I am delighted to be featured in New York Glamour Magazine the third time. I was asked to first speak about myself and then about the anthology Hidden in Childhood [Literary Revelations, 2023]. I am grateful to everyone who spread the word about this stunning anthology. I am grateful to everyone who bought it. I am proud to have brought together the voices of 150 poets to speak to you in more than 270 poems about the trauma and the joy of childhood. Hidden in Childhood is a stunning and important book. It became a #1 Amazon bestseller for 5 days after its release. Yesterday it recaptured its #1 place for the entire day.
You can get the anthology and read the poetry of those stunning writersHERE.
Apologies if I did not return some of your love. I will visit with you as soon as can. None of you knows that I have an extremely rare autoimmune condition. It is so rare that it’s basically understudied. There is no treatment for it. For years it left me alone. Now, I am going through a flare up. All medical tests were done, and there is no damage to any of my internal tissues. I am ok but I will need time to recover. Please be patient with me and I will visit your sites soon.
Now let’s go back to happier things. I am thrilled I was asked by New York Glamour Magazine to talk about me. However I am beyond delighted I could talk about Hidden in Childhood and your marvelous poetry.
Here are some snippets from the interview:
“Yes, I am an American, but I am also a child of Europe. I have been fascinated, mesmerized, frightened, brought to tears, left speechless by the greatest writers of Europe. I still am. Later, I discovered America’s greatest: Sylvia Plath, Toni Morrison, Faulkner, Hemingway, Miller, Poe. Yet, in my darkest moments – like those rare moments in which I cannot write – only the writings of Lawrence Durrell bring my muse back.”
“Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology is our first publication. It comprises over 150 authors and more than 270 poems. It is available on Amazon and for almost 5 days was the #1 Amazon Hot New Release in Poetry Anthologies. As the editor, curator, and publisher of this book, I am honored and humbled that so many poets entrusted me with their work. The beauty and the power of the poems included in Hidden in Childhood brought me to tears. The poems of the contributors are stunners. As I wrote in the foreword of the book, if you open the pages of this poetry collection, you will be mesmerized by the talent of the contributors, and by the range of stylistic approaches they use to recreate the world of childhood“
“I am ecstatic that the book was for 9 days a #1 Amazon Bestseller [category: poetry anthologies].”
“The book is a memorable collection of over 200 poems by more than 100 authors. It’s a must-have because we all can benefit from the poetry of survival, and of healing. We all can benefit from the experiences so strongly evoked in this book. We all can come together to emerge triumphant from pain. We all need to understand that equity among sexes will lead to the creation of social, economic, and political structures far more suited to respond to the challenges of the future.”
You can read the entire interview in the link below.
My favorite poet is Arthur Rimbaud. His work Illuminations left a profound mark in my soul. I recently found a blog in The Guardian written years ago and entitled: “Rimbaud was no genius: The vagabond prodigy promised greatness but never delivered.” I beg to differ...
NY Glam: What three social topics/theme do you care mostly about and why?
Discrimination, abuses of power, and climate change. To some extent they overlap. I despise discrimination with its claim to primordial identities…
NY Glam: What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Read. Write. Do not compare yourself with others. Stay close to people who inspire and help. Stay true to your heart… Forget about social constraints. Social constraints are put in place by structures of power that fear talent of any kind. They fear progress because…. Greatness always encounters resistance.
I would be very grateful to you if you could read the entire interview HERE.
MasticadoresUSA Update
There is a new poem by Merry Maiden up at MasticadoresUSA. There are other great features coming up this week so please stay tuned.
Thank you to everyone you follows MasticadoresUSA. Building a community is a very difficult endeavor. I deeply appreciate your visits and your likes.
Free Verse Revolution Issue II (hermes) is out. Congratulations to the contributors, and thank you to Kristiana Reed, its wonderful editor, for featuring an interview with me and two pieces of my poetic prose.
Below please find the interview. I will feature my published pieces in future posts.
Free Verse Revolution Issue II Interview with Gabriela Marie Milton
KRISTIANA: We would love for you to introduce yourself and share when you began writing and why you decided to share your work with others?
