, are only one way of interpreting the quality of a piece of writing. Of far greater importance to me is the desire to achieve one’s vision as a writer as fully as possible. And that’s something those as great as James Joyce and Thomas Mann might say they never succeeded in achieving. A lifetime’s work – and then some.

Bio:

J.W. Wood is the author of five books of poetry, a novel and the forthcoming comic novella, By Any Other Name (Terror House Publishing, 2022). His poems, articles and reviews have appeared in many publications around the world.

Website: https://jwwoodwriter.net

J.W., thank you for answering our questions and supporting Auroras & Blossoms! We know that people will love your writing as much as we do!

The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: 2021 Edition is available! Click here to purchase your copy.

Cendrine & David

The PoArtMo Anthology Series: Interview with Lorraine Horsley

By

On November 4, 2021

In Inspirational Artist Series

Hello everyone!

Welcome to our PoArtMo Anthology Series, which celebrates the artists whose work appears in The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: 2021 Edition.

Today’s guest is Lorraine Horsley, who contributed flash fiction titled “The One-Buck Blessing” to our anthology.

Auroras & Blossoms: Hello Lorraine. Congratulations for being a featured artist in our anthology! How does a story begin for you? Does it start with an image, a form or a particular theme?

Lorraine: All of the above! 😊

Sometimes it’s a whole scene that just pops into my head, it means nothing on its own, but I’m forced to explore it. Other times, it’s just seeing someone do something simple and I go on to play the ‘what if’ game. Sometimes I see the ending of a story and the characters take up residence in my head and nag me until I give them space on the page. They can be relentless!

A&B: Tell us all about the inspiration behind your piece “The One-Buck Blessing” that appears in The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: 2021 Edition.

Lorraine: I wanted to craft a flash fiction piece. I sat down with no ideas and then the first line came out. I followed it to see where it would take me. It took me to Hope Street and to Evie. I went to school with a kid like Evie, I think we all did.

A&B: Who are your biggest influences in the writing world?

Lorraine: Such a big question! So many people. I belong to the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, (SCBWI – Australia West) and the Children’s Book Council of Australia (WA Branch) and there are many writers and inspirational people there. I’ve felt encouraged and supported by them for many years. I read so many different types of books and there is inspiration in each of them. My family are a big influence – they keep me going and cheer me on when self-doubt tells me to stop.

A&B: What is your relationship with your speaking voice and your written voice?

Lorraine: Sometimes it is hard to tell them apart, sometimes it is a stranger that takes over, making their presence felt on the page. I don’t know where those voices come from.

A&B: Has your own opinion or idea of what writing is changed since you first started writing?

Lorraine: I used to put writers on a pedestal and tell myself that could never be me. I used to believe I needed massive blocks of time to write. I now know neither of those things are true. All writing, when it comes down to it, is just words on a page written by people, and even a novel can be drafted in stolen minutes.

A&B: Does your work have any specific themes or social commentary we should identify with?

Lorraine: I write stories for children and adults, as well as poetry. Many of my stories have characters who want to make a difference in the world and who come to realise it is often the small things that mean the most. My poetry is more inward looking, searching for self, questioning labels and expectations, ponderings on identity.

A&B:Tell us the most positive and uplifting advice you have been given while working as a writer.

Lorraine: Trust the process, the words will come. And write for the joy of it.

Bio:

Lorraine Horsley is an Australian author who writes across genres. She has a love of children’s literature and is currently working on an adult novel. Her non-fiction book, You’ve Got This: Tips for the uncertain student, is due for release at the end of 2021.

Website: https://lorraine591.wixsite.com/wordonawire

Lorraine, thank you for answering our questions and supporting Auroras & Blossoms! We know that people will love your writing as much as we do!

The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: 2021 Edition is available! Click here to purchase your copy.

Cendrine & David

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