Building Sandcastles: A Book of Short Poems by C.X. Turner and James Welsh – advanced praise and two poems

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog. Late July/early August my publishing house Literary Revelations will release a superb book of haiku and senyru co-authored by C.X. Turner and James Welsh and entitled Building Sandcastles: A Book of Short Poems.

I am thrilled to share with you two beautiful poems from the book and the advanced praise we received. I hope you enyoy reading them.

Advanced Praise

“Back in my art teacher days, I used to remind students when they were having difficulties that art was fundamentally an act of play. This artistic playfulness is just what we find in Building Sandcastles: A Book of Short Poems. Turner and Welsh dive deep into their subjects. Exploring every angle and defining every tint and shade along the way. With both broad brushstrokes and intimate details, these two poets paint the beautiful experience of their haiku worlds.”

Bryan Rickert
Editor: Failed Haiku Journal of Senryu
President: The Haiku Society of America

“In one breath tender and poignant, in the next stark and arresting, this collection of short poems is a journey of discovery through an evocative series of moments in nature. It is an exploration of that yearning to glean meaning from the chaotic lives we all lead.

There is a deftness to the poems in this selection, a lightness of touch that beckons the reader inside, leading them gently to the deep meditations and thoughts waiting behind the words.”

Joe Woodhouse
Editor: Wales Haiku Journal

“Building Sandcastles: A Book of Short Poems, the stunning new collection by C.X. Turner and James Welsh, is a must-have for your shelves. These thought-provoking haiku and senryu left me breathless.”

Roberta Beach Jacobson
Editor, Cold Moon Journal and Five Fleas (Itchy Poetry)

Poems

I look out to sea
and see an ancient story
told in shades of blue

unsure of direction
I float my dreams
downstream

Please stay tuned for more news.

Literary Revelations Spanish Feature

Read Here

Building Sandcastles – Front Cover Reveal

Click Here

Gabriela Marie Milton
2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee
Publisher, Editor, Award Winning & #1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:

Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology (ed.), Literary Revelations, 2023
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women (ed.), Experiments in Fiction, 2022.
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Vita Brevis Press, 2021.
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Vita Brevis Press, 2020

Hello Everyone,

Literary Revelations is thrilled to let you know that Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology is scheduled to be released on January 31. On January 31 I will post the Amazon link where you can buy the book.

Contributors please check your email in the beginning of next week for updates. Those of you who are interested in our anthology please check my blog, the Literary Revelations website, and my social media: Twitter @shortprose1 & IG @gabriela_marie_milton. I cannot tell you how excited I am. The book will be monumental. The paperback version will have 450 pages; 450 pages filled with the light and the shadows of your childhoods; 450 pages filled with tears and smiles. It’s an incredible book.

Zoom Meeting – Radio Show

On Saturday, January 21 a pre-launch meeting for Hidden in Childhood took place. I am most grateful to those of you who participated and to Victoria Onofrei of Bloomsbury Radio for inviting us to her show, Victoria in Verse.

We expect the radio show to be broadcast on Sunday January 29, at 6 pm London time. If no delays I will send our contributors the link where they can listen to the show.

Several thoughts about the zoom meeting: I have participated in many literary meetings, but never in one like ours. You recited your poetry beautifully, you poured your heart into every verse, you shared your experiences in a very meaningful way. You opened up your souls and spoke about the abuses you endured, the trauma that is still with you. You shed tears. Thank you for every tear you shed. Thank you for every word you spoke.

Most of the time people want to convince us how great and confident they are. They want to be perceived as winners. Sharing feelings during a public event is not in the cards. Please know that those of you who shared your feelings with sincerity and took off the mask of hypocrisy are the real winners. Our contributors are all winners. You conquered my heart and you will conquered the hearts of those who will read this anthology. My love to all of you.

