Undawnted Interviews Dawn Pisturino, Day Seven of the WordCrafter Poetry Treasures 5: Small Pleasures Book Blog Tour

 WordCrafter Poetry Treasures 5: Small Pleasures

 

About Poetry Treasures 5: Small Pleasures

Open the cover, and you will discover Poetry Treasures from the guests on Robbie Cheadle's 2024: Treasuring Poetry blog series on Writing to be Read.

 

Poetry Treasures 5: Small Pleasures

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Introduction

Welcome, Undawntables to the Poetry Treasures 5: Small Pleasures blog tour. This year, I and several other poets created a wonderful poetry anthology delving into the theme: Small Pleasures. 

Dawn Pisturino is one of my compatriot poets in this publication. She is a beautiful writer with a bright future in the creative writing field. I interviewed Ms. Pisturino about her poetry.

Please welcome her to Undawnted with our warm and gracious hospitality.

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Interview with Dawn Pisturino

Every poet has a favorite poet, but do you have a favorite song? Songs are poetry set to music. Tell me yours and why it is your favorite.

I love all kinds of music, from opera to heavy metal, so I don’t really have a favorite song. Every song touches me in some unique way. Some of my favorite rock songs are “Nights in White Satin” by the Moody Blues and “A Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin. Abbey Road by the Beatles and The Wall by Pink Floyd are among my favorite rock albums. Opera-wise, I’ve liked the Gershwin classic, Porgy and Bess, since I was a child. I enjoy singers like Enya, Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, Al Green, Michael Jackson, Sting, and Roberta Flack. My favorite classical composers are Wagner, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Debussy, Satie, Tchaikovsky, and Grieg.
 

Poetry can be found in anything, and since a picture is worth a thousand words, what school of art (impressionism, expressionism, cubism, et al) inspires you to write poetry and why?

I rarely write poetry based on a photo or a piece of art. My favorite artists are the Italian Renaissance masters, like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. My poetry derives from my own emotions and imagination. Since I have a wide range of interests, I can always find something to write about.

If you have a favorite flower (it can be a tree), which one would you write a poem about? 

I love daffodils and tulips, but purple irises are my favorite because they are delicate and fragile.

Tell me your poetic journey. Where did it start? Does it still influence you today?

I’ve been writing poetry since I was in third grade. My first poem was about spiders. I mainly grew up in the country, so I’ve always lived close to nature. As a teenager, I discovered the great English poets like Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, the Brownings, and Blake. Then, it was American poets like Whitman, Eliot, Cummings, and Millay. Although these poets still influence me, I spend more time reading contemporary poets.

Whatever else you would like to impart upon my readers.

I’ve published five poetry collections, all Amazon bestsellers and/or #1 Amazon New Releases. Ancient Voices: Poems About Ancient Egypt can now be pre-ordered on Amazon. The Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, paperback, and hardcover editions will be available on May 1, 2025. On pre-order, the collection has already achieved #1 Amazon New Release status in African Poetry and History of Egypt. Amazon Blurb “The Ancient Egyptians loved life and celebrated it with joy. Their deepest desire was to live an honorable life and achieve immortality in the afterlife, where they could exist in perfect harmony with the cosmic order and never experience pain, suffering, and hardship again. These original poems by Dawn Pisturino reflect the hopes and dreams of people who were not much different from us. They worked, loved, raised families, worshiped their gods, honored the dead, enjoyed festivals and celebrations, imbibed beer and wine, danced, sang, and played, aspired to better themselves, and appreciated the beauty and wonder of nature. Take a journey back in time to explore the
minds and hearts of the Ancient Egyptians.”

Amazon Purchase Link: https://a.co/d/bmcFOIf
Thank you for your support!

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About Dawn Pisturino

Author photograph of Dawn Pisturino

Dawn Pisturino is a retired registered nurse in Arizona whose international publishing credits include poems, short stories, and articles. Her first poetry collection, Ariel's Song: Published Poems, 1987– 2023, debuted with five-star reviews and reached #60 on the Amazon Bestseller List for Haiku; Japanese Poetry. Her short chapbook, Lunar Gazing Haiku, became a #1 Amazon New Release in six categories. 

