ALLYNA RAE STORMS BRINGS RAW EMOTION AND RESILIENCE TO LIFE IN "MAKE ART. MAKE WAR." - VORAKA

There are some poetry collections that feel less like a performance and more like a conversation someone finally found the courage to have. Make Art. Make War. by Allyna Rae Storms is one of those collections. It is deeply personal, emotionally honest, and unafraid to sit with difficult emotions while still making room for hope.

The Minnesota-based poet writes with clarity about healing from trauma, navigating grief, reclaiming identity, and learning how to create joy after painful experiences. Her work does not romanticize suffering, nor does it try to simplify recovery. Instead, Storms captures the complicated reality of healing. The fear, the anger, the exhaustion, and eventually, the strength that grows from surviving it all are woven throughout the collection.

AUTHOR ALLYNA RAE STORMS

Before releasing her debut collection, Allyna Rae Storms had already begun building recognition for her poetry through literary features and award-winning work. In 2024, she was featured in Richard Stephens’ ode to Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried exhibit. That same year, her poems “Where Does Legacy Go?”, “Sleeper Cells,” and “Curtains” earned first and second place awards at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Creative Arts Competition.

Her work continued gaining attention in 2025 when her poems “Evacuate, Evacuate, Evacuate” and “I Think I Make The Sun Cry” placed second and third in the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Creative Arts Competition. Two of her poems, “Despite it All, I Will Persist” and “Water Lilies,” were also featured in Demeter’s Garden Anthology, a collaborative digital anthology published by Vellichor, Chartium, Jadin, and Luxury digital magazines.

With Make Art. Make War., Storms brings together poetry inspired by resilience, survival, womanhood, and emotional transformation. The collection moves through three stages of healing. It begins with the quiet realization that life can be more than survival alone. From there, it explores the painful process of letting go of relationships, patterns, and versions of yourself that no longer allow growth. By the final stage, the collection arrives at something stronger. It becomes a reclaimed identity and a voice no longer willing to stay silent for the comfort of others.

MAKE ART. MAKE LIFE. by ALLYNA RAE STORMS

What makes the collection stand out is its emotional balance. While the poems openly discuss trauma, neglect, grief, abuse, and emotional pain, they are equally grounded in resilience, hope, and self-discovery. There is anger in these pages, but there is also softness. There is heartbreak, but there is also the steady rebuilding of self-worth.

Storms writes in a way that feels intimate without becoming inaccessible. Her poetry carries emotional weight while remaining relatable, especially for readers who have experienced personal loss, emotional recovery, or the difficult work of rebuilding confidence after hardship. Themes of identity, love, survival, grief, and healing run throughout the collection, creating a body of work that feels both vulnerable and empowering.

At a time when readers are increasingly drawn toward honest conversations around mental health, healing, and emotional resilience, Make Art. Make War. arrives as a timely and deeply human collection. Rather than offering easy answers, Allyna Rae Storms invites readers to sit with their emotions, reflect on their own experiences, and recognize the strength that can exist within vulnerability.

For readers looking to discover emerging contemporary poets with an authentic voice and emotional depth, Allyna Rae Storms is undoubtedly a writer to watch.

Make Art. Make War. is currently available in paperback through:

• Amazon

• Barnes & Noble

• Waterstones

• Pegasus Publishers
  

For readers drawn to emotionally honest poetry about resilience, identity, healing, and finding light after hardship, Make Art. Make War. offers a thoughtful and powerful reading experience.

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR ALLYNA RAE STORMS

Q. What first drew you to poetry as your primary form of expression? Allyna: I always loved the melodic lyricism that came with poetry, and growing up playing musical instruments, melodic lyricism was the most seamless expression to me. Poetry also seemed like it came with the least amount of rules, allowing me to freely express without thinking too much about restrictions.

Q. How has growing up in Minnesota influenced your voice and the themes you explore in your work? Allyna: Minnesota is rich in its connection to nature, Native culture, and history of freedom fighting. It’s a beautiful place to try different interests and home to wildly amazing creatives like Bob Dylan and Prince. I think there’s a deep culture of resilience and freedom to explore that seeped into my writing style.

Q. What does the title Make Art. Make War. mean to you personally? Allyna: Art is political. Expressing emotion is a radical form of self-expression, and coming from a world where I was taught to diminish my feelings and accept abuse or mistreatment, writing poetry inspired by my healing journey felt like a declaration of war against my abusers and versions of myself that no longer served my goals.

Q. How did you develop the three-phase structure of healing within your collection? Allyna: As I read through the poetry, I noticed the progression of my thoughts, confidence, and perspective changing, and how sometimes messy the growth was. To tell this story of healing, I thought it made sense to delineate the phases as I saw and felt them, because it was a deliberate choice each time to enter the next phase.

Q. Which phase of the book was the most challenging for you to write, and why? Allyna: Revenant was the most challenging to write because it was truly the first time I put my thoughts, beliefs, and feelings into anything without considering the response from others, and that was terrifying. In selecting each poem for Revenant, I had to constantly reaffirm to myself that I’m worth raising my voice for, something I had never done before.

Q. How do you approach writing about deeply personal experiences such as trauma and abusive relationships? Allyna: I write as if no one will ever see the poem, and refuse to censor myself in that privacy. I give myself the permission to feel those emotions and not apologize for it when I’m writing, regardless of the topic.

Q. What role does poetry play in your own healing process? Allyna: Writing poetry is a lifeline in my healing process. It’s a way for me to process what I’m thinking or feeling about something I experienced or that’s actively going on in my life. Even if I never share the writing with someone, at least I put it down on paper to get it out of my head.

Q. How do you create space for hope and joy while exploring heavy emotional themes? Allyna: I choose to. I’m a firm believer in the duality of humanity and that what we feed our brains influences our perspective. There can be awful things that happen in the world or to us, but that doesn’t mean joyful and wonderful things don’t happen. So I actively choose to create space for hope and to create joy.

Q. What impact did your recognition at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Creative Arts Competition have on your journey as a poet? Allyna: Just submitting my poetry for the competition affirmed to me that there’s space for me in the writing world, but being recognized for poetry that can be hard to digest really reaffirmed that and it reaffirmed to me that I can connect with people through my writing.

Q. Who or what has most influenced your poetic voice and style? Allyna: Edgar Allan Poe is the poet that really led me to my passion in writing with a heavy darker theme starting from twelve years old, and Taylor Swift’s writing and creative transformations were a really big inspiration for all things in modern creative expression.

Q. What themes or stories are you hoping to explore in your future work? Allyna: I’m exploring the themes of shared human experiences and the intricacies that come with internal freedom, and I’m finding inspiration in travel and reading fantasy novels again.

Q. How do you feel about being in Voraka Magazine, and what does this recognition mean to you?