Artist Statement
by Toni Scales
Welcome. My name is Toni Scales, and I write poetry of literary, Gothic, and Southern Gothic themes, with a special emphasis on the feminine experience. My poetry has been published online and in print.
My work evokes such issues as feminine loss, despair, desire, memory, childhood, and identity. My settings often take place in the haunted South--the ghosts of the past and the ghosts and secrets we keep buried inside us that yearn to be free make a continuous appearance throughout my verse. Yearning, lust, isolation, missing girls, abandoned houses, and vintage ephemera spice my descriptions and poetic pictures and nuances. I write as an expression of my innermost self and as a catharsis, and it seems I cannot help but write. I cannot seem to resist the liberating, giddy, highly gratifying, and therapeutic action of penning my innermost longings, fears, whims, and dreams to paper. And I have always seen life through a softly darkened lens, and this comes through in my poetry.
For my writing process, I tend to permit myself to free-write, then go back and carefully edit, sometimes forcing myself to let a poem stew for at least a week before I feel it is ready to be shared, or submitted. I am an extremely passionate and sensitive person in daily life, and this passion and sensitivity can sometimes overflow and overwhelm, so I attempt to infuse it into my poetic work as an emotional release. Oftentimes I write in a sort of fever; when the fever subsides, I carefully and methodically return for careful consideration to cohesion and conciseness.
I hope my reader will embark upon a kaleidoscopic journey with me and see this strange and beautiful existence of ours through my Gothic lens, and experience the same sense of dark awe, wonderment, and fascination with the world as I do.
All my best,
Toni Scales