Friday, February 15, 2013

Guest: Gayanne Ramsden - Why I Write Love Poems


I have a very special guest for you today, everyone.

Please welcome Gayanne Ramsden, one of my awesome and brave critique partners who recently published her poetry book, White Blossom Love. We don't get poets on this side of the Cosmic Laire very often, but like the Enterprise, checking out distant worlds, every cleft and corner of the writing universe is worth exploring.

Take it away, Gayanne! 

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Writing poetry is an adventure. You never know where you are going or where you will end up. It is a process of discovery. I have just had a poetry book published. It is called White Blossom Love. A friend, after ordering it online, called me. She said it was wonderful. She said it was so deep. She said she had known me for years and hadn’t realized I had such insight.

Why do I write poetry? Is it because as I grow older it is harder to write novels and remember plots and how I described necessary but soon forgotten minor characters? Not really. I write poetry because it makes the world, nature and people more alive. Poetry gives meaning to incidents of life. Writing poetry is also a journey of discovery. When I write poems I don't know what insight I will gain in the human condition. Poetry reveals what I really think about something. I write poetry for the joy I have in words. Writing poems about love is like therapy. It erases the pain of unrequited love. It shows you why you loved a certain person, giving you and the individual feelings of worth. It opens the doors to the possibility of loving again.

I recommend it for everyone.

White Blossom Love is an exploration of love. It starts with hope that the beloved will come and then travels through poems of different kinds of romantic love. There are poems about the pain of unrequited love, elementary school infatuation, the depth of companionship of fifty years, what fairy tales teach us about love, obsessive attraction and finally the hope of reciprocation in love.

I had an English professor, Leslie Norris, who was a great and enduring poet. He was a Welshman and internationally known poet. He taught at Brigham Young University and he was not a member of the LDS faith. I believe he could have taught English at any school he wanted I once asked him why he was teaching at BYU. He humbly said, “Because they asked me.”

The first day of class Leslie Norris asked us to refrain from writing about being in love. He had read it all. He didn’t want to read any more on this subject. So I didn’t write about being in love. Years later I was looking for a theme for a collection of poems. What did I know about? Unrequited love. So I wrote fifty poems. My editor, Marissa Bischoff pared it down to thirty and tweaked a number of them to happier endings.

White Blossom Love was born.

It is a available at raqiapublishing.com and Amazon.

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Glad to see a good friend find success. Congratulations, Gayanne!

Why do you write what you write? How has your journey been so far? How have other people made an influence in your writing?

I'm David, and I'm still at LTUE - see the recap on Monday!

11 comments:

  1. Congratulations, Gayanne! Poetry isn't something I could ever write. Certainly not well enough anyone would want to read it.

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  2. One of the best speakers our local writing group brought in was a poet. In just a few hours, she convinced us all of how reading poetry and trying to write our own would improve our prose. So happy to see Gayanne success.

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  3. I have all the respect for poets because I can't write poetry though I think it is beautiful. Congrats Gayanne.

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  4. Nice to meet you, Gayanne. If it is difficult for me to write prose in English, I'm lost if I ever try poetry. Here's to your success!

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  5. Leslie Norris was an AMAZING poet-- how lucky you got to learn from him. Poetry is a wonderful way to explore life! Thanks, Gayanne, and thanks David for hosting!

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  6. Like the others have said, I'm extremely envious of poets. Not something I have knack for, but love to enjoy. :-)

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  7. I'm a lover of poetry, glad to see more people doing it.

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  8. Congrats to Gayanne! Great post!

    And good to see you at LTUE David! You're freaking awesomesauce!!!

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  9. Congrats, Gayanne! The cover is absolutely stunning. I used to write only poetry, then grew into novels.

    Every now and then, I want to go back to writing poems, but sadly, my characters are a bit too in charge of my creative endeavors. :-D

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  10. This is so cool! Congratulations! My talents most definitely do not lie in poetry...

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