Indie Blu(e) Publishing

Authors in Indie Blu(e) Anthologies: Anu Mahadev

The purpose of doing this series of profiles on authors in Indie Blu(e) Anthologies is to highlight just how talented, hard-working and brilliant our contributors are. It’s not bragging if it’s real and they deserve the limelight because of their devotion to the themes of our anthologies, all of which are social causes and their brilliance as writers/poets and artists.

Anu Mahadev submitted to The Kali Project and is an outstanding poet and thinker. Perhaps because she’s an engineer, she has a wonderful combination of intellect and creativity that we think is show-stopping. Anu lives in New Jersey and has been in two Indie Blu(e) anthologies including; collaborating with her on a LIVE reading of Indie Blu(e)’s collection: Through The Looking Glass: Reflecting on Madness and Chaos Within.

This is a great LIVE read of poems in this anthology, including Anu’s work and her thoughts on the subject.

Given her prodigious talent and packed work schedule we were so honored for Anu to be one of our LIVE readers at the BIG BLUE MARBLE BOOKSTORE (held virtually due to Covid-19. It was a perfect platform to discuss the themes in Through The Looking Glass. Being an anthology of 158 writers and artists from across the globe, this collection sought to unveil the truth about life with mental illness. Diverse, raw, and urgent, the poetry, prose, and art work in this anthology dug deep into the experience of living with depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and other neurodivergent conditions, as well as the challenges of loving someone who struggles with such an illness. Having contributors read their work and join in this meaningful discussion was priceless.

Having submitted beautiful pieces to both The Kali Project and Through The Looking Glass, Anu Mahadev has now published a stunning collection of her own work. ‘a mouthful of sky’ – with incredible cover art. She’s a respected talent in the writing world and this beautiful poetry book promises to collect together some of her most unforgettable work.

Anu Mahadev is a left-brained engineer who morphed into a right-brained poet. She is a 2016 MFA graduate of Drew University, and her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies as well as the Olentangy Review, Silver Birch Press, Sonic Boom, Bending Genres Journal, Tin Lunchbox review, DIN magazine, the Wild Word and the Electronic Pamphlet,.

Incredibly she fits into her busy schedule, time to serve as Editor for THREE literary publications:

The wonderful Jaggery Lit, where she’s Editor-in-Chief.

The very respected Woman Inc., where she’s Senior-Editor.

and the very cool Wild Word. where she’s the Poetry Editor.

Her collection of poetry titled “A Mouthful of Sky” is upcoming from Get Fresh Books LLC this month (April). You can pre-order her book HERE. and when preorders are finished you can purchase via Amazon and others.

“In Anu Mahadev’s A Mouthful of Sky, sensual and sexual pleasures, joys, and freedoms are woven together with gendered inequities, misogyny, and cruelty. The narrator is exceedingly matter-of-factly vulnerable and courageous as she shows the complexities, contradictions, cruelties, and depths of this relationship with complete self-acceptance. With a solid certainty in spite of circumstances. And with forthright insistence of her own pleasure. But it’s never simple. Mahadev’s voice is like none I’ve ever heard–complex, often heartbreaking, strong, and forthright into her lyricism.” — Sarah Vap, author of Winter: Effulgences and Devotions.

“These are poems of resilience, converging confidence and doubt, freedom and entrapment: the “desperate alphabet” of a “disposable heart.” Fraught with sexuality and distress, dualities mirror and split throughout these poems of hunger, ravishment, and, ultimately, discovery.” — Stacey Balkan, author of Oil Fictions: World Literature and our Contemporary Petrosphere.

Anu can be found on Facebook at http://facebook.com/amahadevpoet. Instagram handle : amahadevpoetry

Prayer
After Sarah Gambito’s “Grace”

You will surpass your ancestors.
You will fix a leaking roof, cause a blue shadow to fall upon itself.
You are in fact, the roof.
Beams hold you up, shingles frame your structure.
You have been firm for far too long.
You sag with moss from the monsoon moisture.
The children’s scribbles are blessings, you say.
Collecting kerosene from the ration shop is an errand.
The cool yogurt-rice is home. The banana is dessert.
Like the wrought-iron gates that close together,
so do your hands, folded in supplication.
You could say, this is not a birthday wish.
But a prayer that finds you before dawn rushes in.

