Gloom Cupboard (August 2009) : www.gloomcupboard.com
Excerpt from Interview: "Anarda Nashai: Graduation from the School of Life"
To the core: questions of a lifetime...
Which themes drive and engage you the most?
My roots to poetry are remarkably deep. As a child poet, I remember being influenced by several themes and movements of poetry, whether it was the wayward intuition of French symbolism, or the more earthly and dare I say, brutality of confessionalism. I've experimented with every style since then, but have recently settled with a method of free-style confessional poetry, with themes that are more based on philosophy and commentary than they are with raw emotion. Since I do have vested interest in international women's rights, and love to network with other likeminded hearts, I often write in support of independence from behavioral conformity, cultural diversity, and social freedom. In my collection School Girl: Poetry and Prose of a Pre and Post Adolescent, you will find traces of my budding idealism, which has only matured in spirit over the years, and continues to drive me today, not only as an artist, but as a human being.
Your bio states your continuing engagement towards poetry from 2007 till now, can you make this image more concrete and explicit for us?
As a child, my poetry journals were my unofficial diaries, so it was never my intention to publish them. Having concentrated more on writing fiction after college, I came across my journals, began to share them with family, friends, and colleagues, and was encouraged to publish from my old journals. I fell back into the habit of writing poetry in 2007 and have plans to publish a follow-up collection of poetry in the near future. Currently, I am promoting School Girl, my first collection of poetry, selected from my junior high and high school poetry journals. While I'm in the process of publishing my first novel, Ladybug, I am also hard at work on several other literary projects, which include erotica/paranormal and creative nonfiction.
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