Honoring My Fellows

Greetings, everyone. It’s been weeks in the making, but I’m finally fulfilling my promise to D. Alexandra Porter to write my own version of her Vocal Inspirations post. My apologies for the delay! (Yes, this promise was made just to myself, but I feel I ought to keep such promises.) Catch D’s article here.

What an amazing idea, to honor specific creators on Vocal and give them more of a spotlight than they tend to receive! Although now that I’m thinking about it, I suppose Paul Stewart is also to thank for this, as I’m sort of melding D’s inspirations with Paul’s “Deep Cuts.” Anyway, however it manifests, I want to shine the light.

The following creators are just a few out of so many whom I’ve grown to admire immensely. I feel they deserve more love and reads than they get. Above all, they inspire me to write and write better with each piece.

Rest assured, this will not be the only article I post. Stay tuned.

My Self-Imposed Guidelines

These are my goals for each of these pieces:

1. I want to feature only a handful of creators at a time. This is so I can give them my full attention without making each post too long.
2. I want the post to highlight one story from each creator.
3. The story will be a lesser known, probably older piece.

Aaaaand we're off!

Andrei Z.

“Alchemist” reads like slam poetry would sound. It is full of emotion, surrealism, and a gripping narrative. Truly, a spectacular creation. Andrei’s poetry consistently astounds me. I could probably dedicate an entire article just on Andrei's work.

Chloe J.

“Blink” by Chloë J is astonishing. I was utterly captivated by the colors she uses to establish where the speaker is, and then the following, slowly unfurling mystery. I won’t spoil anything. Just go read it. It’s truly a marvel, and grossly under-read.

Sonia Heidi Unruh

“Flutter” is such an imaginative story about a leaf falling from its tree. The story feels deep, like an allegory, one that you insert yourself into and see the world differently, with more beauty than you did before. The relationship between Flutter and Breeze is truly heart warming, and makes for a gripping narrative.

Mesh Toraskar

“Serendipity” is my favorite poem that Mesh has written (so far). Though it guts me to pick a favorite, I think this is it. The structure, the diction, the paralyzingly gorgeous images and lines... If Mesh were to expand this poem into a poetry collection, I’d be the first to purchase that book. Or any book he wrote, really. (Hi, Mesh!)

* Update: He wrote a second part to this poem “Returning is a love language” that I highly recommend you check out. Like, do it now.  

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If you got this far, thank you! I hope you take the time to read more than just the embedded stories for each creator. It was a challenge to choose the ones I did. Each person has so many I could have gone with instead, but I have to follow my self-imposed guidelines, otherwise this would reach novel length.

Please, if you have any stories to recommend, drop them in the comments! I’m always looking for more undiscovered treasures, be them older or simply underread for whatever reason. So if that means your own work or someone else’s, I invite you to share.

Well, that will do it for this first installment! I do hope you enjoyed. My ever present hope is share this with as many readers as possible and if you’re one of them, it’s working. Thank you so much for your time and love. 💕

Cheers!

Note: I originally posted this three weeks ago, but felt I need to add a few small updates and edit a couple things. Sorry for any confusion!