Yesterday, June 17 2022, Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women became a #1 Amazon bestseller! As your editor and curator and am deeply honored and excited. So are your publisher, Ingrid Wilson, and I suspect all authors who know about.
Does it say #1 and #2 in New Releases in Poetry Anthologies? That is because both editions of Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women the kindle edition, and the paperback were #1. However, you cannot have #1 twice in Hot New Releases, so we ended up #1 and #2. Taken separately you could see both editions were running #1.
I cannot tell you how much that means to me. It humbles me and it fills my heart with joy.
Yesterday evening we were #1 in Women’s Poetry category too.
Let’s keep this book a #1 bestseller for a while. Women’s lives are important. Let’s show everyone we believe that. Let’s walk the walk.
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.
Image: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner – Liebespaar (Die Hembusse), public domain
Summer Love By Gabriela Marie Milton – from Woman: Splendor and Sorrow:I Love Poems and Poetic Prose
That summer love burned us until our skin became tranquilized. We were ready to receive. None of us cared about the danger of the thousand apples from which we bit. Poetry? Oh, poetry was too good to be read. We tasted it and ate it with silver spoons. All filtrations of the mind and senses hid in small apple bites and scented flowers. By dusk, we exhausted everything with our breath. The children’s voices vanished into the dark. The doubt of too much spilled between us like ashes from a broken urn. Summer love.
Updates
Please do not forget our Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong WomenParty, June 18, 3pm London time. I emailed the Zoom link to all authors. The event will be live-streamed via YouTube. See you at the party.
I was interviewed by Victoria Onofrei of Radio Bloomsbury. I spoke about my poetry, our upcoming anthology Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women, and many other things. The interview will be broadcasted Sunday, June 19, 6pm London time. I will share the link on my blog and Twitter account on June 19.
If you submitted poetry for MasticadoresUsa and did not receive a reply from me please resubmit.
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women scheduled to be released on June 18, 2022
Dear Readers,
I am delighted to announce that Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women is scheduled to be released on June 18, 2022.
It has been an honor and a pleasure to edit and curate this anthology. Every day I hear women speaking about the adversities they face. Every day I see most of them triumphing. To read the unbelievable poetry of women and men who understand how many obstacles need to be overcome in a society that is still patriarchal brought me to tears. Thank you for submitting your incredible poetry to this anthology. Thank you for opening your hearts.
Below is the description of the anthology as it will appear on Amazon.
Award-winning authors, Pushcart nominees, emerging poets, voices of women and men, come to the fore in this stunning, powerful, and unique anthology. Their poems testify 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.
This anthology has been a team effort. Many thanks to Ingrid Wilson at Experiments in Fictionfor agreeing to publish this book. Ingrid, you work relentlessly and you are a wonderful poet. Many thanks to Nick Reeves for his wonderful art and for his proofreading expertise. My deepest gratitude to everyone who spread the word about this anthology. Thank you to those of you who joined our Twitter Space.
On June 18, the day of the release, we will have a launch party via Zoom. Contributors are invited to read their poems. An email with more info will go out soon.
The event will be live-streamed via social media, so anyone will have a chance to hear poems from the anthology read by the poets themselves. For further updates check my blog, Ingrid’s, and the following social media accounts:
Twitter: @shortprose1 (Gabriela Marie Milton) @Experimentsinfc (Ingrid Wilson)
Knowing – poem/poetic prose by Gabriela Marie Milton
Around me “all-knowing” people. Happy because they think they know. Yet what brings them happiness is what they do not know. Ignorance repeats itself with the precision with which Big Ben tells the time.
These days the child has an imaginary friend called Li Boo. One night an avocado seed crawled on the north wall of the mansion, reached the roof, and bloomed to the sound of a fanfare that happened to go by. Li Boo came out of the bloom, wrapped in sea silk, blueberry eyes, strawberry lips gasping for moonlight.
Back in our bedroom I throw at you stars dressed in chiffon skirts. Roads toward tomorrow break the walls. The air smells mastic, cyclamen, and rockroses: the smell of the Corsican maquis; the essence of Corsica. Sirens. Homer’s Odyssey. Occupations. Feuds. Purification of Sunday’s water.
Another fanfare goes by. A lizard shakes her head pointing toward the West. Your raspy voice turns toward the South. It flickers in pine trees. It slithers in the white sand. It goes beyond the taste of the daily bread.
Li Boo, sweet tears on his cheek, salt and rose petals in his boots, disappears into my consciousness.
I know nothing. Another claim to fame. Did you smile, my love?
An Update on Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women
Ingrid just received the paperback proof of Wounds I Healed. I am truly thrilled. Please read more here.
Thank you to everyone who plans to join me and Ingrid on Twitter Space on June 4, at 9 am CT – 10 am ET (USA) for a lively discussion and more updates on our anthology Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women. By saving and clicking on the link below you can listen to the discussion even if you do not have a Twitter account. Please share the link with those you think may be interested. I can’t wait to talk to those of you who can attend.
I spend most of my time in the house. I rarely write anymore. I remember what you once said, I believe you were quoting: Culture has become a demonstration of nothingness. It moves with a terrifying speed in direct proportionality with our appetite for fame.
