Chapbook Interview with Ariana D. Den Bleyker

  
1.  Tell us about your latest poetry chapbook.

The journey of learning to cope with any mental illness is to explore the world and yourself. Consciousness is the first step to healing. Recovery begins the day you take stock of your wounds and journey towards new self-awareness and possibility. The poems in Hatched from Bone are succinct highlights of the 12th year of my bipolar diagnosis. It was a year of discovery, a year of change, a year of learning to understand how this becomes that. 

2.  What was the inspiration behind it?

Again, Hatched from Bone documents a year of self-discovery through the visualization and conceptualization of myself through the ups and downs of my marriage. In finally learning how to cope with my diagnosis, I began to understand what lack of communication, unresolved baggage and unfulfilled expectations can do to those we love, can ultimately affect who we are individually.

3.  What would you like readers and other poets to learn from this chapbook?

We reap what we sow. Personal growth is no exception. This manuscript was written to encourage all of those who so deeply want that connected, loving and satisfying marriage, who want to invest themselves in what it takes to have successful relationships with those we love and ourselves.

4.  What advice would you give to a novice poet?   

Read. Read. Read.

Absorb. Absorb. Absorb. 

Write. Write. Write. 

Submit. Submit. Submit. Wash. 

Rinse. Repeat. 

Oh, and NEVER fear rejection. 

5.  Thank you for joining us today.  How can we reach you? 

Anyone can e-mail me at anytime at eljpublications@gmail.com. My personal website is www.arianaddenbleyker.com. For those readers and poets that aren't familiar with my work, please note I am also an editor and founder of a small indie press, ELJ Publications, which is the parent press of Emerge Literary Journal and scissors & spackle. I love to read, read, read and publish, publish, publish what I love to read and wish I had written myself.

Interested?  Purchase Hatched from Bone today.  Lulu.com is offering free mail shipping or 50% off ground shipping with code KINDNESS14.  This offer ends Feb 21.