Hello everyone!
Welcome to our PoArtMo Anthology Series, which celebrates the artists whose work appears in The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: Volume 4.
Today’s guest is Nichola Napora, who contributed a story and three poems to our anthology.
Auroras & Blossoms: Tell us all about the inspiration behind your pieces.
Nichola Napora: My work in this volume speaks to the perspectives we choose and each one is an opportunity to explore alternatives while opening a portal of potential. It is in this act of surrender to seeing with possibility that we can resource through a deeper connection with presence and openness. Tuning into deeper wisdom and experience. Judgements keep us stuck in narrow views and this feedback loop can be interrupted and re-directed.
Great art disrupts. It comforts while navigating uncomfortable aspects of ourselves and life. A goal in my phenomena research and creative adventures is to go to the edges of what I have known in order to burst past that point with a fervour for discovery.
We can develop our vision and impact our engagement with inspiration. Translating the seen with the unseen. The ability to shift and to hold more than one thing is a muscle we can build and why not make this kind of observation fun while we’re at it. An attitude of enjoyment goes a very long way.
A&B: How does a poem, story or creative piece of art begin for you? Does it start with an image, a form or a particular theme?
NN: Most of my writing happens as an event – stream of consciousness from a place of intrinsic aliveness and oneness with life. When I engage in activities that make me feel connected, which is varied, I often begin to receive downloads, much like breathing air. Like lungs opening to receive fresh air insights and a natural poetic language emerges. Also, reflecting on past experiences through different layers of embodiment, from mundane to sacred, from mental to emotional to etheric, begin to dance in my vision and then the work of capturing them begins. Like a poem hunter where patience and attention are the tools.
Blending these worlds of imagination, creativity, experience, and the timing of both the moment and the cadence or heartbeat of the work itself becomes its own dance.
Sometimes other activities like free writing on an idea leads to the place where creation meets me in the field and the muse of “everything belongs” as ingredients for self-expression is always there. In the case of “Red Shoes,” the story was written about an alternative world right where I live, born from a mix of characters both real and not, but the actual starting point was a prompt from Christina Dunbar in a writing group I’m in called Red.
Other people’s art acts an entry point as well. Everyday occurrences, moving my body, and beautiful spaces are ripe with poetry and my garden, wildlife, and forest or water time are a few places/activities that seem to speak in a poetic language and what I do is listen. Things like birds, rainbows, and acts of kindness interrupt our lives with a kind of magic that deserve to have us stop and pay attention.
Taking time to be creative is certainly an act of kindness towards oneself that trickles outward when we share it.
A&B: What is your own artistic background?
NN: Well, I’ve been writing poetry since I was about 8 or 9. Around the same time I was put in weekend meditation classes over the long cold winters in Manitoba, Canada. I have creative, fun parents. My artistic training is in dance, music, and textile art/fashion.
In retrospect, I can see ceremonial arts has always been a part of my life. Earth and aroma arts, and kitchen crafts have been inspired outlets as
well, in general I am always creating and experimenting. I love to travel, learn new things, and find the journeys I go on creatively and with my visionary explorations have reduced my need to be on the go, which has revealed a very rich source of joy and peace.
After a time away with other focuses, I came back to poetry and dance, when my design career became more technical in focus, and I needed more creative expression.
Poetry and writing help me better understand the world and my place in it. Now after cultivating and feeding a deep relationship with nature, myself, spirituality, arts and culture I am in a place of infinite possibility. The more I write and create the more it feels like the stories are seeking me as much I am them.
A&B: Does your work have any specific themes or social commentary we should identify with?
NN: There’s a lot of playfulness when approaching paradoxes, perspectives, and potential in my work. I am leaning into how it can activate a blueprint of transformation in the collective. Strong themes of exploring nature and the wild (inside and out), celebrating interconnection by entering the rich territory between things, being holistically resourced, and asking big and small questions while wholeheartedly facing and living answers as a process and not a destination. Innovating life and work while finding a rhythm of existence unique, enriching, and inspiring that provides roadmaps of opportunity and codes fresh ways of being into our culture.
My art is activism and I do use the act of creating and viewing it as a lens where kaleidoscope meets telescope meets microscope meets stethoscope. Seeking patterns, beauty, radiance, harmony, as well as gently confronting less desirable things that can’t be ignored, like our dark shadows and those rattling skeletons, yet these make up the texture of who we are being and becoming.
My art is my healing, and it helps me, and hopefully others, both breathe through the complexity and embrace the simplicity of life.
My art is alchemy. It helps me digest experience and discover my centre to connect with all that is. It opens doors and first makes them appear as a balm for the imagination.
My art is an opportunity to gently traverse what it means to be alive on this earth.
A&B: Tell us the most positive and uplifting advice you have been given while working as a creative person.
NN: Great question!! A tough one as I’m grateful there’s been so many wonderful teachers and influences in my life.
On my desk sit 3 quotes, 1 prompt, 1 question, and then one I carry in my head that a friend once said. I added a bonus line that bounces around me and I can’t say where it came from, but it’s a good one to feed the hungry critic and partner with the roaming muses – I find exposing myself to uplifting things compel me to go for my creative dreams with commitment and excitement. I surround myself with such things and keep the intention to be this for others, a light that illuminates love and potential. We are all artists. Here they are:
a. “The HOW reveals itself as we go.” – KC Baker
b. Take 3 hours creative free play each week.
c. “We have to create. It is the only thing louder than destruction.” – Andrea Gibson
d. What role does an artist play in society?
e. “Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul!” – Allen Ginsberg
f. “Put it in the art.” – Cara Pifko on life’s challenges…
g. If not you, then who, if not now, then when?
Bio:
Nichola Napora is full of surprises. She shares awe and magic with effervescence, along with deep love. This curious writer and a multidisciplinary artist mixes awareness and dedication with an intuitive response to the craft at hand. She is continually evolving the way she creates and interfaces with life on this amazing planet.
Website: https://www.mysticpeaks.com
Nichola, thank you for answering our questions and supporting Auroras & Blossoms! We know that people will love your work as much as we do!
The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: Volume 4 is available! Click here to purchase your copy.