Her Halloween collection, Haiku for the Midnight Hour, achieved #1 Amazon New Release status in three categories. Sun Haiku: 365 Days of Sunshine, released in December 2024, quickly climbed to #1 Amazon New Release status in Japanese Poetry: Haiku. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America and the Arizona Authors Association.

You can catch Robbie Cheadle’s interview with Dawn Pisturino here: https://writingtoberead.com/2024/10/16/treasuring-poetry-meet-talented-poet-dawn-pisturino-and-a-review-poetrycommunity-poetry-treasuringpoetry.

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*Giveaway*

This tour, we’re giving away digital copies of Poetry Treasures 5: Small Pleasures to three lucky winners. Follow the tour and comment at each stop, so we’ll know you were there. You’ll be entered for another chance in the giveaway at each stop. Winners are chosen through a random drawing by WordCrafter Press. We’ll be watching for your name.

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Support Great Artists 

Poetry Treasures 5: Small Pleasures will be released on April 22, 2025. I hope everyone will have a chance to read the exceptional creative works therein. Every poet featured is a stellar rhythm-rhyme writer.

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Join poets DL Mullan, Barbara Harris Leonhard, Jude Itakali, Ivor Steven, Robbie Cheadle, Michelle Ayon Navajas, Gwen M. Plano, Elizabeth Gauffreau, David Bogomolny, Dawn Pasturino, Maggie Watson, and Colleen Chesebro share their own small pleasures in poetic verse.

Tour Schedule

April 21-28 - Poetry Treasures 5: Small Pleasures, by Kaye Lynne Booth, et.al.
Mon. 4/21 - Opening Day- Writing to be Read - (Intro. post & Book Trailer)
Tues 4/22 - Colleen Writes & Publishes - (Dawn Pisturino. Guest Post)
Wed. 4/23 - Patty's Worlds - (Michelle Navajas Guest Post)
Thurs. 4/24 - Carla Loves to Read- (Ivor Stevens Reading))
Fri. 4/25 – Poetry By Mich - (Barbabra Harris Leonhard Reading)
Sat. 4/26 - Book Places - (DL Mullan Reading)
Sun. 4/27 - Writing to be Read – (Wrap up) - Undawnted (Interview with Dawn
Pisturino)

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Become an Undawntable

Keep up-to-date with everything Undawnted through Substack: Undawntable Newsletter. Join today! 

Undawnted's DL Mullan can be booked for your online Blog Tour, Book Event, Book Review (w/ARC), Interview, Writing Conference, or Genre Convention. Ms. Mullan has years of experience in public speaking, readings, present- ations, events, and tours.

Book a quality author and presenter with Undawnted: Bookings online form.

 

 

Poetry Treasures 5: Small Pleasures Anthology Publishing DL Mullan's Original Works

Celebrate Poetry Month 

Poetry Treasures is a poetry anthology series by Robbie Cheadle (aka Roberta Eaton Cheadle) on Kaye Lynne Booth's Writing to be Read blogsite.

After realizing that I wrote poetry, Ms. Cheadle invited me into her select group: Treasuring Poetry, 2024: Introducing the poetry of DL Mullan and a review. With the culmination of a year's worth of poets, the fifth installment of her poetry anthology is set for publication this month.

Yours truly will be the first poet, since I was Ms. January 2024. Six of my poems will be available for perusal: Daybreak, Home, Myth, Quantum Time, Galactic Ride, and Slap-Happy Contagion. Each one brings a different perspective to the theme: Small Pleasures. 

Poetry Treasures Anthology on Undawnted.  

Poetry Treasures Poetry Slam on Undawnted's channel (Playlist).

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Song Release

Quantum Time is the inspiration for my song released on my self-titled: Undawnted album. 

Listen here and leave me your thoughts on my channel. 

Remember to Like, Comment, and Subscribe!

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Support Great Artists 

Poetry Treasures 5: Small Pleasures will be released on April 22, 2025. I hope everyone will have a chance to read the exceptional creative works therein. Every poet featured is a stellar rhythm-rhyme writer.


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Album Release

Ages instrumental album was inspired by DL Mullan's poems published in this anthology. 

