Hallo, Hallo dear hearts!
I recently featured a beautiful collection of poetry by Ms Lavendar which not only featured authentically truthful bits of prose about the cycles of life through the transitions of grief and sorrow but she had found a beautifully lovely merger between poetry and art! I truly loved spending time within the book – as the colour palette alone was a blissful retreat where the essence of her words, the artwork she included and the calming presence of light lavender against the pages provided me with a joyfulness of serenity.
When I signed on for the blog tour, knowing the nature of this special collection – I decided to cross-feature her poetry with a conversation which would allow myself and my readers to go a bit deeper than the surface of this new collection. I wanted to ask the questions which stirred curiosity in my heart and hopefully encouraged new visitors and regulars of Jorie Loves A Story to contemplate the potential reading of this book if the found the conversation something which would stimulate their own interest in Ms Lavendar’s creative vision.
I have appreciated my alignment with Poetic Book Tours these past few years, as they have given me a passage into Contemporary Poets I had not felt I could navigate myself and whilst I have striven to find a renewal of interest in pursuing my own wanderings into Classical Poetry, this late hour of Summer, I have seen the joys of ‘hearing’ poetry through audiobook renditions of the Classics. I am unsure if I would have reached this point in my Classics Club readings if I hadn’t been pursuing Poetry & Prose through Poetic Book Tours – which begs to refer to the fact, the more you pursue a literary interest the more happiness you’ll find in the pursuit!
I encourage you, dear hearts, to brew your favourite cuppa,
before settling into this conversation and hopefully,
finding a writer you will seek out to read in your own reading hours!
Aesthetically, I loved how the internal pages of this collection were ‘lavender’ as the colour is a calming hue and it befits the name of the poet. As you pause over the ‘Dedication’ you align yourself with the poet and realise how personally convicting the tone and collection will become for both of you. The Foreword is a continuation of the poet’s purpose and of the mindfulness approach she undertook to curate this collection – of thoughts, musings and the artfulness of combining word with art in an evocation of purposeful journalling of one’s reactions out of the dimensions of grief. Her art and her prose are left behind for those encountering their own path of healing – as a footprint left behind to support personal growth and self-renewal through healing with the words she has given towards that particular journey inward.
Each of her poems are paired with a different form of art – from photography to fractals to interpretive artwork, thus adding another layer of interpretation to the reader. The very first entry is ‘Untitled’ – it is evoking an awareness to the reader to continue to see out the Light (both in life and of the world) even if they walk through life with a weariness of fear or the doubtfulness of their internal conscience mind.
As you move through the pages, you notice this is a telling story of one woman’s search for truth, acceptance and understanding out of the periods of grief which have altered her heart and spirit. She has become awakened and sought to share this awareness with others if the words she can impart to explain her experience can positively affect another whose moving through the same difficult passageways she has endured herself. Each cluster of poetic insight fuses the heart of her ‘story’ together, adding layers of her spirit bit by bit in an effort to complete the portrait of her life.
It is a unique journey into the mind, heart and spirit of an artist and poet, who has found a strengthening of heart through the assemblage of this collection. For each crucial piece of advice is well founded in the realities we each can relate too but is elevated through the honestly of her words. She has found a way to write about universal truths with a compassionate insight of a woman who has come through her own adversities of loss to share the revelations of what she’s learnt in the process of healing.
These are the kinds of poems you want to pause over – to reconsider their meaning and to let your own memories swept you up into their messages to seek your own voyage of internal peace. When you’ve come through your own walk of loss and have found your own Light of truth, it is in appreciation of the kindness of a poet who can find words which resonate with the journey you individually took yourself to reach similar conclusions of the poetic mind.
Part Motivational guide and part Spiritual expose on the dimensions of a human soul’s search for truth out of the chaos of loss – Finding Hope in the Darkness of Grief is an entreaty into formulating a method of communicating what we’ve learnt during the darker days of our lives and emerging out of them like a butterfly whose left their cocoon for the realisation the time spent isolating through our transition better prepared us for the fullness of understanding the purpose of living. This is a book full of spiritual truths and a waking insight into how even if we approach the harder experiences we all face differently – there are universal truths we can all come to appreciate as being part of our collective experience.
-quoted from my review for Finding Hope in the Darkness of Grief: Spiritual Insights Expressed Through Art, Poetry and Prose
I was quite intrigued by the different mediums of art showcased throughout your collection of poetry, art and prose within the pages of ‘Finding Hope in the Darkness of Grief’. Which form of art is your personal favourite and why do you think you return to it time after time?
Lavendar responds: I enjoy all forms of art as expressions of my beliefs and experiences. I would have to say that I don’t particularly have a favorite although I really enjoy mixed media. I find it really fun to use several different forms of art for many of my pieces. It adds more layers of emotion and intrigue to my work. Quite a few of my pieces incorporate three or four variations of the types of art that I work with such as photography, digital art, painting, drawing and fractal art. More recently I’ve begun creating faces from photographs of people that I know or have taken pictures of. It’s really interesting to make computer generated people and to see how their different features work together!
