Where I Ache is 6 months old and I wanted to thank everyone on here, in the Poetry community, and the book blogger community for showing this project the love and support you all have!
At the end of the month, I’ll update everyone on my next project coming down the pipeline, until then check out these reviews and consider purchasing Where I Ache yourself on Amazon!
Some reviews from Goodreads, read them in full here
This collection touches on reminiscing on past loves and past lives. A reader gets a melancholy feeling of childhood, school days, and relationships with parents. I really enjoyed the heartache and yearning of the past. This poet has great descriptions of the scenery in his poems. I really enjoy the writing style of repetition and line placement, I’d definitely read more collections from this poet. Some favorites in From My Years include Left at Home, Morning Memory, and Hate is a Loan Shark.
You can absolutely feel all the anger, betrayal and determination coming off the pages in this collection. This collection is right up my alley with its writing style, I loved it! Vontress touched on so many topics that are personal for me involving relationships, self love, and current society. This collection felt very cathartic and I really enjoyed going through that emotional journey with the speaker. I would recommend this collection to just about every girl friend of mine.
I take it all so personally
Can’t seem to let the wrong words go
I just want to stay in bed all day
Shut the blinds and close out the world
Call in sick to work
Think about texting my selfish ex.
I’m just having one of those days
where I’m grinding my teeth
just to make it through.
– July 2019
Today we meet up with poet Jason Yearick. He touches on so many diverse topics in his poetry, you must visit his website because I’m sure there will be something there each person can enjoy! Jason puts so much thought into every poem he creates, there are new layers you’ll notice after each read. Let’s get started!
It depends on the intention of the word placement. As with punctuation within a piece, word usage through placement, fonts, colors, letter grouping, etc. has to be something more than, “I think putting this word over here would look cool.” At least, that’s my approach. Otherwise, if one’s randomly placing words over the real estate of the paper then word placement probably isn’t adding anything beneficial to a piece.
I’m glad that you chose Matthew 14:30 and GPS since the two pieces have different intentions for their word placement and the elements that are added to each piece are different.
I used to perform spoken word poetry in Southern California and Matthew 14:30 is a piece that attempts to capture the performance of the piece if it were performed. Specifically, the spacing of letters and non-linear directions indicate the movement of the speaker and, hopefully, contribute to the visual aspect of the piece when read. Another critical aspect of the piece is that there probably aren’t very many people who are familiar with this Bible verse, so the word placement, character placement, and directional placement all contribute to not having to have read the verse but allow the reader to grasp what is taking place within this verse.
GPS is a more overt attempt to reveal some of the multi-layer meanings that I put into my poetry while accentuating contrasting ideas within the internal struggle of, “Who am I? What’s my purpose in life?” GPS was formatted to be read as one more than one piece and word placement was critical in achieving this goal. In GPS, the left-most justified words reflect this internal dialogue of the speaker questioning their life purpose. The further left the words are placed, the more grounded the thoughts are in the speaker’s mind. Those further to the right reflect stray thoughts during this questioning. Reading from top to bottom reveals, hopefully, these different thought patterns that can take place within the human mind concurrently with each thought pattern reflecting the weight of those thoughts.
That’s a tough question. When someone reads a piece of mine I want them to want to go back and read it again. I don’t want my poetry to be popcorn poetry that someone reads once and say’s, “That’s nice” and then never thinks about it again. I write across so many topics that my hope is that readers understand what I’m trying to communicate in my pieces. That’s where multi-layered themes can shine. Different people can walk away with different meanings from the same piece. This is why I love it when someone leaves a comment. Likes and follows are great and most appreciated. However, a comment can help me to become a better poet.
The most important relationship to me in my life is my relationship with God. All of the work that I’ve done, everything that I am, comes from the Lord. My identity is rooted in my faith, so it’s important that I’m going to write about it. Most importantly though is that I let others know of what God has done in me and through me. I have been healed of so much in my life from heartache to an “incurable” physical illness. God has done so much for me that I want other people to know that He can do the same for them.
God has gotten a bad rap. I think a lot of people if they think about God, think about the people who profess to follow Him and what they’ve done, not done, said or not said. God is love and it’s important to me to let people know that there’s someone who knows all about them and loves them.
