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!