I enjoy pursuing Mixed Media collages – specifically focused on Vintage and Victorian art classifications and the kind of artwork made known by Tim Holtz. I love pulling the textures and variants of colour together intermixed with the different layers of collage artifacts or trinkets with found art supplies and vintage imagery. We each have a unique approach which makes our own creative voice and art form burst to life and I enjoyed hearing how you’ve approached yours. Especially as you are as diverse as I am in your interests whilst your using traditional approaches in newer ways where tech can heighten the end results. I, too, love photography and have a healthy appreciation of fractals!
Some of the artwork inclusive of your collection were fractals – what first drew you to creating them and what is it about fractals do you think leaves all of us a bit awe-inspired?
Lavendar responds: I’m always looking for new ways to express myself. Fractals came into the picture when I saw pieces created by other artists and wanted to try it out as another form of expression. I enjoy the fractals I’ve made because they have an ethereal quality. I think they capture the essence of the spirit realm really nicely.
I believe this is what first attracted me to the spirals of fractal art myself, the ‘otherness’ quality and the ways in which they have the capacity to blend well with a background of ambient electronica soundscapes. As both are synthesised in a different way and yet, both forms of art evoke a realm not quite of this Earth.
Your collection reads like pages from a private journal etched out of the realities of transitioning out of grief whilst embracing a Motivational guide of intuitiveness as well. How did you select the passages to include and which poems or blocks of truth contained therein were your personal favourites?
Lavendar responds: I actually wrote the various pieces of work within the year and a half time frame after my daughter Celby left. It was my process of grief and healing. The pieces flowed out of me pretty easily because writing is cathartic for me. I have to say that my favorite poems are You Shone Like The Sun On Autumn Leaves and Increase Love’s True Grit because they capture the essence of my daughter Celby and her beautiful spirit.
The way you’ve taken your grief and have released the beauty of a mother’s love for her daughter in this collection is heart-warming and spirit lifting. I hope everyone whose had the chance to visit with your words, your prose and your art will see a reflection of her gifts to you but also the healing spirit of your own heart as you sought a way to share these feelings and thoughts with others who are on their own paths of healing for their own losses.
As you wrote about the different stages of grief and acceptance, was there a challenging moment of writing this collection where it was hard to keep the distance from a past of hurt to the present of acceptance? In other words, was assembling the collection cathartic or emotionally challenging due to the nature of how raw and honest it became?
Lavendar responds: It was both cathartic and difficult. Losing children and having to remain here without them is devastating. However, my kids and I have always been extremely close. Even my daughter Jazzy who only lived for ten hours is always with me. While I was writing this book, I actually felt as though they were standing behind me and looking over my shoulder, whispering the words that I wrote on paper. I believe they guide me in my writing not only to show me what heaven is like but also to use me as a way to help others know that this life is not all there is-there is so much more to what the concept of reality encompasses. They wish to comfort all of those who mourn and have deep regrets.
Your response is a beautiful testament of what we all hope is past this part of our life and our experiences – of seeing a bit forward into the next chapter on the hopefulness we have within all our souls and hearts to realise is awaiting us. I believe you were right – they were your guides and your encouragers – the words materalised as they were meant to glide onto the pages and your art completed the circle of what needed to be expressed.
There is a measure of calm reading your words and the textures you’ve created through the pacing of each of the pages and the content contained on them. How did you develop the ‘aesthetic’ within the book?
Lavendar responds: It happened naturally. Even with the art I create I feel spiritual presences guiding me. It’s a beautiful way that I can stay connected to my loved ones and my faith. We all are interconnected on a deep level with wonderful things to share. Each of our talents has the ability to heal and nurture the human condition. This is a concept I feel really needed to be expressed in this book.
Definitely true! If each of us took enough time to share pieces of ourselves in our various artistic pursuits the world would be embraced with more love, hope and joy. There is something to be said for the fusion of intentional purpose and spiritual awakening to where creativity becomes the vehicle of expressing what the heart and mind cannot always connect into words. You did a beautiful job in showcasing your message(s) and of giving the reader something quite lovely to treasure time and time again each time they pick up the book.
You were able to capture a full fusion of life, death and the emergence of self-enlightenment – aside from a period of self-growth and healing what do you hope readers will recognise in your own journey which might benefit them?
Lavendar responds:
That life isn’t easy. That pain is inevitable. But so is love and meaning in life. Darkness can make us grow in ways we wouldn’t even begin to fathom had we not experienced it. So can love and acceptance. Life truly is a Pandora’s box. We never know what we will encounter but somehow spirit will take everything and make it work together for good to benefit not only ourselves but everyone around us. We are all loved, we are all important. We are all here to help and encourage each other through our gifts and talents. Everyone is needed. It is the supernatural design of God.
Very well stated and I couldn’t agree more with your sentiments!
What are your favourite kinds of music to find renewal in your spirit?
