The Remarkable Journey of Mihaela Marilena Chițac Will Leave You Speechless!
Motto: HOMO LUDENS
1. That Special Moment
One fine day, you started writing stories. How did it happen exactly?
Even since I was a girl, I was interested in playing with words.
I used to ask questions about palindromes and make lists of them in a little notebook.
In my childhood, I had wonderful experiences with beautifully illustrated books.
Once I received a gift from my parents, and it was one of my favorite books of poems and songs.
It used to have amazing characters that fascinated me: they belonged to the world of animals and birdies.
They impressed me so much that I felt a need to express myself and tried to compose my own version of those poems.
2. Art Is Work
What does your work as a writer consist of? What are the biggest challenges of the present?
Apart from my work as an editor, author of textbooks, and translator of various books, especially in the field of arts, there is a huge effort when it comes to creating original poems.
One must strive a lot to be recognized as a poet these days.
The question is to whom you address your poems.
It is equally important to keep eyes, ears, and minds open like going on a mystery tour.
I write poems and rhymes for children, as well as poetry for the adult category.
3. Without Projects, There Is No Future
What are your representative projects? What projects are you working on?
I embarked recently on a project of poetry for children which is ready to be materialized in an e-book at e-Publishers Publishing House in Bucharest, Romania.
A collection of rhymes and other poems composed in recent years for my grandchildren, I must say.
Its title: KARAOKE KIRI KI.
4. The Scent of Creation
Describe a scent that immediately transports you to a moment of inspiration or creativity. What emotions does it evoke, and how does it influence your creative process?
I reckon vanilla or almond oil perfume may trigger an overwhelming response in me, which may influence my disposition and indirectly my compositions.
It depends mostly on that special moment.
However, I feel like expressing myself irrespective of the enticing smell perceived around me.
5. Ink and Intimacy
If your writing style were a tactile experience, what texture would it be? How does the act of putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard make you feel on a deeply personal level?
I would say a touch of metal if the tips of my sensitive fingers could speak.
I used to accompany my pen writing by doodling in the paper margin.
I seem to enjoy finding my inspiration in drawing letters in a kind of calligraphic style while trying to grasp my ideas.
At the same time, I am happy to benefit from technological advancements and do not hesitate to touch computer keyboards to serve my literary aims thoroughly even at a slower pace.
6. The Harmony of Silence
Think about a moment when silence spoke louder than words in your creative journey. What were the circumstances, and how did it shape your understanding of your craft?
Poetry is for me my perception of life in silence.
Strolling on a walk into the forest, suddenly I found myself alone in a different world.
A moment of awe and revery.
Silence so deep, I could hear it.
Usually, words speak up in my mind, and I don’t need a riot. I stand still trying to capture their cry for help, their body and shape.
7. The Palette of Dreams:
Imagine your creative mind as a painter’s palette. What colors dominate your artistic spectrum, and how do they represent the different facets of your imagination?
Since I am an artist, my poems display a pictorial representation of reality, filtering colors (sensations) through an extremely flexible personal retina.
Each color fills my cells with the joy of spreading around, into the world.
My imagination flows and transcends beyond, into the outer world.
Phrases correspond to an infinity of nuances and combine into a sort of poetic chant “somewhere over the rainbow”.
Depending on their subject and atmosphere, my poems are dominated by impressionistic colors: cold and warm, which may suggest as many facets as possible of my personality.
8. The Quill of Vulnerability
If your creative expression were a handwritten letter to your inner self, what truths and vulnerabilities would it unveil? How does the act of exposing your innermost thoughts contribute to your artistic identity?
As an artist and poetess, I have always been a sensitive person.
During my formation years, I realized that I’d better handle a paintbrush or a quill than begging for attention from my pals.
This is how I turned to be confident to reveal my true nature.
Now I can expose my inner self through my artworks and poems in public without being embarrassed.
The outcome is fantastic!
And anyone may benefit from my original compositions.
I am happy to share my feelings, my innermost thoughts, and my rich experience with those interested.
9. Symphony of Shadows
Consider a character or theme in your work that embodies the shadows of your own psyche. What does this shadow teach you about your fears, desires, or unexplored dimensions of your creativity?
Is that the case?
A blacksmith is the Beast in my iron bed during my coldest insomnia nights spent in darkness.
Tossing and turning on my mattress filled with armies of ants, I invoke the Iron Spirit to hold me tight in his powerful arms, giving me strength and stamina to resist until the next day.
In a perpetual anxiety of the unknown, I wake up in the morning stumbling over the piles of broken toys which set me traps, and make me responsible for the mess in my room.
Trying to find an escape, I start to recreate an ideal world in my mind, organizing and putting pieces back together in my literary works.
Somehow, the shadows in my psyche prove to be quite resourceful.
10. Echoes of Childhood Whispers:
Recall a childhood memory that resonates with you as a writer. How do the echoes of your early experiences manifest in your work today?
I can see myself as a young girl of six climbing the stairs to the attic of the old house, exploring space.
There was a narrow corridor with rooms for rent and I was not supposed to get there.
Suddenly I found a room with a big iron key in the lock.
I remember I stumbled and made a noise. In no time, the mysterious door opened with a creak, and I could see a dwarf with an old, wrinkled face staring at me as startled as I was. I gave a wild yell which alerted all my neighbors and called for my mum.
Then, I felt ashamed and ran away.
Although that dwelling was demolished soon after in the late regime, its shadowed memory still haunts me, providing me with fears and unrest.