GABRIELA: I may have scribbled some poetry in high school, but basically, I started writing in the period between my undergraduate studies and my graduate ones. Now, I write poetry and short prose under the name Gabriela Marie Milton. Three or four years ago, I published my first poems under Gabriela M. Today, my standard introduction is: Hello My Dear Readers, I am Gabriela Marie Milton, 2019 Author of the Year at Spillwords Press NYC, author of Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, editor of MasticadoresUSA, and author of the forthcoming collection of poems and poetic prose entitled Woman: Splendor and Sorrow to be published by Vita Brevis Press this summer. My favorite poet is Arthur Rimbaud. My all-time favorite novelist is Lawrence Durrell. My heart trembles at Salvador Dali’s surrealism, and it is stolen by Chopin every other week. To enchant some readers who may find such an introduction boring, here is a little more about me: I love Italian food, narrow cobbled streets, cats, and oceans. My favorite color is mauve. I was born in Europe, and I live in the USA. Honestly, initially it was not my decision to share my work, as intriguing as it may sound. Yet, things happened. I will leave it at that.
KRISTIANA: How would you describe your collection, Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, to those new to your work?
GABRIELA: To me the collective unconscious– as conceptualized by Jung – represents another level of existence that we, as humans, share. In Passions I tried to penetrate that level and bring out perhaps its most important element: memories. Passions is a book of vivid and lush images brought to light using symbolist, surrealist, and romantic techniques. It is a book for everyone. It is a call to immortality. It is a journey through the corridors of our collective unconscious. I wrote Passions – like all my other writings – almost in a trance. Passions is that which I feel, not necessarily that which I know. Some pieces included in Passions are influenced by Gnosticism with which I first became acquainted by reading Umberto Eco, Jorge Luis Borges, Lawrence Durrell, and others. To wrap it up, Passions is what Christina Schwarz, the author of the New York Times Bestseller “Drowning Ruth,” described as “a fantastic world ripe with emotion.” I am deeply grateful to her for that description.
KRISTIANA: Your prose pieces often have dominant themes of love and heartache, what draws you to romantic storytelling?
GABRIELA: Mama used to say that I am a romantic story. I, the subject, am the same with the object (i.e. my story). The object does not exist independent from me. Something similar to the concept of endopathy anticipated by Dante: “he who would paint a figure, if he cannot become that figure, cannot portray it.” Yet, when mama said what she said she was not thinking of Dante. She was thinking of Kant’s transcendental idealism. She made me read Kant when I was in high school. I did it with packs of ice on my head. On every page there were about 10 to15 words that I did not understand. It was an interesting experience to say the least.
KRISTIANA: What are your inspirations? Are they musical, literary, ekphrastic, or all three?
GABRIELA: Something more than all three together: the plan of the unconscious. From there my inspiration flows like a river. In there, I find light and darkness, the whole and its parts, sonorous images with their unmistakable language, memories of the future and of the past, the sound of germinating wheat, the entire world.
KRISTIANA: You recently announced your next collection is coming soon, can you give us a synopsis and explain the impact you hope this collection will have on your readers?
GABRIELA: Woman: Splendor and Sorrow, is a collection of love poems and poetic prose. I hope my readers will be interested in this collection. It will be published by Vita Brevis Press at the end of July. Here is part of what I wrote in the dedication in an attempt to describe my own book:
My Dear Readers, My favorite novelist, Lawrence Durrell, once asked:
“Who invented the human heart, I wonder? Tell me, and then show me the place where he was hanged.” If you read this book, you will find that place. Yet make no mistake. It is not a sad place. In the pages you are about to read, I resurrect the one who invented the human heart. The splendors of candlelight and roses and the taste of gingerbread dwell in this book. Partake in them. The core of this book is love. Yet you will also 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.
KRISTIANA: Issue II draws upon Hermes from the Olympic pantheon, why do you think we continue to reinvent and rejuvenate myths and stories of old? Do you have a particular myth/story you remember fondly?
GABRIELA: Oh, myths, none of our civilizations have ever survived without them. We all have a mythical part so to speak. Myths express ontological and moral ideas. Their splendid supernaturality reflects our desire to transcend the materiality of the world, to find our beginnings, and to anticipate the future. Codes, symbols. Their faces may change in time, but they never become old.