Lavendar responds: I love all forms of music. I think the most inspiring though would be classical, opera and indigenous music. I absolutely love music from all over the globe. I also listen to music set to nature sounds when I write. I believe we are all connected to mother earth and we can find deep levels of inspiration from nature as well.
We dearly can and I can attest to this myself – on how the natural world refuells us and allows us to feel inter-connected. Music I always felt connects to us on a different level than spoken dialogue and it knits itself into our bones and blood. Music has a way of voicing the murmurs of what creatively inspires us and it allows a centreing of sorts to let ourselves pursue the art which enriches our hours the most to share.
Where is your favourite place of serenity and peacefulness?
Lavendar responds: At night in front of my computer I’ll open the windows and listen to the crickets and frogs. I also love to visit beaches and sit under the stars. My daughter Celby and I used to look for beautiful natural places to photograph. Celby wanted to be a photographer. Several of the pictures in my book were pictures she took. Now I try to carry on the tradition in her memory.
In the simplicity of experiencing what we can find on Earth, we find ourselves and we find our futures. Even if our days are limited, we never have to search far for the spiritual bits of our lives nor of the natural world’s touch of kindness and mirth.
What is something that might surprise your readers about your writing process?
Lavendar responds: If I don’t feel inspired, I don’t write. Months have gone by in which I haven’t even written a word. For a period of about six months after Celby left, I barely wrote anything. Instead, I was drawn to art. I created a new piece almost every day during that time frame. It goes in spurts. I just honor whatever process is calling me at the moment.
I don’t either – aside from my blog, of course (smiles) – write that is on a regular basis. I even went through a dark well of a decade without writing yet I created nonetheless in other formats of expression or pursued the stories through think-writing practices vs the tangibility of actually getting words to paper. Though, even then, there were long droughts of inactivity and even now, a good decade forward from resuming from whence I had left off, I am not always keen on writing down my own stories but rather feel enlightened to pursue the stories being writ now or have been left for us centuries ago. In finding the stories available, I find a renewal of my own still percolating in the background and waiting their own season of arrival. Hence why I tend to lament I’m a writer moonlighting as a book blogger – yet, my blog is not just my saving grace it is where I can write notes of #bookjoy and #booklove to the writers who are enriching my readerly life with their stories – finding poets I can relate too is an added bonus inasmuch as realising I was a poet not just a novelist as a teenager.
What do you thinks is the most challenging part of being a poet and artist?
Lavendar responds:
Becoming known. There are so many writers and artists in the world that it is like being on a raft in the ocean. Talent is abundant and going through the process of honoring your own talent and becoming known for it can be quite arduous. It takes dedication and a lot of effort. But if it’s meant to be, it will be.That’s another part of having the faith to do what you’ve been called to do. And to trust that whatever is meant to come of it will eventually happen.
Dearly, true and something to celebrate continuously is how small a niche we carve out for ourselves in a world where creatives and the interplay of words have a canopy of voices all interacting together and talking at the same time. How we find ourselves to rise above the dim and set aside a small space for our own collective works is the beauty of how writers and poets find their audience – yet, perhaps part of what is a blessing of the book world online – especially through the two channels of interest I pursue regularly (the book blogosphere and bookish Twitter) is how tech has allowed ourselves to become ‘connected’ and threaded through the mutual passion of words and stories. Of finding a way to bubble up to the surface, raise a hand of interception and find others who are doing the same – thus moving forward the stories and the writers behind them in a way that perhaps was not even conceivable three decades past.
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I look forward to reading your thoughts & commentary! Especially if you read the book or were thinking you might be inclined to read it. I appreciate hearing different points of view especially amongst readers who picked up the same story to read.
Similar to blog tours where I feature book reviews, as I choose to highlight an author via a Guest Post, Q&A, Interview, etc., I do not receive compensation for featuring supplemental content on my blog. I provide the questions for interviews and topics for the guest posts; wherein I receive the responses back from publicists and authors directly. I am naturally curious about the ‘behind-the-scenes’ of stories and the writers who pen them; I have a heap of joy bringing this content to my readers.
{SOURCES: Book covers for “Finding Hope in the Darkness of Grief”, author biography, book synopsis and Poetic Book Tours badge were all provided by Poetic Book Tours and used with permission. Post dividers badge by Fun Stuff for Your Blog via Pure Imagination. Tweets were embedded due to codes provided by Twitter. Blog graphics created by Jorie via Canva: Book Review Banner using Unsplash.com (Creative Commons Zero) Photography by Frank McKenna and the Comment Box Banner.}
Copyright © Jorie Loves A Story, 2018.
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#OnTheBlog : celebrating the creativity & #poetry of @DiamanteLavenda in an uplifting convo in an #interview which highlights the creative in all of us who have something to share w/ the world.
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— Jorie Story 📖🎧 (@joriestory) August 27, 2018
Thank you for sharing another wonderful interview with a poet. I always enjoy these conversations.