Anu shared: “The poems in this book (a mouthful of sky) were written over the span of a year, my most fruitful, creative and prolific year. Perhaps Goddess Saraswati was watching over me, my muse, even as I rode the crests on a wave of mania. Yes, I suffer from bipolar disorder. While anyone observing me would have felt that I was in no way “suffering”, I knew that what I was going through was thoroughly unnatural. My body felt like a prison, my brain a cage, where my mind paced about restlessly like a hungry panther. I was here, there and everywhere at once. Catapulted thoughts from the past made me race into an imaginary future where I had no desire to settle into a present riddled with discontent. Adrenaline flowed freely inside me.”

“Maybe all this sounds wonderful to someone who can’t keep a positive thought afloat, but I had a sinking feeling inside that all this would come to a grinding halt, and it did. You can’t climb forever. Somewhere there would be a snake after all those ladders, waiting to pull me down. “

“When people say that everyone has “mood swings“, I don’t think they understand the depths or the crests that a bipolar person experiences. Either everything is excellent and brilliant, or else the worst, the absolute pits. It took me a long time to get up after my fall from grace, and perhaps I lost a few friends along the way, maybe more. But life, in its infinite patience, continues to be a kind teacher. With talk therapy, the proper drugs and a healthy lifestyle, I am limping my way back to recovery.”

There is undoubtedly a price to be paid for burning so brightly, but let us not forget how many talented artists throughout history have been subject to this mercurial rise-and-fall. In some ways it is that incredible galvanized energy that permits the individual to create such powerful work and produce such excellence, when others simply cannot find the get-up-and-go. It may be a double-edged-sword but the sheer brilliance of those mercurial writers cannot be denied.

Anu’s courage as a writer of experience and truth, is particularly valuable. She doesn’t flinch from revealing her rawest experience. Surely this is the definition of what a poet must be in order to truly break through convention and trope and set fire to pretense. Her truth is something we can all in some way, relate to, and her candor helps us realize that when we too struggle, we are not alone, and we do not have to measure up to some false ideal. We can just survive and in doing so, thrive.

Clearly Anu does far more than simply survive, for all her genuine modesty over her talents, she writes electrically and charges the poetry scene with stunning verses that are utterly without guile. She isn’t just smart, she’s wicked smart. She isn’t just creative, she’s stunningly so. And her poems are individual testimonies to her willingness to go all in.

Talking to the water
You do not care
whether or not I show up
soapy in the shower
Perhaps you do not sense
the mediocrities –
of standing naked
You do not know
that your rivulets
don’t curve across
my pockmarked skin
my bloated body
like they show in the movies
You do not promise
to wash off any sin
You are in cahoots with the mirror
to dilute my worth down to nothing
as I disrobe furtively
So I don’t disturb the universal reign
of beauty and symmetry
Mine is a vast and empty landscape
that self-love does not inhabit
And you still want to know –
why I detest you
why I hate your amorphous form
© Anu Mahadev September 2021

Through The Looking Glass is available HERE: Bookshop: https://tinyurl.com/3hmts5d9Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/3dd7vb6uPothi: https://tinyurl.com/sp2tm86r

The Kali Project is available HERE: Amazon and via all good bookstores including Pothi in India.

Remember to pre-order and then order Anu Mahadev’s collection a mouthful of sky, when it publishes APRIL 1. It will be available nationally via all good bookstores. MARK THE DATE~

Indie Blu(e) Publishing is VERY proud of our authors / poets / artists and contributors to our anthologies. We love highlighting their accomplishments. If YOU are a IB contributor and wish to have a profile here, please get in touch (indleblusubmissions@gmail.com) including information we’d like to promote on our website such as: Bio, photo, live readings, links, interesting information and one short exert or poem. http://www.indieblu.netHERE.