Each subcategory is an element of love that I broke down into different aspects. Loss is the most beneficial and hopeful category for me. It’s not my favorite to write about but it probably contains the most healing. Loss is where I can find humility in relationships past and discover that it’s better to have lost then to have held onto something because it feels “good.” Loss allows for negative emotions to be healed and to help prevent me from making the same mistakes twice. Whether it be letting someone go or going myself. There’s a lot to be said for loss.
Today we welcome DeVonne White to the blog! We’ll explore how meditative and healing poetry can be! Poetry is an amazing way to express thoughts and work through struggles. Let’s talk to DeVonne about how inspiring it is to write about her faith!
Most of the poetry I write is scripture driven. I’ll read a piece of scripture and as I meditate upon it, let it stir around in my heart and mind, a poem will make itself known. The great thing about that is I’m really taking my time with what the Word of God is saying. It has built my faith more than anything else I’ve done. More that a retreat, conference, even church. That personal time meditating on God’s word is truly faith-building.
2019 has been a very difficult year for my family, we lost both of our Dad’s within twelve weeks of one another. Mixed in with our own grief, we have been walking alongside our grieving mothers. Writing poetry, that stands on scripture, has truly brought peace to this restless mind of mine.
My Most favorite lately is:
The Hope-Giver
He is the Hope Giver
The Hope Filler
Her Overflowing Hope
She hopes for what is unseen
Cupping her hands
Holding her cup close
She waits patiently
Drops of hope begin to fall
Her cup, once empty,
Fills with a living hope
Her eyes see, what was once unseen
The Hope Giver never stops pouring
Never stops filling
He fills her with His peace
His joy, His love
Her cup overflows
I am a note taker. All through out the day I will think of words or phrases. I write them down or type a note in my phone. Then in the evening I sit with my laptop and start putting those notes together. Like piecing together a puzzle. I let that poem sit for a day or two, and then come back to it and edit. I must say, I enjoy the entire process and find myself restless when I’m not working on a project. I am happiest when creating.
I think it would have to be ‘Faithful’
I try my best to be faithful to the Lord and His calling on my life. That calling can look different each day. Somedays I am working on writing or storytelling projects. Other days, like recently, I’ve been caring for my Mom after a recent surgery and balancing my day job at an insurance agency.
I strive to be faithful in all things. Faithful to the Lord, to my husband, children our extended family and friends. I want to be that person who stands by her people, who is there and is present, in the big things and the small ones.
The dream for me had always been to be picked up by a big publishing company in the future of my writing career. I knew that would not happen right away and self publishing some books would almost be like building up a resume. I could grow my own fan base, I would be showing that I’m not just a one hit wonder, and I would show that I have the passion and commitment to continue on for many more years.
There’s definitely stress and frustration that comes with putting a book together but I do love having control over every decision and making my collection EXACTLY how I want it. As I’ve never been traditionally published, I don’t know when the hand off happens exactly. But I’m sure there’s Cover Designers and Illustrators that can give your collection a complete makeover – a makeover you may not want. You can be included in the conversation but how could you disagree with the professionals if you didn’t like the design?
A big plus of signing with a traditional company is the marketing resources that can be dedicated to getting your book to consumers’ hands. When you self publish all the marketing and promoting falls on you. The thing is I’ve seen some collections that were published by traditional companies but barely have 50 reviews on Amazon. I know reviews don’t equal sales but one of the big 5 publishing houses should have enough resources to ensure their books are being promoted well.
Traditional publishing companies have been in the industry for a long time, they have a lot of connections, and they know all the ins and outs to get your book in front of the right people. But will they use that knowledge on you, that’s no guarantee as this recent thread on Twitter speaks to.
After publishing my first two collections, I’ve learned I want control of all creative decisions and I want as much promotional help as possible, it seems there are plenty of examples in the industry that traditional companies don’t help me with either of those things.
Being picked up by a publishing company could be the greatest thing to ever happen to your writing career. It could be the greatest to happen to mine as well, I’m just saying that I no longer feel that hungry desire to chase after one of the big 5 houses. I’m happy self publishing. It’s difficult at some points and I know traditional would have it’s own difficulties as well. Self publishing has been making steady strides in this industry for years and I am here for it’s next step.
