Featured Author: Wendy E. Slater, Poet


Our featured author is a poet with 3 books published. She's here today to share with us her latest release, The Ocher of Abundance. Get to know author Wendy E. Slater.



Who is Wendy E. Slater, the woman?

I'm a mystical poet presently living in Vermont, and have published several volumes in my Traduka Wisdom Poetry Series of spiritually inspired poetry.  I live my life in accordance with this wisdom and the understanding that the most complex concepts can be expressed succinctly with simplicity. 

When did you start writing poetry? 

Let me answer that question by first defining what poetry is to me. 

Audre Lorde, the poet, said “Poetry is the way we give name to the nameless so it can be thought.”  I embrace Lorde’s statement as truth about poetry. I started reading and writing poetry at a very young age as a child, and poetry was always and still remains a vivid way for me to dialogue in a clear still place. Poetry gives edges, expression, and delineation to experiences that allow the reader to help define and be with their own experience that is evoked from reading the poem. 

To some readers, a poem defines an emotional experience that lacked words and depth, and the poetry enables them to re-experience and ultimately, re-examine and reintegrate from the reading of a poem. For the reader, poetry essentially creates an intimacy within the self and with the poem. Great poetry renders a visual like a painting where one can see all the splashes,  colors, layers and depths or a beautiful symphony or ensemble of music where one has the time and space to really listen to each and every instrument and the synthesis of all the sounds that create the culmination of the whole journey of the painting or song. Poetry enables the reader to be in the painting or music, as examples, in action, yet, also, as an observer.  Poetry enables one to glimpse into both one’s own life, as well as that of the poet’s.

I wrote my first poem in I think 6th grade (age 11 or 12, I think), and the poem was printed in the school anthology. I wrote this first poem, I believe, because it was a homework assignment to write a poem. By this age I had read quite a bit of poetry, although I suspect all of the poetry read at that point in my life had been poetry written for children. The emotion, at the time, of my first poem, I believe, was silent acceptance and hope. The poem had an expression of Divinity in it-although not directly but abstractly. I think that was very reflective of where I was at in my life-that I had a deep connection and understanding of Divinity, not in religious terms, but rather in spiritual terms. Expression through poetry has always been second nature for me, very at ease. My 15 page poem in The Ocher of Abundance was written in about 30-40 minutes as a stream of consciousness. 

Have you ever thought of writing in other genres?

I very much would like to write in other genres. I have an oral history project on the back burner, as well as an idea for a children’s book. I intend to put together a workshop book on poetry and healing to help others express and heal in their lives.

What is your best composition? Can you share it with us?

I have so many poems. While only 3 volumes are published as of today, there are over twenty written (most unedited) volumes in my poetry series, the Traduka Wisdom Poetry Series. While editing a volume of my poetry, I become very analytical, detached in a way from what I am editing, and ultimately, at the end of the process, I need to greatly distance myself from the published volume of poetry for a bit of time in order to be with my poetry as “ poetry” again. 

Here is a favorite published poem from The Ocher of Abundance, Poems-Volume 16, my most recently published volume of poetry. 

1602 

Full moons,
    Tantric eclipses
       Linger no more,
       Neither in the palm, heart, eye,
            Nor in the unconfirmed
                   Or confirmed echo and breath
                         Of now and always
     Begins again
            As if it never ceased
                   Nor stopped
                   When foot folded
                         Under the shadow
                         Of it all.
   
A full moon
          In stilled water
          Is apparently
            Not the truth
          When you dive into
               And immerse in the illusion
               Bent by reflection,
                      Arcs, trajectories
          Of spitting stars
                      From breath
               To catch in the heart
                       When footing is
                                     Unsteady.
  
 A rose is always a rose
           In the garden, vase,
           Or wilted,
           Even folded back into the compost
             That has the revelation
                     Of truth,
   Not as a secret to unfold
           But in the touch
                Of the petal, stem,
                And even the thorn,
                With care.

© 2018 Wendy E. Slater

Have you won any competition or planning to enter poetry competitions?

When I was much younger, before I stopped writing for 15-20 years, I was in my school anthology and a college anthology. In the mid 2000’s, around 2005, I made a few submissions. And it was a learning curve because, in hindsight, I presented everything from titles to cover letters incorrectly, as wells as submitting improperly edited poems.I learned a lot from the experience. Now I know where to go to have  second set of eyes edit the poetry for grammar (my biggest weakness) etc. It was really like a having a couple of full-time jobs over the past 3-4 years as I learned all about computer programs, social media, self-publishing etc. I wasn’t present on social media before 2015. 

What do you think about Indie Publishing? Are you enjoying it so far?

I have mixed feelings about Indie publishing, personally. Meaning it is an enormous amount of work as any Indie author knows. I have read some wonderful, well written books by Indie authors. The Indie movement is a force unto itself. It has allowed writers to step beyond the conformity of publishers. 

However, having said that, I wanted to understand my branding with the poetry and readers before finding the correct publisher or publishing house. In order to do that, I needed to self-publish. I needed to understand my modern mystical poetry and what distinguishes my poetry and how it synthesizes with my shamanic/ quantum healing business ( medical intuition and energy healing) as all my published poetry books are part of my spiritual poetry series: The Traduka Wisdom Poetry Series.

Tell us about your latest release, The Ocher of Abundance

The Ocher of Abundance, Poems-Volume 16 is my third poetry book in my modern mystical poetry series: The Traduka Wisdom Poetry Series to be published. After a twenty-year hiatus from writing poetry, I composed 20 volumes of spiritually inspired poetry which began in 2001 during a mystical sojourn to Scotland.  

My poetry is the expression and integration of the inner dialogue with Divinity and the spiritual journey of self-discovery through vision quests, spiritual awakenings, and the dark night of the soul. 

My words reflect deeply on both the hidden and revealed relationship of nature, the cosmos, humanity and the healing of archetypes both esoteric and known in the individual and collective psyche. My poetic formulas are both wisdom and method; a sharing of words that open doors for readers and invite them on their own spiritual journey of awakening and healing. (Into the Hearth, Poems-volume 14 and Of the Flame, Poems-Volume 15 precede The Ocher of Abundance, Poems-Volume 16.)




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