I’ve snuck an extra guest writer in this week. Talented poet Nicole Sara will be known to many of you from her blog Starry Steps. Her brand new poetry collection is coming out tomorrow! Here’s the blurb:
The Blues and the Beautiful is a luminous collection of poems celebrating life and love in all its forms – the sweet and tender or the painful, the fleeting and the eternal. Written over a period of almost three years, the poems trace the way beauty and sadness intertwine in our life, highlighting bright or black times… and especially the quiet radiance that follows heavier moments, thus showing how heartache, regret or sorrow can shimmer with meaning eventually.
These rhyming poems together with their accompanying photographs honor the simple joys that fill our days: the breeze and the sunlight frolic through the leaves, the magical colors of flowers, sweet smiles shared in happy moments, the soothing presence of the ones we love. Through the delicate imagery and reflective verse, this collection celebrates life’s richness and radiance, its inner rhythm and rhyme, and our resilience… the grace of ultimately finding beauty and light in the deepest shades of blue, darkness or despair.
In its colorful beauty and soft sadness, the collection essentially sings of gratitude – reminding us that beauty and love never truly fade; they transform and they return, living on in everything and everyone we touch.
And it’s now over to Nicole:
Hello, I am Nicole, and I am a bilingual poet and poetic prose writer from Romania.
To share a little about me… I love languages and performing magic with words. I began writing poems in Romanian first, and then also pairing the originals with their translation into English. I love sharing and connecting with fellow creatives on my writing and photography blogs, finding inspiration in the beauty and intelligence of everything around. I write poetry in rhyming verse mostly, as to me it feels as though the rhyme adds to the inner flowing rhythm of things I wish to express.
In 2024, I fulfilled a dream I have had ever since 2015, when starting my first blog, that of publishing a collection of poems accompanied by my nature photographs. I self-published my debut collection, Rhyming Dreams, towards the end of last year, selecting my first poems translated into English in 2016 and 2017. Almost the end of 2025 now, and I am happy to be introducing my second collection as well, The Blues and the Beautiful. Over the past year, my poetic work has also been featured and published (or has been accepted for and is pending publication) in anthologies and online literary magazines.
The poems in The Blues and the Beautiful were written over a period of almost three years, from September 2017 to January 2020 and are like miniature paintings, I could say. Or perhaps… like an invitation? Some even read like joyful games or riddles. What I can say for sure is that they playfully or dreamily wish to capture life’s beauty and brightness, its colorful joy or soft nostalgia, and that they are simply about the journey, not the destination. It is after all a search, what we do, the way we live, how we create… despite the days’ ups and downs, and the sadness or wistfulness that we may feel along our winding ways.
Thank you very much, Esther, for your kind invitation to share news about my upcoming collection and myself, it has been a real pleasure!
Here is a poem from this new collection to be released at the beginning of November.
Smiling Chant
A good night thought and a good morning hug,
a nice cup of tea or a big coffee mug,
smiles and handshakes and soft kind words,
a sweet dear gesture or the chirping of birds…
flowers and sunshine, the sounding of bells,
sea waves and sand castles, suntan and shells,
the mountains, the meadows, the winding ways,
the trees and the grass in Augusts or Mays,
the scent of an orange, the taste of sweet cherries,
the texture of apples, the colors of berries…
a bee and a butterfly, a spider or ant,
all glorious part
of a radiant chant…
Cat fur and dog ears and cute rabbits’ eyes
a well known habit or a funny surprise,
raindrops and rainbows, a wonderful walk,
a meaningful silence or a comforting talk…
cloudy or sunny, tears or gladness,
the blue or the red, the cheer or sadness,
nightlights and stars, moon glow in her hair,
deep hues in his heart, dream balm in the air,
hello’s, see you later’s, arriving or leaving,
trusting, adoring, rejoicing, believing…
the past’s pulsing rhythm, the present’s new rhyme
the glittering rippling
of a radiant chime…
Esther Chilton 
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