Friday Five Writers – Page 19

Photo of Sage Ravenwood, a deaf Cherokee poet — Sage Ravenwood

I first encountered the writings of Sage Ravenwood via one of her poems, “Lit Cigarette Summer.” It was published in Scavengers, a literary magazine of Querencia Press, and the opening lines — I wanted a clove cigarette so bad/I could taste it like a dying wish — hooked me immediately, like a nicotine habit. I knew right away that I had to read more from this writer.

Recently, her collection of poems, Everything That Hurt Us Becomes A Ghost, celebrated its one-year anniversary. In this week’s Friday Five, Sage discusses that collection, her philosophy on writing, and more. She also shares the poem, in its entirety, that inspired the book’s title.

Author João Cerqueira. Image via ReadersFavorite.com.

November 9 will mark the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall that once separated communist East Germany from democratic West Germany. While this event may sound like ancient history to some younger readers, I have vivid memories of watching in astonishment the TV news reports of the wall’s dismantling. Today, this act is seen as symbolic of the collapse of the Soviet Union’s style of communism, the collapse of that nation and its Eastern European satellites, a collapse hastened by the political reform movement in the Soviet Union known as “perestroika.”

The downfall of communism in the USSR and Eastern Europe is the subject of Portuguese writer João Cerqueira‘s latest novel, Perestroika: An Eye for an Eye, a Tooth for a Tooth. The novel tells the story of a fictitious Eastern Bloc nation, Slavia, that is caught in the social and political upheavals of that era.

Category: Friday Five Writers

Friday Five: Q&A with poet Sage Ravenwood (and bonus poem)

Friday Five: Q&A with ‘Perestroika’ author João Cerqueira