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The PoArtMo Anthology Series: Focus on Cendrine Marrouat

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On July 18, 2024

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: Volume 5.

Today’s guest is Cendrine Marrouat, co-founder of Auroras & Blossoms, who has contributed a very unique set of poems. She explains what inspired her pieces.

Those who know me are aware that I love challenging myself as an artist. I believe that it is one of the most effective ways of getting rid of writer’s block.

Over the years, I have created several poetry forms, which are all inspired by the Haiku: the Hemingku, Kindku, Pareiku, Sixku, Sepigram, and Vardhaku. (Three of them have also involved David Ellis.) I invented my own type of flash fiction, called the Flashku, too. So, I wanted to share a few examples of those in this year’s volume, as well as a short story that reinvents the myth behind sunsets and sunrises.

I have been passionate about the Haiku for two decades. Its minimalistic approach makes it a very challenging form to master. I also consider it one of the greatest poetry forms ever created. To be impactful, the Haiku requires a deep dive into the exploration of one’s emotions. It is not something I have experienced with other forms—at least not as strongly.

That is exactly what the forms I (co-)created are all about.

Whenever I start working on a piece, I want to do more than just entertain readers. My biggest goal is to inspire them to sit and think about the world around them, and (re-)learn to enjoy the little things.

Of course, not everyone will relate to my message. But writing from a place of self-worth and self-understanding has helped me remain grounded. I would not be the artist and person I am today without it.

Bio:

Cendrine Marrouat is a French-born Canadian photographer, writer, poet, painter, digital artist, podcaster, and the multi-genre author of 50 books. In 2019, she co-founded Auroras & Blossoms and PoArtMo with David Ellis. She is also the (co-)creator of several poetry forms and a type of digital image.

Cendrine writes both in French and English and has worked in many different fields in her 21-year career, including translation, language instruction, journalism, art reviews, and social media.

Website: https://creativeramblings.com

Cendrine, thank you for supporting Auroras & Blossoms! We know that people will love your work as much as we all do!

That’s it for this year’s series! See you in 2025 for the next volume of our PoArtMo Anthology. In the meantime, don’t forget to purchase your copy of Volume 5! See below for more information.

The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: Volume 5 is available! Click here to purchase your copy.

The PoArtMo Anthology Series: Focus on Marjolein Rotsteeg

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On June 18, 2024

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: Volume 5.

Today’s guest is Marjolein Rotsteeg, one of our favorite contributors. She sent us another batch of lovely stories and poetry, including haiku. In this post, she tells us about her most inspiring moment.

School was just a stone’s throw away from where I lived. Literally. It was across the street, right opposite our house. From our living-room window, I could observe what was happening in the downstairs classrooms, like watching a silent movie. And I did. Every day. I can’t have been any older than three.

I couldn’t wait until my fourth birthday, the day I was finally allowed to start school.

To me, school was where magic happened. Not only would I get to be with other children, but I would also learn things I was so eager to learn. First of all reading. Books have been like magnets for me as long as I can remember. On opening them, I entered another world. Unfortunately, I could not make sense of the printed black signs myself. I needed one of my parents, my favourite aunt or my grandmother to decipher them for me.

From a social point of view, school was a disappointment. I got bullied, almost from day one. Also physically. However, my bullies never succeeded in spoiling my appetite for learning. Being able to read myself after some time, was my lifeline. For my birthday, I would usually ask for books. Later, I started borrowing books from the public library. I would return them in a matter of days, having read them all, much to the surprise of the librarians.

Then came writing. In the beginning, it was just the technique of holding a pen and learning to ‘draw’ the signs called letters. Letters became words became sentences…

Suddenly, I realised, I had to write. As a creative form of expression, that is. I wanted, no, I had to tell stories. I had enough in my language toolkit to get started.

On Wednesday afternoons, when there was no school, rather than playing in the street and getting called names or even getting beaten up, I stayed in and invented stories, often inspired by pictures of animals. Inside my head, I saw fragments of film. The animals came alive in my mind. I could both see them and the world through their eyes. I knew what their lives were like. I felt their joy and pain. Three of those short stories I still have.

At age nine I wrote a poem about my pony. It was an ode to Girl. It even got published. In retrospect, getting published was – and still is – the icing on the cake of the writing process. When writing, my thoughts often drift back to that moment when I realised that not only I couldn’t write technically and that I had a vivid imagination – an important tool for writers –, but also that writing was a basic need for me.

Bio:

Writer and poet Marjolein Rotsteeg writes in English, Dutch and French. Nature, people and animals keep inspiring her. Her work has been published in The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: Volume 4, The Auroras & Blossoms Haiku Anthology: Volume 1, haikuNetra and other (online) magazines. Her haiku have received honorable mentions in Japan and Poland.

Website: https://substack.com/@marjoleinrotsteeg

Marjolein, thank you for supporting Auroras & Blossoms! We know that people will love your work as much as we do!