I’d like to welcome Vontress Ortega as our next guest! Vontress is a four time published author with her newest “Tainted Soil” released just last month! Her collections touch on character development, self empowerment, love, and betrayal. Vontress is incredibly talented and relatable, I had a hard time putting down her Unveiled collection and I’m sure you’ll all feel the same way once you read this interview!
I felt that the title being at the bottom of the poem was more like a “ signature”
and the poems were letters to the readers.
The inspiration behind the poem came from scrolling down my timeline. I have
seen so many people that I know personally change themselves to fit in with that
they THINK is going on in someone else’s life based on social media posts. We
like what we see and then begin to question ourselves so much that we start to
change so that we are out of the ordinary.
I do feel that social media is sometimes damaging to relationships that don’t
have solid foundations. They affect how we feel about ourselves and our peers. Because
in our minds we have been programmed to see only surface and not substance.
Shedding light on our broken pieces !
I would like to share the Non Profit organization that I am apart of. It is called Your Hearts Deziare. It is a Women’s Empowerment and Support group. We help women who have suffered from life’s traumas and help them build self confidence and work on their mental and emotional health through beauty, retreats and art expression.
DDateable travels again!! This time we’re in Brazil with Paul Webb! Paul is a poet, translator, and English-language teacher, just to name a few! And quite an educated man, Webb holds a BA in Theology, a Master’s degree in Modern Languages and a Doctorate in Sociology. Naturally my first question will have to be about Language to a translator and teacher, so here we go!
I would say that, at root, all my poems are about language. Poetry is about humanity and everything human is mediated by language. People say that the human brain is the most complex object in the universe. But language is more complex, because language is the product of billions of human brains working together throughout history.
When I moved to Brazil, I became keenly aware of the Englishness of English as a historically determined cultural, political and socio-economic artefact. I try to bring this out in my work: favoring Anglo-Saxon over Latinate lexis, using lots of phrasal verbs and grammatical and phonetic features that are characteristic of English and reflect its history of seafaring, free-market capitalism, industry and the like.
I don’t really have the right to make that judgment for myself. I would say, however, that I feel more comfortable with my own voice now than I ever have done before. In the early phases, I was very dependent stylistically on certain masters: Francis Ponge, João Cabral, William Carlos Williams, and so forth. At other times my work was more exploratory, diffident, experimental. Now I always know exactly what I want as soon as I start a piece. That doesn’t mean it comes easily; I still have to craft. In fact, I tend to craft more, because I know now what I am working towards.
As a general rule, I don’t write about myself or my life. I am interested in certain themes and follow these in my work. These themes necessarily derive in some measure from my experiences and the times in which I live. But I am not a confessional poet; nor does my work aim to reach out to people in a touchy-feely way. I can give two examples of these overarching themes rooted in issues that trouble me. One concerns the ambivalent nature of language itself. The way it simultaneously endows us with the great gift of being able to connect with other human beings and the world, yet also provides us with a set of tools that can equally well be applied to fostering exclusion and alienation and destroying the natural environment. This is perhaps explored most extensively in my series Thirty Sonnets on Autism, which was based on the experience of living with an autistic boy. In these poems, true closeness comes ironically from a denial of language, from a closing or shrugging off of neurologically typical language-bound human relations.
The other theme is that of comfort and convenience as harbingers of self-destruction. The very facility of modern life contains the seeds of its own demise. The pursuit of happiness so often produces its opposite, especially in relationships. The theme is a pressing one in an age in which the pursuit off convenience and freedom from distress
is, in fact, ruining our mental health and poisoning our natural habitats. I first addressed this theme in an apocalyptic poem entitled Expurosis, in which the fires of the end of the world are described in terms of home and hearth and comforting warmth.
I wouldn’t write a book about my life because either it would be brutally honest and reflect badly on me or wholly dishonest and hence pointless. Besides, my life hasn’t been very interesting. There are far more important things to write about. My last selection of poems was entitled Fun and Suffering. That pretty much sums life up.
Yes. My work has become more and more political over the years, although not in an overtly party-political or ideological way. I spent 25 years trying to write an idiosyncratic translation of Catullus Poem 64 .
When it finally came together, it was late 2016 and we had had the election of Trump and the Brexit referendum and I realized that, for a long time, I had been trying to write about the social forces that unleashed these results. Not that I support Trump or Brexit, but I hail from the ranks of the dispossessed working classes that do and I feel I understand why. Since then, it has become a mission to address these subjects, however painful. My next long poem series—17—was about a mass shooting.