This LP (long play) album's singles are available for listening via the Ages Playlist. 

For more information, or to read the song track titles, visit Ages Album & Singles on Undawnted.

 

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About the Poet

 

DL Mullan is much more than a lyrical and literary poet. Her elementary school taught Japanese theater and poetry, foreign languages, writing, cooking, drama, as well as drawing skills. Secondary education was an Arts Magnet High school, introducing her to the technical side of art through theater and concert choir. Everything a budding artist would need until community college filled her with a love for poetry. As a poet, she won academic awards and writing credits. Director of her own community poetry group, she presented, taught the love of poetry, as well as created her own poetic forms. During 2020, participants from around the world, including Europe and Asia, flocked to Undawnted to learn poetry from Ms. Mullan. Experience poetry in genres and styles that aren’t taught in the traditional English textbooks, but should be.

Ms. Mullan holds several college degrees, including a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies, as well as a Masters of Arts in Teaching and Learning with Technology.

For more information about DL Mullan’s creative writing, digital art, poetry, music and more, visit http://www.undawnted.com.

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Become an Undawntable

 Keep up-to-date with everything Undawnted through Substack: Undawntable Newsletter. Join today!

Undawnted's DL Mullan can be booked for your online Blog Tour, Book Event, Book Review (w/ARC), Interview, Writing Conference, or Genre Convention. Ms. Mullan has years of experience in public speaking, readings, present- ations, events, and tours.

Book a quality author and presenter with Undawnted: Bookings online form.

 

Undawnted Presents: Paul Kane's The Hanging Men for WordCrafter's Tales from the Hanging Tree Anthology

About Tales From the Hanging Tree

There exists a tree that is timeless, spanning across all dimensions, which absorbs every life as those who are hanged as they die… and it remembers every one. The stories within are a select few of the Tales From the Hanging Tree. Tales from the Hanging Tree is a wonderfully dark, themed anthology which revolves around an ephemeral and timeless hanging tree that absorbs the memories of all hanging victims. This WordCrafter Press anthology was created by invitation only and includes stories from authors Kaye Lynne Booth, Paul Kane, DL Mullan, C.R. Johansson, Joseph Carrabis, Sylva Fae, and Matt Usher.

 

Purchase through Books2Read. 

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Inspiration for “The Hanging Men”, by Paul Kane

As soon as Kaye mentioned that there was a Wordcrafter anthology coming up she was gathering stories for, called Tales from the Hanging Tree, something clicked. I remembered an old tale I’d started many years ago, in fact not that long after I’d begun writing and sending submissions off to small press magazines back in the 1990s. Back then, I’d also attend events with like-minded people, all chatting about their influences – such as MR James, Arthur Machen, William Hope Hodgson, Lovecraft and so on. 

I’d read a few of those kinds of tales growing up, usually in supernatural anthologies, but was really coming to horror/supernatural writing via ’70s and ’80s fiction by authors like Jim Herbert, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Anne Rice, Ramsey Campbell, Graham Masterton et al. So I went away and read some of those recommendations from my fellow writers, and loved it all – so much so that it influenced tales like ‘Shadow Writer’, ‘St August’s Flame’ and ‘Star Pool’. I eventually moved more towards the modern kind of horror writing again, but still liked to keep my hand in with the more old-fashioned style of tale. 

Which is where ‘The Hanging Men’ comes in. I began writing it in either the late ’90s, or early 2000s, aiming to produce something that was a mix of ghost story and folk horror; the kind of thing that might morph into a myth or legend itself. There’s definitely more than a whiff of James about the whole thing, probably also influenced by those wonderful BBC A Ghost Story for Christmas adaptations of the ’60s and ’70s.  

For some reason I can’t remember now – it might even have been to do with moving more towards a modern style, or perhaps it was because I was starting to teach around then and so my time was a bit limited – I never got around to actually finishing it off. But like something I might have mislaid during a house move, it niggled me. Those things tend to do that – I’ve just recently rediscovered a full-length novel I wrote in my early 20s, which I went through and sent out to be published: The Wet, which has just been released as a curiosity (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wet-Paul-Kane/dp/1953905935/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2OT394GFS7A40&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Z5N5llZqAAvpsFpjpXneog.fasuXHPlidz2Ik_jjO2jXQ1AjZSPboqiOvAK0eudfm8&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+wet+paul+kane&qid=1724771978&sprefix=the+wet+paul+kane%2Caps%2C77&sr=8-1). 