The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: Volume 5 is available! Click here to purchase your copy.

The PoArtMo Anthology (Youth Edition) Series: Celebrating Inspiration with Anna Kuang & Makili Matty

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On March 20, 2023

In Inspirational Artist Series

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 (Volume 2).

Today, Anna Kuang and Makili Matty are telling us what inspired the pieces they sent us.

Anna Kuang

Anna Kuang (Beavercreek, U.S.) loves cross-country running, playing quizbowl, singing, reading, and writing. She plans to study biochemical engineering because of her interest in using science to save the environment. “My role model is my mother because she has an amazing way of staying positive every single day. She is so selfless, generous, and strong. She has been through so much adversity, and has never given up or lost her ability to see the bright side of things. I can only hope that one day I can be as awesome as she is.”

Anna sent us the poem titled The Sun and Us:

The idea for this poem came to me during a point in my life when I felt stuck — like I was doing the same things over and over, day after day, without going anywhere. Things never changed. It was life on repeat, and I was sick and tired of it.

However, as time went on, I came to realize that though each day seemed like the same old day, there was still beauty in living, if only I opened my eyes to see it. And not only were there small joys in everyday living, there were opportunities to make life better for others. The sun takes the same path day after day, and yet through the process, it shines light onto the whole world. I learned that, just like the sun, I can take each day as a new opportunity to illuminate the world around me, and in doing so, illuminate my own life. And through this poem, I hope I can inspire others to believe that as well.

Makili Matty

Makili Matty (Kittery Point, U.S.) enjoys writing, playing soccer and hockey, math, and science, and wants to become a professor of theoretical physics. “My role model is my grandmother. She is always kind to everyone, and trying to help or feed them lunch.”

Makili sent us the poem titled Cranberry Bundt Cake:

The first time I ate raw cranberries, I spit them out. It was at this small farm, and I remember watching as the old ladies that owned the bog sorted through the fruit, throwing out the unripe ones. Every now and then, one of them would pop a berry into their mouth. They called them “candy”.

Raw cranberries are not sweet. They taste like someone took the sour part of a lemon and the tart part of a grapefruit, and added the faintest dash of honey. They are not sweet, yet when you cook them with sugar and flour and butter, they make the most basic cake that much better.

Cranberry Bundt Cake is a reflection of how tart and sour can make something the slightest bit sweeter. Of how a bit of pain and sorrow can sometimes make a memory just a little bit more meaningful, and of how small things can sometimes be the difference between a cake and a bowl of cranberries.

Anna and Makili, thank you for sharing what inspired your pieces. We know that people will love your work as much as we do!

This instalment ends our PoArtMo Anthology (Youth Edition) Series for this year. We hope that you enjoyed reading the words of our wonderful contributors, and will support them by buying a copy of The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: Youth Edition (Volume 2).

The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: Youth Edition (Volume 2) will be released on March 23, 2023. In the meantime, you can pre-order your copy for 50% off the regular price. Offer ends on March 23, 2023.

The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: Youth Edition (Volume 2)

Cendrine & David

Please note that Auroras & Blossoms only releases digital copies (ebooks) of its anthologies. This allows us to keep our costs and book prices low, and avoid charging young participants for submitting to us.

The PoArtMo Anthology (Youth Edition) Series: Celebrating Inspiration with Shailey Bellamkonda & Saara Parijaat

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On March 14, 2023

In Inspirational Artist Series

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 (Volume 2).

Today, Shailey Bellamkonda and Saara Parijaat are telling us what inspired the pieces they sent us.

Shailey Bellamkonda

Shailey Bellamkonda (Hyderabad, India) likes writing, reading, sketching, and listening to music. Her stories are published in various online literary journals. She is also a winner of the Himalayan Writing Retreat Fiction Contest.

Shailey is currently working on her first poetry and prose chapbook. She wants to become a data analyst and writer. “My role model is JK Rowling. The way she interweaves mystery, leaving intriguing clues within the sphere of drama is fascinating.”

Shailey sent us the poem titled Have You Looked Within?:

“AHAM BRAHMASMI! — as written in the Upanishad (Hindu Vedic Philosophical treatise to well living) is what inspired me to write this poem — ‘Have You Looked Within’. Aham Brahmasmi(I am the God/ I am the Brahman) urges us to understand and realise the cosmic energy that lies within us. Later date thinkers also resonated with the same — Search where you are Lost. Our body and mind encapsulate the unbound spirit of nature. Everything originates and is caused by the reflexes of our mind, body, actions, and words. The solution lies within the origin of the problem. This is my understanding and I wanted to express it in simple, yet well meaning, well intended lines. That is how the poem came out.

I am happy that Auroras & Blossoms provided me with the right platform to share my work resonating with the same spirit as my poem. I thank Cendrine and David for giving this work the deserving outreach. I hope this poem will instill positivity and inspiration amongst its readers.

