Featured Poet: Sally Rawhey
We had the opportunity to interview the talented Sally Rawhey about her creative process and body of work.
Congratulations on publishing your books There and The Unspoken Voices What inspired you to write these books?
I would like to thank Train River Publishing for choosing me for this interview on your esteemed website, I was also one of the fortunate poets who joined your Spring Anthology and I am very proud of that. Well, my first book came after a turning point in my life, after a realization that one is created for a purpose and if it is poetry writing that fills the heart with a sense of living and meaning, then my journey was chosen for that. Greatly moved and inspired by the book, The Forty Rules Of Love, by Elif Shafak, and her magnificent story of Rumi ( the great Sufi Poet) and Shams the Dervish , I felt a strong need to write about the essence of love and its many magical forms, hence my first book, The Unspoken Voices. A couple of years later, THERE was published by the same British Publishing house that found in it a continuation to this elevated state of the heart that is made by love. Only this time, THERE, is a collection of poems that takes you to that very spot where everything meaningful in life happens. THERE, where people fall in love. THERE where hatred is rooted.. THERE, where God grants happiness.
Can you describe your creative process?
I never really had a pattern, I’ve been writing since I was a kid, the sound of rhyming words that come with coated sincere emotions increases the beats of my heart, and fills me with euphoric sensations that morph into poems. But I love the game of words, putting scattered letters together and creating meaning is like doing magic. The thrill of experimenting with different types and structures of poetry is almost an addiction. But most of all, creativity in my case is an attempt to release my soul, allow it to take control of my being and letting it dictate and I write obediently.
What does your workspace look like?
My workspace is a rock by the sea, or the brown, rough surface of a trunk of a tree, or perhaps a street corner as I stop when the words flow without permission on to me. My workspace is any space where my heart is free to express what is me.
What is your motivation for writing?
I want to reach more people, let them see the connection between their heart and soul. To see how truth is beauty and pureness is freedom. I want to realize my existence in the lives of others, I want to shed light on the magnificence of all what God created and it all exists in the word “love”.
Sally Rawhey performing a poetry reading of her book The Unspoken Voices in 2019.
How did you become a poet?
I became a poet the moment I stood in front of a big audience of poets and writers in an open-mic event in one of London’s main poetry halls and heard their applause. I lived a lifetime writing to myself but that moment of sharing with other poets created within me a dream to relive the experience and participate with my work year after year. Followed by a determination to publish my book, alas one day my kids proudly hold it in their hands.
Has the coronavirus pandemic changed how you approach your craft?
That difficult time made me appreciate more my constant companions: words. Only they came in a spectrum of colors: sadness, fear, strength, gratitude, will…and a new book of poems was put together, that will soon become my third.
What does literary success look like to you?
Literary success is a link between myself and more souls, threads of invisible love, and the more they increase the more I am content and pleased.
Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
Yes… know that the voice in your heart, that makes you write is your lifetime best friend, it will walk along with you in your sad times, dance to your success, pull you up from your loses and immortalize you when you are gone…hold on to your friend in your journey of life and never, ever silence its voice.
Where can readers read more of your work?
My two books The Unspoken Voices and THERE are selling in U.K.’s bookstores and can also be bought online on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. You can follow me on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.