Brave and Reckless’ April’s Creativity Prompt Challenge: We Will Not Be Silenced

April 2022 Creativity Prompt Challenge

We Will Not Be Silenced

Sponsored by Brave & Reckless

Submit by email to her.red.pen.wordsmithing@gmail.com for publication

Instagram: #WeWillNotBeSilenced | @stitchypoet

During April, I am departing from my normal monthly Creativity Prompt format, and instead providing one phrase as the prompt for the month: We Will Not Be Silenced. However, I will be offering two different ways to approach the prompt. Feel free to respond in either way, or to respond to both. There is no limit to how many pieces of writing or art you submit for the challenge as long as I receive your submission by April 30^th. I will accept previously published pieces of writing or art as long as you retain the rights to this work.

Response Option #1 – General

There is only one guideline for Option 1: We Will Not Be Silenced should serve as the title of your piece OR all the words in the phrase should be integrated into your piece somehow.

Response Option #2 – The Lived Experience of Sexual Assault/Abuse/Harassment

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM) in the United States. SAAM is an educational campaign whose goals are to increase awareness about the causes and risk factors for sexual assault and to empower individuals to take steps to prevent it in their own communities.

In solidarity to SAAM, I will accept submissions of writing and art about the lived experience of sexual assault, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, trafficking, rape culture, and misogyny. I am defining ‘lived experience’ broadly as we all are impacted by rape culture and political and social institutions that have support sexual assault. I will accept submissions sent in under a pen name will respect any requests to publish pieces under ‘Anonymous’.

I realize that submissions about the Lived Experience of Sexual Assault/Abuse/Harassment may not make for the easiest or most comfortable reading, but that in no way lessens their importance or impact. It can be incredibly empowering for survivors to tell their stories. It can be really impactful to share epiphany moments and insights into how this culture has shaped you personally.

There is strength in our stories and although we have seen the world begin to shift, there is much work still to be done.

It is an honor to publish your writing and art on Brave and Reckless. I welcome submissions of poetry, prose, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, essay, and art. I will accept responses to We Will Not Be Silenced until April 30th, but will not start publishing them on Brave & Reckless until April 1st.

Email your prompt responses with a short bio (if you have not recently submitted to me) and a suggested image to her.red.pen.wordsmithing@gmail.com.

You can also participate on Instagram by tagging your writing/art with:

#WeWillNotBeSilenced
#stitchypoet

Submit by email to her.red.pen.wordsmithing@gmail.com for publication

Authors in Indie Blu(e) Anthologies: Dr. Pragya Suman

Dr. Pragya Suman is another valued contributor to Indie Blu(e)’s The Kali Project. She recalls: “I came to know about Candice Louisa Daquin through social media and she invited me to participate in Indie Blu(e)’s anthology on Indian women poets, entitled: The Kali Project. Being an Indian it was quite a familiar topic to me and in my personal life, I am a devotee to Hindu rituals and mythologies.” (the notable poet Megha Sood, was co-editor on this anthology alongside Daquin).

“My poetry Amrapali is included in this project, which is based upon the great legend of Indian history. The Spiritual transformation of Amrapali from Nagarvadhu (bride of city) to a saint is a story of infiniteness, different shades of life representing an ocean included in drop. Vivid faces of deities like Kali, Durga, Laxmi, Saraswati are very much adorable to me. The Kali Project is a unique collection in it’s representation of various figments of womanhood, and it was this, which drew me to submit.”

“In my personal life I believe in mysticism and my literary likings are tilted towards postmodernism. Pluralism and relativism are more practical in comparison to any abstract truth. Spirituality is a personal belief and I believe we should not be indulgent in making it an open debate.”

“I like to keep my pen between two extremes of literary movements that are; art for art’s sake and realism. Acute and sharp observation are much more important for a writer.”