And while that one is not the novel I’d write today, when I finally laid my hands on ‘The Hanging Men’ in an old folder and re-read what I’d done – maybe 1000 wds or so – I found I slipped very easily into the voice again, like a pair of old comfy slippers. Maybe it’s because we’ve just been putting together an anthology called Beyond & Within: Folk Horror for Flame Tree (out now, folks! https://www.amazon.co.uk/Horror-Short-Stories-Beyond-Within/dp/1804177326/ref=sr_1_1?crid=VASDFLOSSYL1&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.JHGNriPdOKCpgs65pre9wQ._Df1E3MW5R_JlmdmOb5h7VnV9F3o-vM4NnovHRf-4mQ&dib_tag=se&keywords=beyond+and+within+folk+horror&qid=1724772064&sprefix=beyond+and+within%2Caps%2C81&sr=8-1) that it felt so right. Or perhaps it was a simple matter of completing something that needed completing. 

Either way, I’m delighted Kaye took the story for Tales from the Hanging Tree, giving it a new lease of life. A tale that spans 25 years or more, not in the narrative itself, but in the writing of it. I hope readers enjoy this short shocker when they pick up the book! 

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Support Great Artists 

Buy your copy of Tales from the Hanging Tree anthology at these fine retailers:

Purchase through Books2Read. 

 

 

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About Paul Kane

Paul Kane is the award-winning (including the British Fantasy Society’s Legends of FantasyCon Award 2022), bestselling author and editor of over a hundred and fifty books – such as the Arrowhead  trilogy (gathered in the sellout Hooded Man omnibus), Hellbound Hearts, Wonderland (a Shirley Jackson Award finalist) and Pain Cages (an Amazon #1 bestseller). His non-fiction books include The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy and Voices in the Dark. He has been a Guest at many conventions, as well as being a panellist at FantasyCon and the World FantasyConvention, and a fiction judge at the Sci-Fi London festival. A former British Fantasy Society SpecialPublications Editor, he has also served as co-chair for the UK chapter of The Horror Writers Association and co-chaired ChillerCon UK in May 2022. His work has been optioned and adapted for the big and small screen, including for US network primetime television and as the feature film Sacrifice starring Barbara Crampton (Re-Animator, You’re Next, Suitable Flesh). His audio work includes the full cast drama adaptation of The Hellbound Heart for Bafflegab, starring Alice Lowe (Prevenge), and the Robin of Sherwood adventure The Red Lord for Spiteful Puppet/ITV. He has also contributed to the Warhammer 40k universe for Games Workshop. Paul’s latest novels are the sequels to RED – Blood RED & Deep RED (aka The RED Trilogy) – the award-winning hit Sherlock Holmes & the Servants of Hell, Before (an Amazon Top 5 dark fantasy bestseller), Arcana, The Storm and The Gemini Effect. In addition he writes thrillers for HQ/HarperCollins as PL Kane: the sellout novels Her Last Secret, Her Husband’s Grave and The Family Lie. Paul lives in Derbyshire, UK, with his wife Marie O’Regan. Find out more at his site www.shadow-writer.co.uk which has featured Guest Writers such as Stephen King, Catriona Ward, Dean Koontz, Olivie Blake and Guillermo del Toro.

Socials: Facebook, X (@PaulKaneShadow),  Instagram (@paul.kane.376) and Bluesky (@paulkane.bsky.social) 

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 Undawnteum Vlog: 

 Author News and Updates Playlist

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Tour Schedule

Monday Sept. 9 – Writing to be Read – Reading Excerpt by Joseph Carrabis & Guest Sylva Fae

Tuesday Sept. 10 – Roberta Writes – Guest Kaye Lynne Booth

Wednesday Sept. 11 – Carla Reads – Guest C.R. Johansson

Thursday Sept. 12 – Undawnted – Guest Paul Kane*

Friday Sept. 13 – Writing to be Read – Guest Matt Usher