Chapman student publishes first poetry book on love, life, nature

Starting March 25, senior Armond Gray’s new book of poetry, “The Petals Fall One by One,” will be available for purchase at Target, Barnes & Noble and Books a Million. Book cover courtesy of Gray.

Everyone has had a quarantine hobby. After the initial COVID-19 shutdown, many spent their time watching Netflix’s “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness,” going on walks, making TikTok-inspired whipped coffee or doing Chloe Ting’s workout routines. 

Meanwhile, Armond Gray, a senior kinesiology major at Chapman University, turned inward. He wrote poem after poem, eventually compiling enough to cultivate an entire book.  

“There was inspiration to continue writing following a creative writing course I took in the spring, but a lot of it was just because I had so much free time and I was really enjoying writing,” Gray said. “It was a way to express how I was feeling.”

The end product, a new book titled “The Petals Fall One by One,” will be released March 25. The book is centered around love, life and nature, Gray said. 

“The idea for the title came from rose petals — when people play the game ‘she loves me, she loves me not,’ the petals are falling,” Gray said. “So the book has to do with the ups and downs of relationships, love and life.” 

Although Gray eventually found a common theme between his poems, he wrote them all individually from sporadic bursts of inspiration.

“A lot of them were emotion-based, so if something would pop into my head such as a word or a line while I was driving or sitting on the couch, I would write it in my notes,” Gray said. “But there were other times where a line would pop into my head and the rest would quickly come to me.” 

Gray's main inspiration for the book was sparked from his experience in professor Douglas Cooney’s Introduction to Creative Writing class at Chapman. His style of writing, he said, was inspired by a variety of poets including Maya Angelou, Winston Hughes and R.H. Sin. 

“Reading R.H. Sin’s (work) gave me the confidence to be like, ‘OK, I can do this,’” Gray said. “It’s not very often that you see men sharing their emotions or being super vulnerable in society, especially Black men, so reading his books gave me the extra confidence I needed.”

The book is currently available on Gray’s website for preorder, with every copy coming hand-signed and with an undisclosed free gift. On March 25, the book will go live on Gray’s website and in Barnes & Noble, Target and Books a Million. 

In the meantime, Gray will just have to sit tight. 

“I am feeling a lot of anxiety, because I feel like a lot of people have not seen this side of me, but I am also excited because people have not seen this side of me,” Gray said. “I feel like there’s something in there for everyone. It's not solely about love, there’s also motivational pieces and pieces about being grateful."