BOOK REVIEW
“if you choose to see art in the ordinary, it will bring you happiness.”
Chameleon Skin, is a shift in perception to a transformed world with the story told through poetry written by Breanne Weber.
From a shift in perception to a transformed world, Chameleon Skin, is poet Breanne Weber's written odyssey out of the monochrome frames of depression and into the technicolor landscapes of hope.
As the book is less than 100-pages, there’s a lot of content dealt within the book discussing topics of depression and rediscovering hope. The poems run on without titles, in which some parts were difficult to see where the story ended or began. While the book focuses on self discovery, growth and healing, it never shined away from the harder stories to read about.
The imagery throughout the book was beautiful with a great connection to nature. Dealing with stories from being lost in a deep depression to trying to find her way back to herself, it’s a heart wrenching read with many stand out moments.
As the book progresses, there’s vibrant snippets of her story that are inspiring and uplifting, although some parts were repetitive. A brilliant thing, overall, was that her voice was authentic as the poetry flowed nicely from one piece to the next.
Weber pens, “if I could go back to that girl, I would tell her, everything is going to be alright, and grey clouds are more beautiful than white,” summing up the book with a positive closure that makes the reading worthwhile.
A photographer by trade, Breanne Weber has a sensitive eye for the luminance of life that guides her in art and writing. Her poetry is frequently featured online by Bleeding Soul Poetry and Train River Publishing. Weber lives and writes in Central Florida alongside her husband and their pet bunny, Clover.
Words by Danielle Holian
INTERVIEW
Tell us a bit about your writing background.
I started with journaling at a very young age, before I could even spell. I continued through my teenage years and young adulthood journaling almost every day. In my 20's I began art journaling and wanted to put more of a creative spin on my words and eventually I felt it evolve into poetry.
What, or who, inspired you to start writing?
It’s hard to put my finger on it. I believe my inspiration to start writing as a child came from my older sister, who has a developmental disability. I saw her writing in a journal she got with her cursive like swirls and I thought I wanted to do it too. Looking back I wonder what thoughts she was penning down. As an adult, what fueled me as I got into poetry was my emotions. Whenever I am experiencing strong emotions, my initial reaction is to start writing about it. If I am having a particularly numb time that’s when I have writer's block.
And what influenced your poetry book, Chameleon Skin?
Initially I was inspired by the difficulty I was having finding my identity. I was struggling with depression and I felt like it was defining me. I was also known as the type of person that morphs into other people when I spend too much time with them. And I started feeling like I didn’t have my own quirks and mannerisms. I started to wonder if that in itself was my identity. A chameleon. That’s when I decided to start a journey of healing, self growth, and choosing my own identity. Chameleon skin is sort of a journal of that period of my life.
How do you find the balance between writing about your own personal experiences and exploring topics that may not necessarily be autobiographical, but still speak to so many people?
This is actually something very difficult for me. Since I started out journaling, my pieces tend to be very personal. They may even come across as cryptic. I had a situation in my life that I likened to Pandora’s box and I have written countless pieces about boxes and without an explanation it can come across very confusing. But something that’s beautiful about any kind of art, including writing, is that it can be open to interpretation. I hope that someone may find comfort in my words in a way that it speaks to them personally, despite being different from its original meaning.
What makes a piece of your writing right to post on your Instagram, versus the ones that stay in the book only?
This may be a lame answer but it’s entirely just based on a feeling. In the Myers Briggs world I am an “infp”, so I do many things because I have a feeling about it. I have no explanation, no thought behind it. It just has to feel right. My intuition is powerful and impossible to explain. I guess my best explanation is that the posts on Instagram are a glass of water and the book, a river.
And finally, what advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Write every little thing that pops into your head. If you feel like you have nothing to write about, write about having nothing to write about. Try not to worry too much about grammar, you can go back and edit as many times as you need to, just get it out on paper. And read. Read and read and read. In the words of Virginia Woolf, that will make “your words flow like a river.”