Below please find the Amazon Description I wrote for the book

From authors featured on NPR, BBC, and the New York Times, and from emerging poets, comes a monumental anthology in which every poem sends shivers down your spine. Childhood’s joy and trauma expressed – with stunning talent and sincerity – by over 150 poets in more than 280 poems. Childhood spaces magnified by the human memory, populated by good and bad, by trips to hell and heaven, in an almost Hieronymus Bosch type of atmosphere. Over 150 voices call you to read this book. Read it. You will learn that childhood never goes away. You will be reminded of the beauty of the seraphim and the need to protect children from any form of abuse. 150 voices knock on your door. Open the door. A chorus of childhoods will tell you that our children need love.

Literary Revelations is proud to bring you this anthology and deeply grateful to all contributors for pouring out their hearts into the pages of this book.

Gabriela Marie Milton
editor, author, publisher

A screenshot from our Zoom meeting.

Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women is out!

To the readers: A stunning poetry anthology. From its gorgeous pages, pain driven away by healing. Souls who endured, fought, and won. Some of them still waiting to win. Empowerment. We all need it. The life of women. We all need to read it.

To the authors: It was an honor and a pleasure to edit and curate this anthology. Your poetry showed me the way to your souls. For that I will be forever grateful. In my darkest moments, I will think about how each and one of you fought. Your fight became my candle to a better tomorrow. I’ll take my broken heart and mend it because you showed me how.

To the entire team who worked on this anthology: Ingrid Wilson of Experiments in Fiction, thank you for working on this book and for publishing it. Nick Reeves, gratitude for the gorgeous cover art, and editing expertise. It was an honor and a pleasure to work with both of you.

Yesterday, Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women was running #4 in Amazon Hot New Releases [category: anthology].

Please spread the word. Help us to get these talented and brave authors to #1. They deserve it. You will not regret reading their words.

Amazon description:

Award-winning authors, Pushcart nominees, emerging poets, voices of women and men, come to the fore in this stunning, powerful, and unique anthology. These poems testify both to the challenges that women face in our society, and to their power to overcome them. A memorable collection of over 200 poems by more than 100 authors, this anthology is a must-have for anyone. We all can benefit from the poetry of survival, and of healing. We all can benefit from the experiences so beautifully evoked in this book. We can all come together to emerge triumphant from pain.

Do not forget the launching party is June 18, 3pm London time and it will be live-steamed on YouTube.

Have a glorious day everyone.

Gabriela Marie Milton
#1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings

My book Woman: Splendor and Sorrow is out!

My Dear Readers,

My book Woman: Splendor and Sorrow is out!

I am deeply grateful to my followers who have supported me. My gratitude to my publisher, Brian Geiger – Vita Brevis Press – for accepting my manuscript and making my dream come true.

Book marketing is exceedingly difficult for me because I write under a penname. As I pointed out in an interview when I publish: “There are no gettings together, no signing of books in bookstores, no flowers, no friends to buy a bunch of your books and start writing reviews.”

Yet I have you, my WP and my social media friends. You make my writing journey beautiful. You make my soul blossom with joy.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

From the back cover:

“Woman is a triumphant collection of poetry. Milton explores with sincerity and great craft the many faces of identity and womanhood. This is the sort of poetry collection that will resonate with any reader.”

writes Brian Geiger, editor of Vita Brevis Press

You can order the e-book and the paperback in the link below.

I am also grateful to Brian for featuring me on Vita Brevis Poet Spotlight a place where, if you wish, you can learn more about my publications, my awards, and you can read my most recent interview.

From the Spotlight:

An Interview with Gabriela Marie Milton

Gabriela Marie Milton is a poet of condition rather than profession. I wrote as much in the foreword to her collection of poetry, Passions, referring to the great Robert Graves’ suggestion that the art of poetry isn’t so much learned as it is lived. This is the first thing readers of Milton’s work will realize; this is poetry with soul.

What’s the Purpose of Poetry?

