Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Q&A with Stephanie Gilzene @stephgi

Today I'm pleased to welcome Stephanie Gilzene to the blog to talk about her experience in writing poetry.

But first, a little about her writing...

This book of poems was written to share the experience of a poet’s collective thoughts. Allow this book of poems to take you on a poetic journey, letting words lead the way.

Now let's talk poetry!



Q: I'd love to hear about your experience of putting all your poetry together and how you chose what to include and what not to include. 

A: Thank you DelSheree for taking the time to feature me on your blog. I’m excited to be featured on a blog post, for the first time ever! I have been writing poetry for over 16 years now. My poetry started off as creative writing. I always loved being adventurous or mysterious whenever I would tell or write a short story. Poetry became a beautiful extension of my creative writing skills. For years, I would write a poem here and there. I would be very conscientious to date my poems! I wanted to be reminded of the times in which I wrote them. If I had a brand new notebook, I would write a poem on the first few pages. Sometimes I would rip the pages out and put them in a safe place. 

Other times I would just leave the notebook on the table and every day I would write a new poem or I would write a short story. I eventually created a collection of poems. I knew that one day I wanted to write a book of poetry. I was not sure when I would be able to do it and how I would be able to do it.  Still, I knew that one day, a book of poetry would be published! Last year, around May 2014, I found some old poems. I remember looking at the poems thinking, “Maybe I should finally finish that book of poetry I always wanted to publish.” So, I opened up my laptop and went straight to my Google Drive: opened up a new document and started typing. Before I knew it, I typed up a template for a book. I was so excited. I started to research the process of publishing a book of poetry. Every day for about a month I would write my poems on paper and then type them into my book template. 

Choosing which poems would make the “cut” per se was an interesting process. I had a pile of poems but I needed to figure out what the theme of my book would be or if there would be a theme at all. I wanted this book of poetry to be an introduction to different emotions. So the poems that I would publish would need to have an element of intuitiveness, excitement, or concern; I wanted them to extend beyond the usual ‘happy’ or ‘sad’ option. Eventually, I had enough pages to start looking at the process of publishing. I self-published and I am so proud of my work. I hope the world enjoys Poems from Stories Yet to Be Told! 

 Follow Stephanie on:


Twitter: @stephgi

Grab a copy of her books here: 

Website  

B&N

Lulu Paperback

 Lulu ebook

 

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