Perhaps the unexpected encounter stimulated my propensity to create compositions in a Gothic darkish style.
It triggered a kind of creative response to my meditation and modeled my personality.
11. Melodies of Memory:
If your memories were composed as a musical score, what instrument would represent your most cherished creative recollections? How does the melody of your past influence the composition of your present work?
Perhaps my melodies of memory match the sound of drums as in this late poem of mine:
drums hammering a rat-a-tat!
beating up the spinal rhythm
tapping with my fingertips.
rest a bit and play the beat,
running in the daily beep
checking for the air
pumped into my lungs,
chirping a tweet-tweet!
nesting in the dark
stirring through the curving ribs
in the bellows of the night…
12. The Dance of Syntax
If your writing style were a dance, what would be the rhythm and tempo? How does the cadence of your sentences mirror the beating of your creative heart?
In my female universe, the rhythms, cadence, and acoustic echo are as important as the ideational substrate.
Imaginary rhythmic wingbeats relaunch a rock & roll dance in most of my poems.
There is a lot of strain and improvisation as well.
I keep the alert tempo as my heartbeats are as quick as possible.
13. Admiration Exercises
Which writers do you admire? What are your favorite books?
Here is a short list of my favorite writers and book titles:
Edward Lear’s Book of Nonsense; Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland; Oscar Wilde’s Portrait of Dorian Gray; The Happy Prince and Other Tales; Edgar Allen Poe’s Poems (The Raven, Annabel Lee, Ulalume, The Bells, etc.); the essay Eureka, A Prose Poem; short stories (Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque; The Fall of the House of Usher, The Crimes in Rue Morgue; The Gold Bug; The Dead Alive, etc.); Sylvia Plath’s The Colossus and Other Poems; Ariel; Virginia Woolf’s collected Essays and novels (Mrs Dalloway; To the Lighthouse; Orlando; The Waves)
14. An Indiscreet Question
With which influential author or inspirational figure from life, past or present, would you most like to share a cup of tea and a captivating conversation?
I’d better choose Erica Jong, a contemporary American poetess, novelist, and essay writer to share a cup of oriental tea and have a captivating conversation on female poetry, considering her historical character Sappho, the renowned poetess of Antiquity in Sappho’s Leap, a novel which inspired me a lot.
15. A Story in Ten Words
A storyteller tells a tall tale of life and death.
16. A Favorite Fragment from Your Works
ALLURE YOUR VIEWER
come in my dear viewer
the gallery is open but not wide…
the rain has stopped
it isn’t pouring anymore…
tread onto my threshold and stay…
release the gate,
step on into my gallery,
incognito, obscured.
enter the frames of pictures.
paintings have always been secured…
they deserve constant humidity
an optimum range of temperature
a bit of jazz, cool atmosphere.
now, camouflaged like a spy
under so many coats of paint
please, keep an eye on my display.
anytime, day or night… when the light grows dim,
you might do it in your own way!
17. Contact Information
How can you be contacted?
By email: mihaela@chitac.ro
18. Blog/Author Page/Social Media Profile
Where can we read your works?
Here is my Blog, but generally, my poems are written in Romanian.
I am also on Facebook: Facebook Artist Page, and Facebook Profile, where I can sense its torments, as illustrated by this poem of mine:
FACEBOOK TORMENTS
Facebook, my love, it seems me to no avail,
as I get along your misty slimy trail
I am weak, you are strong.
you cheat and you lie, here is my cry.
in this chant or song dedicated to you,
I think it will do,
cause you are always right,
and I am sometimes wrong.
you make me unveil my personal world,
though you have curtailed my liberties I hail
Facebook, my love, release me on bail.
my face is oblong, your face is a name.
my book is your tale.
faithfully to you, signing in I play…
19. What exactly would you like to convey to a fellow writer/editor/screenwriter/film producer?
Where can your English creations be read?
Present your writings in a few words.
I would like to convey the idea that plunging into my poetry is like going on a mystery tour to be carried further on the wings of imagination.
My poems are always accompanied by my own illustrations, an argument to be translated and published by a specialized publishing house.
Presently, my creations have not been translated into English yet, due to a whole range of stylistic difficulties (rhymes and assonances, alliterations, puns, onomatopoieas, echo mimetico, etc.).
So far, I published 13 books of poetry.
My poetical writings are two-fold: on one hand, they are addressed to the children, and that is why, the lines are written in a playful spirit, and on the other hand, they are addressed to the people who think that the art of poetry speaks to the soul.
In an effort of essentialization, I tend to transform communication into a plurivalent matter, purifying the concrete in a permanent self-spiritual sublimation.
Owing to the spectacular world of legends and ancestral myths, I try to recreate my personal mythology out of elements of the real world combined with the imaginary, in a play of magic, which highlights the universal symbolism of creatures.
For me, the primordial elements making up the surrounding world (sky, water, fire, earth, air) exert an irresistible fascination, an uncommon charm, that I am eager to transmit through my poems to my readers, as well.
20. Embers of Endings
Envision the conclusion of a significant project. How do you feel as you pen the final words or brush the last strokes? What is the emotional resonance of completion, and how does it influence your anticipation for the next artistic endeavor?
It is relieving to finish the project of your lifetime.
The pangs of creation are well-known.
After completing an important literary project, it is natural to feel an overwhelming joy.
Nevertheless, such a positive feeling may be altered at any time by another dose of unrest in trying to outline my prospective project.
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