“Since beginning my work as a poet, I have written two books. My first book Lost Mother was written during the first lockdown of corona. My second book Photonic Postcard (you can purchase this HERE) is written in the prose poetry genre.”

Death dipped in the Ganga

The limpid drops squirted

out of lip corner

As mother tried to put the spoon

Tepid eyes of father twirling

On the death bed

My mother saw–

Death in garmented flash

Exit – the orbit moat

And that day death dipped in the Ganga

(Footnote: In Hinduism it is a sacred tradition to put Ganga water in the mouth of a dying person. It is believed that after death a person would get salvation).

Some reviews of my books:

“I have really enjoyed reading Photonic Postcard. I especially liked the complex and beguiling play of ideas and images and the imaginative way Pragya uses the Prose Poem form.” – Paul Hetherington, Professor of Writing and Head of International Poetry Studies Institute, Canberra University, Australia.

“I love Photonic Postcard . There are so many poems I love in it –my favorite is “Mother’s Postcard” it’s beautifully crafted. I am so thrilled she is raising the profile of prose poetry in India.” Cassandra Atherton, Professor of writing and Literature, Deakin University.

“By following the language written by the Indian Author Pragya Suman, I always felt that she was whispering in her rhetoric and words. And this whisper takes many forms and images. It is nice to follow those pictures and forms to see this enrichment in this beautiful color and unique language.” Dr. Anwer Ghani, Author and Doctor from Iraq.

Dr. Suman is the Founding Editor of the respected ARC Magazine.

“Poetry is, among many things, the art of saying the unsayable. Pragya Suman’s poems achieve this challenge, inviting the reader to enter the space of her poetry and use their imaginations as a continuation of the ineffable. Her poems rely on diverse shifts of gestalt patterns, mysterious as paintings by surrealists. Enter wit and humor, hallmark features of her work, and her poems, oftentimes psychologically complex, become accessible to the average reader.” David Thane Cornell, American Author.

Arc Magazine, created by Dr. Suman and a valued addition to the literary world.

You can purchase the ARC Poetry Anthology via Amazon (by clicking HERE).

Biography

Dr. Pragya Suman is a specialist doctor from Bihar, India. She is a doctor by profession and a writer by passion. Her poetry, reviews, and fiction have been published in many magazines and anthologies. She has achieved certificates of excellence from many literary forums and the Gujrat Sahitya Academy. She won the Gideon poetry award summer 2020. Her debut book Lost Mother was published in 2020. Her second book Photonic Postcard is published by Ukiyoto Publishing, Canada. Photonic postcard is a collection of Prose Poems.

Dr. Suman’s first book Lost Mother. Gideon Poetry Prize Winner.

Dr. Pragya Suman is the founding editor of Arc Magazine. Arc Magazine is a triennial literary journal with spring, summer issue, and autumn issues of Arc Prose Poetry Anthology which comes in the fall of the year.

Writing is her passion which she inherited from her father. Her Father, the late Triveni Prasad Yadav was a civil engineer by profession who always kept his library up to date. Her mother was a housewife and a real motivator. Dr. Suman’s husband Dr. Bisheshwar Kumar is also a doctor. She is the mother of a daughter named Vatsalya.

Her poetry mentor is David Thanne Cornell, for whom she has high regards. Her poems are weekly broadcast from universal vision radio Mexico. HERE

Links to work:

https://www.arcmagazine.co.in/ HERE

https://www.arcmagazine.co.in/arc-prose-poetry-1

Social Media Links:

Twitter : @DrPragyaSuman7

Facebook : Pragya.Suman.50

Instagram : pragya.suman.50

Indie Blu(e) Publishing is extremely proud to showcase and highlight our anthology contributors including superb world poets. Sharing their accomplishments may speak for themselves but sharing their work and passion reminds us why we put together anthologies and the joy of working with multi-talented poets and artists throughout the world. http://www.indieblu.net To read Dr. Pragya Suman’s valuable poetic contribution in Indie Blu(e)’s The Kali Project – get your copy via Amazon HERE or any good bookseller.