Three times a year fleshy, peachy roses are still being delivered. They have my name on. It happens mid-day, at the exact time when I take sedatives before immersing myself in a bath infused with scented Dead Sea Salt. Dried flowers float in the water. They stain my skin. They make me think summer by our lake: scents of blue irises; somnolent movements of algae.
Nights are cruel. No nightingales. Tree branches hit the master suite’s windows even when the air is soft like the breath of a new baby. Half-naked, lying on the sofa I think Wuthering Heights. Catherine’s ghost knocking on the window. In the dark, Lockwood pushing his hand through the glass. Her cold hand. Her voice. She wants to get in.
I kneel and scratch your name under the frame of every bedroom window. I wait.
The windows start rattling. I pick the middle one. I push my hand through the glass. Pain. The warmth of my blood. The ferocity of wounds. Voices coming from the gooseberry bushes.
Gabriela Marie Milton – Editor’s Note on Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women
When I posted the call for submissions to Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women, I wanted to compile an anthology that would underscore how powerful women are, and how much they can accomplish regardless of the adversities most of them go through. I had no idea that – while reading the poems I included in this book – a larger story will emerge. I can only judge this story with my own sensibility.
First, there is my complicity with the poems from the book. I am a woman, and I can relate to the consequences that our patriarchal society has on my fellow women. The stories the poems here tell are my stories even if I did not live them all. Either Jung’s “objective psyche” exists, or I underwent a process of osmosis while reading the stunning work I selected. All abuses described here, as well as all victories, became mine.
Second, I can assure you dear readers that you will not regret a moment immersing yourselves in this book. It is not important whether a poem is born like a child, or constructed like a temple. The type of poetry is always secondary to its substance. It’s a matter of preference. The poems in this book are poems of substance regardless of their form. They grab you by the throat. They scream listen to me. They bring you to your knees. They inscribe on each page – with a multiplicity of voices coming from all sexes – the astonishing power women have. They are exceptional poems.
Third, is this a feminist book? One could see it as such regardless of what definition of feminism one employs. However, our minds and souls can transcend definitions. We can go beyond reflections. The poems in this book are not reflections or merely copies of life. They do not belong to certain metaphysics of feminism and/or patriarchy. The poems in this book are life itself.
Welcome to women’s lives my dear readers.
You will enjoy this ride.
I promise you.
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women, edited by Gabriela Marie Milton and published by Ingrid Wilson/Experiments in Fiction will be released in the first part of June. Artwork by Nick Reeves.
Head of a Woman’ by Jean Jacques Henner, Public Domain
Flash Fiction by Gabriela Marie Milton
My name is Gabriela. Papa used to call me Marie.
One night the moon stretched in our bed, its lips sultry, its breasts soft like two humongous cotton candies bought by the Holyoke Merry-Go-Round Carousel. That night your cascading laughter made all naked desires hide under the bed. I tried to drag them out. I couldn’t.
Later, head on your shoulder I looked at the stars through the broken ceiling, my eyes plagued by an inexorable yearning to prove my existence. I don’t know why. Those who want to prove their existence live in the realm of the inexistent. They are bizarre people who write love letters to themselves trying to deceive others. Any trick is a cry for recognition. Any cry for recognition is a basic assertion of impotence.
What was I doing? Oh, I was trying to get into my red dress. I couldn’t get it over my hips. The humidity of the night must have made it stick to my skin. Did you laugh again? Stop. Put your shirt on. We’re going out.
Anyway, I was talking about the absence of existence itself which always leads to sorcery. The skin of an eel caught in the spring, dried, stuffed with rose petals and rosemary, chopped and hidden behind the head of the bed. A night spent in that bed will haunt the two lovers for life. Like I haunt you.
How did you call me? Why did you use that name? Yes, it is my first name, but nobody uses it. Everyone calls me Gabriela.
Stop calling me Anastasia. I am not resurrected yet. I don’t know who Anastasia is. I’ve never met her. But don’t get fooled. That doesn’t make her less dangerous than me.
Image: front cover Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women – update
Thank you for your submissions to the anthology Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women. Submissions are now closed.
The anthology will be edited, and curated, by me and published by Experiments in Fiction. Publication date: early June.
You will receive an email from me end of April/beginning of May.
Thank you once again to everyone who participated in the submission process.
A Twitter Poem by Gabriela Marie Milton
Feel me my love inside the #succulent black grapes which burned our taste in nights of ardor & of sand between your spade & the incandescence of the hurt bull the blood and sweat of a forgotten afternoon fragments in red and blue my soul
I am the wounded healer who does not heal anymore. He who touches me dies. Go to the end of this world & wait for me. Between two centuries, between two sufferings, I’ll find you & then I’ll heal you.
Thank you to everyone who submitted to the anthology: Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women. I am privileged to read your work. Thank you for letting me inside your soul. There is no higher honor for me.
In three days the submission period closes. If you still want to submit you can read the guidelines for submission HERE.
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women will be published by Experiments in Fiction, a publishing house owned by the wonderful poet Ingrid Wilson. The gorgeous art on the cover is by Nick Reeves.
