The image shows a natural pool fed with streams. There is a mist on its surface and there are green moss covered rocks surrounding it.
before sunโs pink fingertips brush the face of mother earth by the sacred pool clouds swirl, circle murmurs rise in silver streams coalesce in dew-drop webs while incantations spill silently from her lips enchantments whispering in the mist
The image shows shows a rocky landscape near the ocean. Overhead an old house with a few mechanical devices is floating in the sky on a small piece of land.
All aboard, all aboard!
Cogs whirr, chains clank pistons pump and gears crank hang onto your hats and donโt look down Bethelbertโs ride is the best in town feast your eyes on the folk down there open-mouthed they stand and stare passing over the hills and dales the oceanโs in sight, do you see those whales? clouds above and sea below which wayโs up Iโd love to know hold on tight and live your dream in Bethelbertโs marvellous mystery machine!
Elizabeth Gauffreau and her new poetry book, Grief Songs
It’s my great pleasure to welcome Elizabeth Gauffreau to this month’s Launch Pad spot. Like me, you may already be familiar with Liz through herblog, and others of you will know her through her wonderful novel, Telling Sonny, a book I thoroughly enjoyed when I read it earlier this year.
So, let’s find out a little bit more about her. We’ll start with her official author bio:
Elizabeth Gauffreau writes fiction and poetry with a strong connection to family and place. She holds a BA in English/Writing from Old Dominion University and an MA in English/Fiction Writing from the University of New Hampshire. After a misbegotten stint teaching high school English and Latin, she spent her career in nontraditional higher education.
Her recent literary magazine publications include Woven Tale Press, Dash, Pinyon, Aji, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, and Evening Street Review. Her fiction and poetry have also been featured in several themed anthologies, including Ad Hoc Monadnock, Shifts: An Anthology of Womenโs Growth through Change,When Last on the Mountain: The View from Writers over Fifty, Familiar, and Poetry Leaves. Her 2018 debut novel, Telling Sonny, was inspired by a family secret and a lot of research into small-time vaudeville.
Liz lives in Nottingham, New Hampshire with her husband. Their daughter has flown the nest to sunny California.
Grief Songs ~ paperback and ebook
Liz’s new book of poetry, Grief Songs – Poems of Love & Remembrance, is just out. It’s a deeply moving collection of poetry which speaks to an album of her family photographs. I just finished reading it yesterday, such a wonderful bitter-sweet collection, it moved me deeply. You can read my review here.
Now, let me hand over to Liz to tell us about the background to her new release.
~~~
Thank you for hosting me on your blog, Chris. I greatly appreciate it.
I am a fiction writer by training, so I never expected to be releasing a book of poetry, much less a book of poetry written in tanka. However, being a part of our wonderful blogging community for the past several years has given me the inspiration to take my writing in new directions and the courage to publish the results for others to read.
Grief Songs started with the last poem in the collection, “Portland Head Autumnal,” although I had no way of knowing that when I wrote the poem. I had been following Colleen Chesebro’s poetry blog, “Word Craft: Prose & Poetry,” for some time and growing more and more curious to try my hand at syllabic poetry adapted from Japanese, such as haiku and tanka. I wrote “Portland Head Autumnal” as a tanka after a trip to Portland Head Light in Maine on a cold, gray, windy day in September when I could not recall any time I had been to Portland Head when the sky and water were gray, rather than bright blue.
Two months later, my mother died, leaving me the last person in my immediate family. As people do, I turned to the family photograph albums in an attempt to keep my mother with me just a little longer. As part of that process, lines of poetry started coming to me. Tanka seemed the appropriate form to give those lines shape and purpose. In the book, photographs are paired with poems to tell the story of a loving family lost.
Grief is a deeply personal experience, yet it’s an experience many of us have in common, particularly as we get older. What prompted my decision to go ahead with publishing Grief Songs were readers’ responses to some of the individual poems I shared. The poems prompted fond memories of their own loved ones. For me, striking a responsive chord with a reader’s own experience in any number of different ways is what poetry is all about.
Thanks again, Chris, for featuring Grief Songs: Poems of Love & Remembrance on your blog and giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts with your readers.
~~~
The blurb
When a loved one dies, the family will often turn to the photograph albums as an act of solace, to keep their loved one with them just a little while longer, Grief Songs: Poems of Love & Remembrance arose from that experience. The collection opens with three free verse expressions of raw grief, followed by a series of photographs from the authorโs family album, each paired with a poem written in tanka. Taken together, they tell the story of a loving family lost.
Praise for Grief Songs
“A beautiful, personal collection of family photos and poems that express the author’s most inner feelings. Nostalgic and heartfelt, Gauffreauโs poems are written in the Japanese style of tanka, simple, thoughtful, and full of love. Filled with wonderful memories of the past.”
~Kristi Elizabeth, Manhattan Book Review
“Poetry readers willing to walk the road of grief and family connections will find Grief Songs: Poems of Love & Remembrance a psychological treasure trove. It’s a very accessible poetic tribute that brings with it something to hold onto–the memories and foundations of past family joys, large and small.”
~Diane Donovan, Midwest Book Review
Book Trailer
So lovely, I’ve watched it again and again…
Grief Songs is available in paperback and ebook from all your favourite online bookstores – buy it here
At dayโs end when golden rays slide silently into shadow running through the shorter colours of the rainbow while sunโs bright disk is swallowed by dark waves I wonder, what did I achieve today?