Authors in Indie Blu(e) Anthologies: Kashiana Singh

Kashiana Singh(http://www.kashianasingh.com/) calls herself a work practitioner and embodies the essence of her TEDx talk – Work as Worship into her everyday. Her chapbook Crushed Anthills from Yavanika Press in 2020 is a journey that unravels memory through 10 cities. She proudly serves as a Managing Editor for Poets Reading the News and her voice be read and heard on various international platforms. Kashiana’s first poetry collection is called, Shelling Peanuts and Stringing Words. Her newest full-length collection, Woman by the Door has just been released with Apprentice House Press.

Kashiana Singh – three of her books – including her latest Woman by the Door.

Kashiana’s latest collection of poetry; Woman by the Door is a series of poems that crystallized over the last 9 years, beginning when Kashiana moved from India to the US in 2013. She relates that: “These poems are born of necessity and travel in and out of that doorway into many spaces before and after that point in time. Serving as a problem-solving tool, poetry has continually helped me focus and refocus towards a center of gravity.”

Coming together in this knitted collage are poems rooted in lived experiences and saturated with the poet’s varied sensibilities and influences. The poems flow through three sections – Aperture explores poems of memory and family, Portal opens the door to transition and growth, Detours holds our hand through loss and ache. The woman herself is an intersection, always kneeling by the door – coming, going, waiting, leaning in. Witnessing. Relentlessly she receives and offers lifetimes. Woman by the Door is ultimately preoccupied with paying tribute to that woman.

Country | Kashiana Singh | Samyukta Poetry

Kashiana lives in North Carolina and carries her various geographical homes within her poetry.

Her poems have been published on various platforms including Rattle, Poets Reading the News, Visual Verse, Oddball Magazine, Café Dissensus, and others including anthologies like The Kali Project. Besides being a learner of poetry, Kashiana’s latest corporate assignment of 16 years was as Vice President, Health and Benefits Operations with Alight Solutions.

Indie Blu(e) talked to Kashiana on the publication of her latest collection of poetry, Woman by the Door – which we were lucky enough to review. Duly impressed by Kashiana’s fluidity of expression and willingness to speak truths, we were reminded of why her work featured powerfully in Indie Blu(e)’s The Kali Project. To say Kashiana can give life to truth, is to underestimate the poised impact of her deftest writing. She is a gentle giant in her approach to poetry and a magnificently astute observer of humanity, not least our interior lives.

What does it mean to bring your background and heritage to your work? How does it influence your writing both in terms of content and language?

“Everything!”

“What I mean by that is that background and heritage is not just a guest participant but fully immersed within the poems through their inspiration, source, language, music or form. Each/All of these elements stay in gestation till the final piece takes birth and are ingredients that add fragrance to our work. The tapestry we stitch together is richer when suffused with elements of stories, sounds and shapes of buzzing words and drunken language.”

Singh is always in search of new beginnings as she distills deeper into her core as a poet-practitioner… The book is a ‘portal’ that summons and reveals, it offers a quiet introspection of memory as well as is vulnerable in it’s discourse with loss, each poem a witness to the spirit.

“The process of navigating through these poems gave me both the permission and the fortitude to remember and transmit aspects of my own background, my journey as a woman and as a global observer of dailyness. As is often stated and recently reinforced by Nobel Prize winner Gurnah: “writers come to writing through reading,” I firmly believe that writers come to writing with their heritage and history.”

In an interview with THE POET Kashiana made the following observation of how her cultural and ethnic and spiritual identity ties together:

“I am a Sikh and it is part of my lexicon without necessarily ever thinking about it. The Guru Granth Saheb, which is the holy scripture of the Sikhs, is really a compilation of approx. 4000 hymns, that are both exhilarating and uplifting. Second, I have had an ever-present influence of Sikh values – speaking for the truth, a keen awareness of the larger order, and work as worship. So, in that context I would say Sikhism does factor in organically into my writing in terms of the traditions of both oral and written forms of poetry, and the philosophical attributes of being a Sikh.”