Gabriela Marie Milton: “My first impulse is to answer the creation of meanings. That which is not directly expressed impacts us differently than a simple narration. A table of contents informs us. It speaks to our reason. A poem takes us to the plans of our inner and outer worlds that lie beyond reasoning, such as for instance the oneiric plan.

“Of course, great poetry was written during the Enlightenment period: a period characterized by the celebration of reason.

You can read more below.

Poet Spotlight: Gabriela Marie Milton

Thank you.
Love.

@Gabriela Marie Milton

My Dear Readers,

The purpose of this post is two-fold.

To share with you some thoughts on poetry.

To briefly give you more information about my upcoming poetry collection Woman: Splendor and Sorrow, Vita Brevis Press, release date July 31. 2021, and share with you one of my favorite poems included in this collection.

Random Thoughts on Poetry

In an interview with New York Glamor Magazine, I stated: “Poetry is the magnificence which reflects upon the landscape of our souls.” My intent was neither to offer an exhaustive definition of poetry, nor to dive into the more complex realm of conceptualization, and try to explain of what poetry is composed. How arrogant of me that would have been. For those who did not get the news yet, arrogance is not sexy. It is not a precondition for talent and/or high intelligence.

However, back to my tentative definition of poetry. It suffices to say that, if one pays close attention to my words, the most obvious conclusion is that poetry is “out there” waiting to be recognized, and to reflect itself upon the landscape of our souls. Once recognized, the reflection happens only in the measure to which our souls can create a mirror image, albeit highly distorted and with the degree of distortion predicated on our sensibility.

As Nigel McLoughlin wrote: “Recognition depends not on linguistic criteria or on conscious thought, but on what is physically felt. It does not demand structure or form. It is beyond that.” [McLoughlin, Nigel F ORCID: 0000-0002-0382-6831 (2013) Writing Poetry. In: A Companion to Creative Writing. Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 40-55]

Poetry is indeed beyond structure and form and, if I may, is “out there.” All of us are poets when that which we gather with our sense starts having an emotional and physical impact on us.

[draft – Thoughts on Poetry will continue in an interview with me conducted by Brian Geiger, the editor of Vita Brevis Poetry Magazine.]

On Woman: Splendor and Sorrow

Woman is a collection of 63 love poems and 25 pieces of poetic prose. I talked in another post about the feminist and philosophical trends in my poetic prose. However, the main theme of my book is love.

Therefore, in this post I would like to quickly turn to my love poems. Out of the 63 love poems included in Woman, “The Biblical Sense Of To Know” is my favorite. The poem was first published by Spillwords Press under one of my pen names: Gabriela M on March 10, 2020. Below is the original text of the poem as published by Spillwords. In Woman, the text was slightly modified.

The Biblical Sense Of To Know

the biblical sense of to know
born in a summer that never existed
nailed to the cross of your poems
I’m losing my mind inside the blue night
I reach you in dreams you do not understand
It hurts when I’m there
It hurts when I’m not
I ask for the help gravediggers can grant
I wrote I love you on a note that I locked
It wasn’t a snake, it was an iguana
the night the tango nuevo played its guitar
on fifteen decades I counted my prayers
my fingers were naked
my fingers were gloved

Why do I like this poem so much? Because in the moments I wrote it reality deeply reflected in the mirrors of my souls. I was hurting.

I do not believe poets know only that which comes “by observation of themselves.” The observation of ourselves is only one of the preconditions of poetry. The multiple faces of reality is perhaps another one.

my fingers were naked
my fingers were gloved

Those are simply two instances of the same thing.

I will talk to you more soon.

Thank you for reading.
Love to everyone.

@Gabriela Marie Milton

Woman: Splendor and Sorrow cover reveal

My Dear Readers,

I am thrilled that my new poetry collection Woman: Splendor and Sorrow will be released on July 31. Both formats -e-book and paperback – will be available.