I have a very clear personal poetics, which is influenced in part by the principles that underpin the Dogme style of film-making. Like Dogme film-makers, I aim to avoid all artificial devices: rhyme schemes, formal rhythm, fancy language and the like. I try not to write anything in a poem that would sound out of place in everyday life. Poetry, for me, is about finding music and beauty in ordinary (even vulgar) language use, not about imposing an artificial or sentimentalized formal structure upon it.
Today we travel across the pond to UK poet and blogger Jupiter Grant! Jupiter recently released her saucy debut collection “Poe-rotica” which I reviewed and we’ll talk about today! We learn much more about the depth and insight of the collection from this interview so let’s hop right into it.
The “sing-song” quality of rhyming poetry appeals to me. I like it’s rhythms and beats. When I have a rhyming couplet in my head, there’s a tempo that inevitably accompanies it, and I find myself tapping out the beats as I write.
As I say in my introduction, I grew up with the work of an English poet called Pam Ayres. I don’t know whether she was ever well known outside of the UK, but she’s very famous here. Her poems were always in rhyme schemes, and they were always very funny. I recommend everyone look for clips of her reading her work. There are lots on YouTube and, for me, they still stand up decades later.
After jumping up and down excitedly, and possibly fainting from the shock, I would immediately hand in my notice at work, and buy a house or a flat overlooking the sea where I could spend all my time writing, reading and walking along the beach. My absolute dream location is the west coast of the UK, Cornwall or Devon, but I guess the Caribbean would be fine, too. 😉
I think the beauty of colloquialisms is that they speak to the shared linguistic heritage of a group of people. For me as a reader, if I encounter a word, phrase, or reference that is perhaps peculiar to my own cultural and linguistic heritage, I feel like I’m sharing an in-joke with the author: in that moment, we “get” each other, we’re on the same page. To give an example, in a recent fiction I wrote there was a reference to “Ann Widdecombe”. She is a well known, indeed infamous, right-wing politician here in the UK. Had I changed it to “Margaret Thatcher” (which I had considered doing) more people would have understood the reference, but it would have seemed anachronistic and out-of-touch. As it was, the context of the sentence meant that a reader didn’t need to be familiar with Widdecombe’s name to understand the inference.
Also, colloquialisms or foreign words and phrases can often capture an idea very effectively in a short word or phrase, where one might otherwise need a more “wordy” stanza to achieve the same effect, or can express a concept more poetically or sensually (e.g. soixante neuf). That’s a useful tool for any writer, I think.
Though words like shag and wank are not commonplace in the US, I suspect that anyone who’s watched an Austin Powers film would still get the reference, so I didn’t feel concerned that using these terms would confuse or alienate a non-UK readership. And I like throwing a bit of that kind of Brit-speak in because it’s a reflection of how I talk, and I find that no matter what I’m writing, there’s usually a chunk of me in there somewhere.
I have always been fascinated by the interplay of sex and religion. There are countless academic studies that explore the interconnectedness of the two. Sex and the mystico-religious experience are both associated with ecstasy, love, communion with a/ The beloved. If you read the works of many of the most well-known Christian mystics and saints, there is a very strong vein of sensuality and almost orgasmic intensity in their religious experiences. St Teresa of Avila is a perfect example, but there are countless others.
I think also that in the same way regional colloquialisms can enhance meaning in one’s writing, the language of religion also forms part of our shared nomenclature. As readers, regardless of whether we are believers within a religious tradition, most of us will still have at least a basic familiarity with the concepts of, for example, the garden of Eden, karma, Nirvana, a Bat- or Bar-Mitzvah, the hajj, etc.
I share the same dream as arguably every other author on the planet, which is to be able to write full-time. I don’t have any grand delusions of being the next JK Rowling or Danielle Steel. As long as I could earn just enough from writing to keep a roof over my head, keep enough basics in the cupboard, and keep the WiFi running, I’d be in seventh heaven.
I’d like to have finished writing and editing my first novel by the end of 2019. I really enjoy blogging short fiction and poetry, and I fully intend to keep doing that. I’ve met such amazing, supportive and simply wonderful people through my blog, and I don’t know how I ever got along without them in my life!