“I am a fusion of all my sensibilities and geographies. The language and words I bring into my poems come from all the places that I have directly and indirectly been influenced by, and is inherent to my poetic refrain. I say that my poems help me continually focus and refocus towards a center of gravity.”

“I cannot ignore my skin color, my accent, nor my Indian descent, but I think of all of these as enablers to my poetic output. I bring to my writing table a larger canvas and a broader range of perspectives and some days that is an advantage and other days a burden but never something I can ignore. I think Ada Limon said it best in one of her interviews that we are like a ‘collage‘ – that is beautifully stated.”

(For the full interview please visit Kashiana’s Q&A with THE POET HERE. )

Kashiana Singh speaks about her book Woman by the Door on Wedneday Night Poetry (Kai Coggin) HERE: : https://www.facebook.com/535429421/videos/317120953704473/

Here is Kashiana Singh reading her poem Miracles, which was featured in Rattle. She’s a natural reader and has great clarity in her natural reading. https://www.rattle.com/miracles-by-kashiana-singh/

Website: http://www.kashianasingh.com

Instagram – @kashianasingh

Twitter – @Kashianasingh

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/authorkashianasingh

Kashiana Singh – Worship as a Work Practitioner / TEDx talk.

Indie Blu(e) Publishing is extremely proud to showcase and highlight our anthology contributors including superb world poets like Kashiana Singh. Her accomplishments may speak for themselves but sharing her work and passion reminds us why we put together anthologies and the joy of working with multi-talented poets and artists throughout the world. http://www.indieblu.net To read Kashiana’s valuable poetic contribution in Indie Blu(e)’s The Kali Project – get your copy via Amazon HERE or any good bookseller.

You can purchase Woman by the Door on Amazon and most booksellers HERE as well as Shelling Peanuts & Stringing Words HERE and

Authors in Indie Blu(e) Anthologies: Nadia Garofalo

With Relative Traumas Nadia Garofalo has taken her gift as a song-writer and poet, and merged the two together to create a striking collection. One of the most exciting projects I have worked on lately, due to the passionate truth of Garofalo’s writing, which Indie Blu(e) Publishing first discovered through our anthology SMITTEN.

Nadia Garofalo is a childhood friend of Indie Blu(e)’s author Georgia Park and when she submitted to SMITTEN (purchase HERE) we recognized that unique blend of songwriting ability and wordsmithing. We were so impressed with Nadia’s writing and her being an accomplished musician and human-being.

Singer, songwriter, musician, and poet Nadia Garofalo is a throwback to the days of Byron and all who felt deeply, intensely, piercingly. As a songwriter, Garofalo has the precision of a wordsmith – she knows how to infiltrate the soul and will rend your emotions with her refrain. This debut collection of poetry examines the exquisite pain of chasing your dreams throughout the years, and storing within your blood the urgent need to live passionately. Her writing is raw, edgy, and unapologetic, with a tendency to revive the reader in the way that one is revived by putting their hands in cool water.

When you consider your life, imagining the ancestors before you who immigrated and brought their cultures with them, you forge memories without end. Garofalo condenses these types of observations alongside the humming piques of desire and complex relationships. Her confessional words might as well be sung for all the power they possess, imploring to the void for more. There is such a stirring rendition of urgent living here that it quickens the pulse, stirs what was once thought long dead, and awakens us to the potency that is poetry.

When did you first realize you wanted to be a musician and given that it’s a challenging job, did you think it would actually happen?

NG: I’ve tried to quit music a few times over the years but it just never seems to stick, there’s always something that brings me back. I think being in a band in high school, independent of any structural/school-related activity, was the first time I thought of it as any kind of future pursuit. Like maybe I’ll continue to play music with friends as a hobby and write my own songs when I feel like it etc.