Thank you to everyone who supported me, encouraged me, and inspired me.

artwork used in the creation of the cover: *Odalisque in a modern style – original acrylic painting by* *arteliia* (Shutterstock)

From the back cover:

Brian Geiger, editor of Vita Brevis Press

MasticadoresUSA update

Please visit MasticadoresUSA here. There is new wonderful poetry by Karima Hoisan, Annette Kalandros, Nancy Elliott, Punam and others that I probably mentioned before. Please support your fellow poets and do not forget to follow the site.

Thank you.

@Gabriela Marie Milton

The front cover of my upcoming poetry book Woman: Splendor and Sorrow

Dear Readers,

My second poetry book Woman: Splendor and Sorrow will be published by Vita Brevis Press at the end of July. I hope you enjoy the front cover.

Here is a snippet from my dedication:

“The core of this book is love. Yet, you will find in it philosophical thoughts on literature, on winning and losing, on hate, on feminism, and on life in general.
My dear reader, from wherever you are in this world, walk with me on the beautiful path of the human heart. I promise you will not regret doing so. On this road you will find love and the symbols that define us as humans.”

Image used in the cover: Odalisque in a modern style – original acrylic painting by arteliia (Shutterstock)

MasticadoresUSA – update

Two beautiful poems are now up at MasticadoresUSA.

Please welcome our first guest from outside the US who presently resides in Slovenia: Ingrid Wilson. Read Ingrid’s poem “Am I only?” here.

In case you missed Java Avendel’s poem “Gloaming” you can read it here.

Do not forget to follow MasticadoresUSA.

Thank you
Gabriela

@Gabriela Marie Milton

A beautiful anthology – The Sound of Brilliance: The Short of It – is out #guest post

It is my pleasure to introduce you to The Sound of Brilliance: The Short of It by Susi Bocks. In Susi’s words the anthology features the brilliant work of 41 poets and writers. I know some of them and I truly look forward to reading this beautiful collection.

Joni Caggiano and Jaya Avendel, as well as other wonderful writers, are included in this anthology. Please consider buying it.

Furthermore below is the link for Poets Coffee Table Chat- April 5. You can listen to Susi talking about the anthology, and to various poets – Joni included – discussing multiple issues and reading their poetry. I hope you enjoy.

Love

Gabriela

@Gabriela Marie Milton

I paid for all the happiness that was bestowed upon us by the Ides of October.
I used to feel the presence of the child all around me.
A woman said I should pick a piece of slough cast by a snake and wear it against my skin.
I did it.
Flushed as a young peach every sunset became a resurrection.
Roses wrapped around my waist and later in June the child was born.

A new October sets our pictures on the Spanish chest.
Emotions animate your cheeks.
Every night above the trees the moon nurses the stars.
When I see cocoons of the larvae, I think silk as soft as the hair of the child.
When I say I love you, I think death as the harbinger of birth.
Your lips tremble and your voice flattens.
I know you love me.
With nude fingers the Ides of October betroth us again.

[Ides as the 15th day in March, May, July, and October according to the Roman calendar]

My poetry collection Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings is available on Amazon here .
Passions featured in San Francisco Book Review
Passions featured in Manhattan Book Review.

image: Maria Okolnichnikova; Shutterstock; [link]

@Gabriela Marie Milton

I can see the woman who assumes things. Every night she picks the flowers that I throw on the road: withered lilies of the valley. She wants to be me. She wants my blood. She does not know I rearranged the bell-shaped whites so no one else can breathe their sweet scents. No one else can be me. No one else can make you, you.

The woman puts the withered flowers in her bag.

A new moon rises over her left shoulder. Bad luck.

I shiver.

I rush to protect her.

I stumble.

Before he died my father said:

If you try to do justice to the wicked, you will forget to do justice to the virtuous. And if you forget to do justice to the virtuous you only work for yourself. That is the biggest sin of all.

I have to think again.

My poetry collection Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings is available on Amazon here .
Passions featured in San Francisco Book Review
Passions featured in Manhattan Book Review.
image: Sandratsky Dmitriy; Shutterstock; [link]

@Gabriela Marie Milton