Indie Blu(e) Publishing

Poets of SMITTEN Speak: Alison Palmer

Poets of SMITTEN Speak Series – Alison Palmer’s interview

Alison Palmer is the author of the poetry chapbook, The Need for Hiding (Dancing Girl Press, 2018). To read an in-depth interview by The Poet’s Billow about the collection visit http://www.thepoetsbillow.org. Alison’s work appears in FIELD, Bear Review, River Styx, Glass, Cream City Review, Salt Hill, Los Angeles Review and elsewhere. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets 2017, and a finalist for Eyewear Publishing’s Sexton Prize, Alison lives and writes outside Washington, D.C.

Generally, I’ve not engaged with much lesbian literature, perhaps due to lack of mainstream availability or due to suspicion that lesbian/bi work is more erotic than literary. However, my expectations were shattered after reading Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Winterson challenges heterosexual traditions through her descriptions of women loving women as they strive to gain independence from the confines of religion and male power…

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Poets of SMITTEN Speak: Dr Sneha Rooh

Poets of SMITTEN Speak Series – Dr. Sneha Rooh is interviewed on her perspectives. SMITTEN is being published by Indie Blu(e) this month! Read about the authors here.

TheFeatheredSleep

Dr. Sneha Rooh is a palliative physician and founder of Orikalankini an organisation that is changing narratives around Menstruation and sexuality in India through art theatre and dialogue. She loves to travel and write.

What does it mean to be a part of smitten?

To me writing for this anthology means contributing to a well people can derive something from, hopefully like medicine and use it. It means building representation to the various ways women can love women .To give hope and companionship to women when they need it.

What particular struggles have you faced as a woman who loves woman in a country that’t not free like America

Growing up in an Indian family, we never met people who were not heterosexuals and non heterosexuals we knew about were gay men which i clearly wasn’t so it felt I was missing some piece, some lesson about life i didn’t…

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Poets of SMITTEN Speak: Lindz McLeod

Poets of SMITTEN Speak – first interview with poet Lindz McLeod one of the authors in the upcoming SMITTEN out this month by Indie Blu(e).

TheFeatheredSleep

Lindz McLeod has published poetry with Wingless Dreamer, Passaic / Völuspá, Prometheus Dreaming, Meat For Tea: the Valley Review, and For Women Who Roar; she was shortlisted for the Fish Publishing Poetry Prize in 2019. Her prose won the Cazart Short Story prize in 2012 and has been longlisted for the Fish Publishing Flash Fiction prize; her short stories have been published by the Scottish Book Trust, 365 Tomorrows, Dreamscape Press, and more.

How does being a poet inform your views on expressing emotions through writing?

I used to consider myself mainly a fiction writer; I am always looking for the actions, the subtext, the foreshadowing. This influences my poetry hugely. Expressing emotions feels much easier to do when I describe it in those terms, the smells and tastes of actions, the feel of a ripple somewhere in the body sending signals to be interpreted or ignored by the conscious mind.

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Mariah Voutilainen reviews Smitten, edited by Candice Louisa Daquin

SMITTEN UPDATED 7.23

Indie Blu(e)’s Smitten should be your newest gift of poetry

By Mariah Voutilainen

Before I begin to review Smitten, a book that lays bare and re-frames (in a very personal manner) the love that women have for women, I must be equally open. As I formed my thoughts, I realized that I was (and am) extremely nervous about how to respond to these poems from my own heterosexual, cis female lens. I felt this because I am a woman of color, one who feels the simmering heat of frustration when those who cannot ever know my experience want to take a stab at relating to it. What I can say is the following: While Smitten is a book about women who love women (from every-which perspective), of course, it is about love. And I can relate to love. I can understand first love, last love, forbidden love, unrequited love, the love of someone lost, the love of someone found. The love of someone who saves.

But in truth, even as a woman of color married to a white man, I have not experienced love that is criticized or fetishized by outsiders, that is closeted by well (and not-so-well) meaning family. I will never feel the excruciating pain of those who are beat down because of whom or how they love. So, as I opened up my advance copy of Smitten, it was with delicate hands, an open and reverent heart—because that is how I wish my own poetry to be read.

Over a hundred poems about women, by women. Can I say how exhilarating it is to have read so many at one go? I happily recognized quite a few of the poets—hailing from an independent poetry network often curated by Indie Blu(e) Publishing: Tara Caribou, Candice Louisa Daquin, Christine E. Ray, Kindra M. Austin and Georgia Park, to name a few. But there was a mélange of poets new to me, whose unique voices were employed in a variety of styles from musical to prose to concrete poetry. Among my favorites were Paula Jellis’ “I want a woman with a big bouffant,” Katherine DeGilio’s “Sunburned Shoulders,” Nick Kay’s “The Value of a Rusty Coin,” Jessica Jacobs’ “Out of the Windfields,” and Susan M. Conway’s “Letters to my Love.”

Would that I could list every single poem (my list is long), as they touched my sensibilities in different ways. Some entreat us to dance to an inaudible tune; others confide to us the secrets of nerve-wracked first kisses; they relate the early-in-the-morning and late-at-night mundanities of love. But we are also invited to the troubled history of these loves in poems such as “Love is Our Theory” (Sean Heather K. McGraw), “Letter from Lock Up to the NYPD, June 1969, Christopher Street” (Melissa Fadul) and “You Don’t Deserve to Read About My Life” (Georgia Park). These such poems are the ones that will be hardest to bear, but among the most important to read.

This is a book that should be gifted. In spite of its implied audience, Smitten is not just for women who adore women. It is for those whose hearts flutter and skin goosebumps at romance, who know the flight of butterflies in their stomachs and who long for the feeling of home in another’s heart.

SMITTEN This Is What Love Looks Like: Poetry by Women for Women an Anthology is now available on Amazon in both print and Kindle editions. Request it at your local/international bookstores.

Mariah Voutilainen writes poetry and prose about all manner of things at www.reimaginingthemundane.wordpress.com.

Review of Composition of a Woman, 2nd Edition, Christine E. Ray by Kristiana Reed

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“Ray is a woman conducting an orchestra while openly admitting she isn’t perfect. There is dazzling beauty in her ability to lift your spirits and reach beyond the book, calling for your blood and belly fire.”

These were my closing thoughts after reading and reviewing Composition of a Woman for the first time and I am pleased to report the second edition achieves this once more but with thirty-six new and stunning pieces. The collection has since been awarded a Bronze Book Award by Readers’ Favourite too.

The ingenious anatomical structure remains, with Ray taking us on a journey through her experience of physical and mental health, love, loss and being a warrior, feminist and advocate for many. The new pieces fit in seamlessly with the story Ray had begun to tell from the collection’s first release; and considering Composition of a Woman was never lacking in the first place, the additional work only seeks to improve and reinforce the messages Ray’s writing shares. Messages about the honesty found in vulnerability. Messages of strength and courage. Messages of hope. Messages about how no matter how overwhelming loss may feel, you are not alone. Messages of fire and brimstone. Messages about freedom, equality and never giving up.

Although the collection follows ‘a Woman’, Ray writes for all and the second edition reaffirms her purpose, evident in all the work she does in editing and publishing, to lift others up and hold them in the light.

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Composition of a Woman is available in print and Kindle versions worldwide

I write about love, lust, struggle, survival, fickle things, dreams and the stars. And anything in between. You can read more of my writing at My Screaming Twenties

I released my debut collection of poetry and prose in May 2019, Between the Trees which is available to buy, below. I am currently working on my second collection.

Between the Trees:

Amazon UK

Amazon US