“Write your raw and honest truth because you will be surprised at how many people will connect with it.”
Lydia Redwine’s The Blue-Gabled House, is a poetry collection for lovers and readers of heart-touching and original poetry and prose pieces. Released on March 1, 2020, this collection including fifty-eight original pieces, is the perfect collection to read and become inspired by. Her work in The Blue-Gabled House is both refreshing and impactful.
The Blue-Gabled House is Redwine’s second collection of poetry that explores her mind and heart as she navigates the first stages of a new season of life. This collection explores growth, change, and acceptance of oneself as well as others. Solemn and sweet, these poems speak to love, loss, and discovery.
Lydia, a 19-year-old author from Cincinnati, Ohio, is also the author of two fantasy novels and two poetry collections all of which can be viewed and purchased on Amazon here.
Can you share some background knowledge on The Blue-Gabled House! When and why did you start creating the idea for this collection?
All of my poems kind of come about in very random ways. I don’t just sit down and draft a whole poetry book. I write poems here and there and eventually gather them in a collection. As far as the concept and title of The Blue-Gabled House goes, well, I had that title picked out long before I even considered myself to be a poet. I had that title in mind for a long time and knew that it would be some kind of metaphor of a well lived-in place now occupied by a new, young, broken person searching for answers in an uncertain transition in their life. I thought this would be the title of a novel or something but once I had a number of poems collected, I knew the title would be The Blue-Gabled House.
What female poets have inspired you and The Blue-Gabled House. Why?
My favorite female poet is Olivia Gatwood, who, while she writes on topics different from those I’ve written about in this collection, is a huge inspiration to me in storytelling and style. I don’t really have any other poets that inspired this work. Most of it came from my own experiences but I was also definitely inspired by authors Lucy Maud Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables) and Louisa May Alcott (Little Women) for how they wrote about womanhood and youth.
One of my favorite pieces from The Blue-Gabled House is “(un)becoming” Can you give a little more insight behind that piece?
For a good year or so I’ve been entranced by this concept of “becoming” which is basically a word I use for learning, self-improvement, growth, discovery, transition, etc. As I considered this concept in copious contexts, I started to think of what unbecoming might mean. I struck something inside of myself where I learned that sometimes to “become” a better person or what we want to be, we have to undo some things already within us. Whether those be habits, hangups, traits, grudges, etc. You already are you who are right now.
What piece from The Blue-Gabled House is your favorite and why?
Okay, this is really hard but if I HAD to chose I would probably go with poem 55 titled “The Answer to the First Problem” or poem 56 titled “This is Woman.”
Both poems are about women in the Bible and I wrote them because I grew up in the church and in a conservative home where I felt like the powerful stories of women in the Bible were both underrated and unappreciated. There are certain stories about strong women in this book that many people do not know exist. I wanted to give them a shoutout in my poetry.
Lydia explained that it is very hard to give advice because it sounds all the same. In her experience, most people just say to read a lot and just finish a draft. Sure, both of those are things that need to be done but she added more. She said, “build a community and write from your own feelings and experiences. Do not worry so much about what people will criticize you for or techniques. Write your raw and honest truth because you will be surprised at how many people will connect with it.”
For the rest of 2020, she hopes keep writing. “My main writing goal all the time is to just write whenever I can.” Specifically, she hopes to finish and publish the third book in my fantasy series Instruments of Sacrifice and draft the fourth book. She added that she will probably be writing more poems too because, “Poetry always pops out of nowhere for me.”
I cannot wait to see what her future work will bring. If it’s anything like The Blue-Gabled House, it’s guaranteed to have both refreshing and inspiring pieces.
Connect with Lydia today and be sure to add The Blue-Gabled House to your collection!