This

– Poems by Srividya Joshi, “Blue Room” by Stephan Vasement –

When I lost touch with Srividya Joshi during the Spring of ’21, I feared the worst. We’d been collaborating to recruit Haiku poets to participate in an international multimedia mosaic that would showcase sights and sounds in vivid verse from around the world. Sadly, the Delta COVID variant was raging in India with devastating consequences. Over a year went by before we reconnected, at which point she offered these poems, fragments from a long period she felt she couldn’t write, as a window into her experience…

– Jeffrey F. Barken

A rustling paper –
Mouthful of stillness murmurs
Aching sighs.

This
This now
While fire rises
The unhinged rush
The unhindered serene flow
The call to be heeded of both
The storms collected
While river flows
This now
This

Bartered for life
Fire of Sun blesses
Some world somewhere.

***

Srividya Joshi is an Interior Designer from Bangalore, India. Dabbling in words, she is exploring her inner world through poetry.

A screenwriter by education, Stephan Vasement is a graphic AI artist who has been fascinated by art since an early age. He grew up in a small snowy town where he went sledding and had a simple childhood that he would wish for every creative person. Fate took him first to Photography, Animation, and then to Artificial Intelligence, the medium of expression that he never left. Vasement´s reference in films is Robert Bresson and in photography Henri Cartier Bresson. He also draws inspiration from the music of Marie Laforet and Françoise Hardy. In 2022, Stephan´s work was featured in Superchief Gallery NFT, Art Basel Miami, nft now and became one of the Finalist pieces in 1st Claire AI Contest.