I was an ABBA fan from the time I was a toddler. But the first artist and song that I remember being absolute obsessed with was Kate Bush and “Wuthering Heights”. My second cousin had the ’45, and my family couldn’t get me out the door while it was playing. In the end, she was somehow persuaded to give me the record, as well as her copy of “I Feel Love” by Donna Summer. (I’m sorry for nicking your records, J!). Thus began a life-long love affair with Kate Bush. I think she’s magical.
Today we’re lucky to interview Kate from the Philippines! I’m always so excited when this blog gets to travel internationally! Kate’s been writing poetry for a number of years now, honing her craft during her college days. She is an artist that enjoys art in many forms including reading and music. Let’s here from Kate now!
I do not have a perfect setting for writing. Most of my works are out of “spur of the moment”. Like, for example, ‘Poems About Love’ series were written when I was about to go home from work, or sitting in the couch at home while watching Nat Geo. It naturally comes to me, and sometimes it doesn’t. I get writer’s block, too, and when the creative juices come back, I take advantage of what kind of theme or topic that I will be writing. That’s how I write, I think.
The recurring theme of my art is about love, and not just romantic love, but all aspects of love. Although that is the case, views and likes that my blog receive are for the posts that are about romantic love. That is why I put more focus on it than most of the other aspects. I heed the “pulse” of the readers.
I first considered myself as a writer when I started writing poems during my college days. I had a lot of poems that were lost in time. Some poems and stories were about my friends in relation to their experience in love, and sometimes, based on my own, too. Like, if you have read ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’, I know that at first look, it’s a title of a song, but it’s about my heartbreak from the person whom I considered my ‘sunshine’. The titles are generally connected to the content, and I highlight the significance of the title to my poetry.
I feel happy, of course! Most people that I know do not appreciate the works that I have written. They find it cheesy or just not in their liking. But when I am told that it’s good, it fuels me to write even more. It drives me to be more passionate to write for the appreciative reader/s that I have.
Scheduling a blog book tour is pretty tough, it requires a lot of coordination and management. You have to find bloggers that are interested in hosting a blog tour, see which of those are available during the timeframe you want and who will even respond to you, and then you have to communicate about the content of the posting.
So first, I would search for blogs that are doing tours for your niche. I searched through the WordPress Reader since that’s my hosting site but if you use another platform you might use google or your hosting’s reader feed.
I knew I wanted to do interviews for my blog tour so that’s what I looked for specifically but I think it’s also common just to have the tour host review your new book. Once I found a site I would search their page for any submission guidelines or policies to make sure I wasn’t rudely bulldozing my way through. If that all checked out then I would email them, letting them know I saw their post that I liked, a little blurb about my book, and the timeframe I’m hoping for.
There’s a lot of different ways you can schedule your blog tour. I’ve seen a tour for 15 consecutive days in a row and I decided to go with once a week but starting 6 weeks out from the release date. So there’s a wide range of how many stops to do, how many weeks to do, and the decision to have them all at once or spread out.
I would say I emailed about 20-25 bloggers about hosting me for a blog tour. I got 7 for Yes and that was more than enough for me and what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to do interviews and I knew that would require me to do a good chunk of work and writing so I contacted bloggers all the way back in February for a May dated tour.
To me, there was no need to badger anyone until it got closer to when the tour would be starting. But then that also left no time to recoup if anything was going wrong. Plus, I had done my side of the work for all of them. On my side of things, it all seemed like it would be working out. It wasn’t till a few days would go by after I sent in my responses that I didn’t hear anything.
As April came around and one of my bloggers wasn’t responding in emails I checked out the site and saw there hadn’t been a new posting since January. It’s instances like that were the tour can just fall apart on you. I was able to get 2 more bloggers interested in hosting me after my release date.
Overall, I have to admit that the blog tour was not a success for my initial plan. My goal was to have 7 spots completed by my release date, the result was 3. But out of the 9 Yes, 6 have come together overall so I have about 67% success rate in the end, which for a first time blog tour is actually very good. And I must say, having tour dates after the release was really helpful and kept my book relevant even a month after launch.
This post isn’t meant to complain but to show that even with the best effort, planning a book blog tour is difficult and is not guaranteed to come out the way you planned. My suggestion is to contact as many people as possible with the understanding that some will fall through.
Debatably Dateable 