Unlike dawn with her sacred dazzling promise of a brand new day and a fresh clean start another tiny chapter of life has closed one more page has turned, waves washing over sand, erasing.
I sit on the sun-worn steps gazing out at the ocean her timeless waves her heart beating and wonder what might tomorrow bring?
The image shows a view of the setting sun over a body of water. In the foreground, you can see wooden steps leading into the water. Grey clouds are drifting in the sky.
It’s my great pleasure to welcome international best-selling poet, Michelle Navajas, to this month’s Launch Pad spot. Some of you will already be familiar with Mich through her blog, where she posts her unique and highly accessible style of poetry and prose with awesome frequency!
So, let’s find out a little bit more about her. We’ll start with her official author bio:
Philippine-born Michelle Navajas, currently residing in Malaysia. Michelle authored the book After โ Rain Skies: A Million Stars, for Perak Women for Women Society (PWW) during their Million Stars campaign. Itโs a collection of true and inspiring stories of victims and survivors of abuse and violence in prose and poetry.
Graduating with a Master of Education majoring in English in the Philippines (University Of San Agustin โ Iloilo), Michelle was a former college professor, teaching literature, speech and oral communication, creative writing, drama, and theatre arts. She is also a graduate of Mass Communications major in Journalism (Centro Escolar University โ Manila).
Michelle is active in her writing profession and works as a freelance creative writer.
She blogs passionately at www.michnavs.wordpress.com, where you can find her prose and poetry on love, life, motherhood, and her advocacy on abuse and violence.
I’d originally approached Mich to introduce her fourth book, I Would Fly To Where You Are, which she wrote during the deepest time of Covid and which was released in May 2021. However, between then and now she’s released her fifth volume of poetry, I Will Love You Forever, Too. Published just a few weeks ago, this latest collection of Mich’s poetry went straight to the number one spot on both Amazon and Kobo on its first day of release: an impressive achievement that most authors can only dream of. Also impressive is the fact that Mich has produced her five books in just two years!
I’ve just finished reading I Will Love You Forever, Too – you can read my review on Goodreads here(or over on the side bar, depending which device you’re using).
Now, let me hand over to Mich now to tell us about her writing journey and how her wonderful poetry books came to be. Over to you, Mich!
~~~
Thanks for having me on your blog, Chris. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Dreams do come true. And it can happen unexpectedly, anytime, anywhere, when you really deserve it. This has been my life’s mantra. I love to take things slowly and carefully and let things unfold on their own by the grace and power of the universe.
I remember, as a little girl, I’ve always dreamt of seeing my name in the newspapers, magazines, or in a book. And I told myself, one day I will make it happen, though at that time I didn’t know how to make it happen, not even how to begin.
My first book, After-Rain Skies, a collection of true and inspiring stories of abuse and violence in prose and poetry, was born in 2019, unexpectedly. Four decades after the conception of my dream.
It was written and published in 2019, with the sole intention of creating awareness on abuse and violence, with the hope of putting an end to the culture of abuse. It was received so well by many that I followed it up with an eBook copy made available via kobo.com.
The pandemic happened in 2020. We were all forced to stay at home and work from home. That’s how I started writing poetry almost every day. Surprisingly too, my long-time readers and followers, love my love poems. It inspired me to write even more.
What If Snowflakes Donโt Fall In Winter? is my second book, a collection of poems about the nature of love. The success of my first book made me realize that I can be a love poet as well. After-Rain Skies taught me that love, more than anything else was what kept these victims going and hoping; their love for themselves, love for their children, their families, friends, and relatives, and most of all, their desire to want to love again and build a life around its seasons. Celebrate how love always changes, just enough to get better and better and better.
The world stopped during the pandemic. It prompted me to write poetry celebrating humanityโs perseverance and resilience. Oh! Dear One, was born to soothe everyoneโs soul amidst the outbreak of a global pandemic.
The outbreak of a global pandemic has led to lockdowns and isolation, which eventually led to the separation of families, loved ones, friends, and colleagues.
I Would Fly To Where You Are is my fourth poetry book, a collection of poetry written during the height of the COVID-19. Reflective of each and everyoneโs love and desire to be with their loved ones – the special occasions we all missed to celebrate together like birthdays, anniversaries, baptisms, and many other milestones, and also, reflective of the moment we failed to say our final goodbyes to our loved ones who went ahead of us during the pandemic. This is a collection of poetry on love; love, surviving against all odds.
We celebrate love, no matter how much it hurts and no matter how painful it is.
We celebrate life and love because there is always tomorrow, a better and kinder tomorrow.
My fourth book is definitely an epitome of true love. The kind of love that only gets better and better over the years and that no matter what it takes, itโs the kind of love worth taking the risk, worth taking the big leap, and worth keeping forever.
Finally, my most recent book: I Will Love You Forever, Too, is a compilation of poetry on the greatest love one can ever have. The kind of love that makes you want to write sappy love poems all the time (even if you are not a poet), the kind of love that makes you want to believe in โhappily โ ever โ afterโ or โdreams โ do โ come โ trueโ, it is the kind of love that makes you reflect on all of your โwhat ifsโ and โmaybesโ, it is the kind of love where you will completely miss your beloved, strangely, even though your loved one is gone just briefly, and it is the kind of love that gives you the courage to commit to love forever.
This book also includes selected poems I wrote, which were requested by some of my very loyal readers and followers.
luna's on line 