I have many stories I remember fondly. However, in myths, as well as in most major religions, there is one thing that fascinates me the most: the fall. Something goes wrong with our world because somebody errs. In most cases that somebody is a woman. Certain Gnostics believe that our material world is not the creation of the real God. The world is the creation of the demiurge (a lesser God) who came into being because of Sophia’s fall. I remember when I first visited Santorini. One early morning, caught between its breathtaking views and the blue of the Mediterranean, I realized that nobody could have ever lived in Greece without concocting myths. The beauty of that place refuses itself to rationality. One needs an entire mythology to absorb it.
KRISTIANA: Would you describe yourself as multifaceted like Hermes? Could you use three words to describe yourself?
GABRIELA: Hermes is a fascinating figure. He is the messenger of Gods. Some see him as the Logos itself. However, Hermes is also the god of thieves and liars. The Greeks did not leave one single human trait without a God. You must hand it to them. To answer your question, I do not think of myself as multifaceted. Three words to describe myself: I am mystery. Why? Because I am like anyone else. We all have a sight that we do not understand. Perhaps we are not supposed to.
KRISTIANA: You are a long time, and very appreciated, supporter of FVR and other online platforms, what do you feel the online community has brought to the traditional world of writing and publishing?
GABRIELA: The online community allows people to express their talents without having to go through more cumbersome conventional processes. It gives voice to the poor, and to the misunderstood. It gives voice to those who are unconventional. It allows us to dwell in a multiplicity of talents. It forces us to rediscover ourselves.
Thank you for reading. Please download the entire issue here.
MasticadoresUSA Update
There are two beautiful poems up at MasticadoresUSA.
In a flash my mind shows me a thousand streets tormented by loneliness. These streets – once the grand wine-presses of human bodies and cars – are now haunted by sickness and eaten by desolation.
It’s spring. The ocean’s water is warm like a country bread. I can taste it. The crisp crust, the sweetness of grains and earth melt on my tongue.
I miss you and the chestnut tree from that pastel afternoon when we first kissed.
Why did I love you? Of course, you were handsome, but it wasn’t that. I loved you because you could not have been conquered by the tricks with which a woman conquers most men. Why would I even want a man that any women with lipstick and stilettos can have?
I am digressing, am I not?
It’s spring. The water is red. Under the light of its pearls, flowers open like fresh young lips.
I avert my mind from the memory of your arms which tries to drag me inside an abyss of naked love; a love blessed with the force of the mistral and the sensuality of linked fingers under the moonlight.
The earth and the waters are one.
Yet the pain is heavy and filled with fluids like the chest cavity of a dead animal hanging up-side down.
I can see your boat. It’s beautiful.
The world is sick.
If I say I love you will you tell me what I can do to heal it?
Please read my Spillwords Author of the Year (2019) interview here
My thanks again to Kevin Morris – a wonderful poet – for interviewing me. Please read Kevin’s interview with me here.
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….
Continue reading here
This poem first appear on this blog (slightly modified).
During my two and a half years of blogging I’ve been nominated for numerous blogging awards. My most sincere thanks to everyone who nominated me. My life is extremely hectic. I deeply apologize for not being able to reply to your nominations.
However, if you want to know more about me please read my Spillwords interview “Spotlight on Writers- Gabriela M”
Here is an excerpt from the interview “…most fascinatingly America is a country of dreamers. We are all dreamers.”
I am humbled that I was voted Author of the Year at Spillwords Press. Thank you to everyone who voted for me, and thank you to the wonderful team at Spillwords Press (NYC).
“…from the writings of the titans coming from the Latin American space to the writings of their counterparts coming from the Slavic space. Yes, I am an American, but I am also a child of Europe. I have been fascinated, mesmerized, frightened, brought to tears…”
I am grateful to the Spillwords team for giving me the opportunity to share more about me.
“...most fascinatingly America is a country of dreamers. We are all dreamers...”
“..I have very few moments when I get stuck creatively…”
You can read my author interview here.
Love and hugs to everyone.