Saara Parijaat

Saara Parijaat (Dehli, India) likes writing poetry, dancing, sketching, and animal welfare. She wants to commit her life to being an Earth Protector and work towards the prevention of the current Ecocide. “My role model is Malala Yousafzai. In an extremely adverse, life-threatening and hostile environment, she had the gumption to fight not just for herself, but also for the rights of other girls in her country. I resonate deeply with her ethos of Integrity, Bravery, Justice and Inclusion for all. Her commitment to realizing her mission of access to education for all, through the Malala Foundation, has transformed several young lives. Her story is an inspiration, her story has a purpose. I strongly believe that nobody is perfect, but that we all have a purpose. If we all fulfill it to make this world a better place, it will be much better.”

Saara sent us the poem titled Kindle My Kindness:

The poem was created to serve as an affirmation to the cyclical philosophy of Karma: where one’s actions boomerang to become one’s fate in a later bout.

To a guilty conscience, it induces fear. Paranoia. Though, it is a much needed affirmation for the altruists in the world to pursue the path of their heart. Knowing that every gesture of kindness they show, every tick of a clock they spend, every joule of energy they give away; will all eventually come back to nourish their own life.

This poem, I hold very close to my heart as I am reminded to play my role, and leave it at that. Our role is to be kind, and we must leave it at that. Only that. The poem doesn’t specify who will ‘return’ our kindness, it just illustrates a picture of it being showered back on us, through some force elected by the universe. Perhaps you’ll receive your share from not the one you gave it to. I want you all to know: your altruism, your benevolence, your compassion, are always acknowledged. I pray that the beautiful hymns of kindness you sing, echo back into your ears someday.

Shailey and Saara, thank you for sharing what inspired your pieces. We know that people will love your work as much as we do!

The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: Youth Edition (Volume 2) will be released on March 23, 2023. In the meantime, you can pre-order your copy for 50% off the regular price. Offer ends on March 23, 2023.

The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: Youth Edition (Volume 2)

Cendrine & David

Please note that Auroras & Blossoms only releases digital copies (ebooks) of its anthologies. This allows us to keep our costs and book prices low, and avoid charging young participants for submitting to us.

The PoArtMo Anthology (Youth Edition) Series: Celebrating Inspiration with Morgan Gustafson & Dia Nigam

By

On February 27, 2023

In Inspirational Artist Series

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 (Volume 2).

Today, Morgan Gustafson and Dia Nigam are telling us what inspired the pieces they sent us.

Morgan Gustafson

Morgan Gustafson (Sarasota, U.S.) loves reading and sewing costumes. They also paint and write. They want to study psychology to understand how the brain works. “My role model is Gerard Way. I love the way he plays with gender and the message he infuses into his music. I find it really inspiring that they always stress the importance of it being okay to not be okay. As a person who struggles with mental health issues, it feels amazing to hear my feelings expresses through song.”

Morgan sent us the story titled The Story of a Lifetime:

When I was looking for competitions to submit to I found the PoArtMo anthology and a flash of creativity immediately came to me. The idea of writing a short story based around the entire life of a person summed up in less than 2,000 words was a challenge that I accepted with vigor.

I came up with the basic idea of a person so in love with another that they wanted to make the world better for all. This central basic plot line really helped shape the work into a short story of a gentle man spreading and receiving love. I was enamored with the idea of creating a story that could pick others up when they are feeling down as that’s what the best kind of literature does.

Dia Nigam

Dia Nigam (Lucknow, India) enjoys singing, writing, dancing. She wants to be a responsible global citizen. “My role models are my parents because they have taught me everything.”

Diam sent us the poem titled That Mystifying Face:

Have you ever wondered about the special bond between sisters? Or have you ever had a huge fight with your sister? Pretty obvious isn’t it?

“A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves — a special kind of double.”— Toni Morrison

Who doesn’t love their sisters?

Yeah I do fight with my sister a lot, like in a day, I fight with her for 24 hours… But who says I won’t kill for her? I mean we’re still sisters, I’d do anything for her. And then there are those times when you don’t want your sisters to see or read something and you keep it hidden somewhere…and as expected obviously, they are going to search for that thing everywhere until they find it and leave a mark on it to let you know that they did what you told them not to. That’s just normal sister behavior.

You feeling me?

That is what inspired me to write this poem.

Morgan and Dia, thank you for sharing what inspired your pieces. We know that people will love your work as much as we do!

The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: Youth Edition (Volume 2) will be released on March 23, 2023. In the meantime, you can pre-order your copy for 50% off the regular price. Offer ends on March 23, 2023.

The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: Youth Edition (Volume 2)

Cendrine & David

Please note that Auroras & Blossoms only releases digital copies (ebooks) of its anthologies. This allows us to keep our costs and book prices low, and avoid charging young participants for submitting to us.

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