What part does writing play in your role as a songwriter and musician? What is your process and if you don’t have one, how do you start and finish writing something you are happy with?

NG: Writing is the center of pretty much everything for me, it’s how I work out concepts and feelings in a way that makes sense to me. I’m much more naturally a writer than a musician so sometimes the rhythm of words can feel almost instrumental to me, it can inform the instrumentation just as much as the other way around.

How hard it is to get in front of a huge audience? What do you do to get through that and make it work?

NG: I’m a clinically anxious person but for some reason, I can feel completely comfortable performing with Ganser in front of a large audience, it’s like a switch goes off in my head and I just do “my job”. Its a lot more difficult for me to read poetry on my own, it’s just a much more intimate experience for me. In both situations, I do my best to keep my head clear and avoid anything that might make things harder for me by taking care of my mind and body as much as possible leading up to a performance. If I’m nervous I’ll give myself some time to write it out or take space to breathe.

When you decided to put your poems together, what were you thinking in terms of the direction you wanted to take this? Did you have any concerns?

NG: I’ve been passing the idea of publishing a chapbook around in my head for a few years but 2020 was when I actually started the process of convincing myself to do it. It took another year or so of going through my notebooks to pick out and edit what I wanted to include. In terms of the direction, I wanted to give space and attention to what I was going through while those notebooks were being filled but with a perspective gained from looking back at it years later. It’s scary because it can feel very vulnerable to have these things out there for public consumption, I was always concerned it wouldn’t be good enough but that’s something I’m working on.

Is publishing your poetry a different feeling than singing/songwriting and if so, how is it a different experience?

NG: I was lucky to have a lot of support in making this book but at the end of the day it’s just me out there with my name on this thing I made. One of the things I love about songwriting is the collaboration that happens between me and my bandmates, we are all working towards the same goal of making music we can all be proud of. With writing (especially self-publishing) I’m the one who has the definitive say in what the final product is and that can be great but also scary.

What was your vision with Relative Traumas? What influenced you in terms of the layout and design?

NG: I wanted to create a book that felt as intimate as the material inside. I used the City Lights Pocket Poet series as a model for how I wanted my book to look, I love that you can carry them with you easily where ever you go. My earliest memories of poetry always had some element of illustration so I wanted to pay homage to that as well as bring in the work of some of my favorite local artists to accompany the poems and not completely lose the collaborative element in this “solo project”.

Nadia wasn’t sure if her first book was really something she should do. She’s a successful prop designer and buyer and has a cool life in Chicago with their flourishing music scene, hell she opened for The Smashing Pumpkins … it doesn’t get much better. But despite these successes she’s a very laid-back, humble and non-grandiose human and she was in two-minds about dipping her toe fully into a whole book of her own writing.

Despite this – she went ahead and Relative Traumas was born. A physically small book, it stands out as a pocket-sized collection of art and words – a little like the miniature Penguin editions, and the care and design put into it is very original and unique. Nadia somehow had time to create this alongside her full time job as a Pops Buyer in Chicago and touring with her successful band.

Her debut collection, Relative Traumas is a true testimony to Nadia’s pure ability as a writer of songs and poetry and life. She may not yet know how good she is (which is a bit adorable, in this world of unfettered egotism) but anyone who has read her, surely does. Indie Blu(e) loves that the world still have some living-breathing-true musicians who get on the road and do the grind. That those musicians have poetry in them and despite the knock-down-drag-out spectacle of life, continue to write that poetry. We hope we never grow tired of those kinds of souls, let’s always harken to the dark birds of song and post-punk revelry.

Relative Traumas is available via Amazon HERE and by asking your independent bookstore. You can also buy it direct from the author. If you love indie poets and musicians, song-writers and incredible musicians then Nadia Garofalo’s debut Relative Traumas is going to sate that hunger.

Social Media Links:

Medium Page

@Nadic on Instagram

Here’s a video of the band Nadia is in – Ganser (https://www.ganserband.com/)