Adriana
Oniță is a poet, artist, educator, editor, translator, and
researcher with a PhD in arts-based language education. She writes and teaches
in English, Romanian, Spanish, French, and Italian. Her debut poetry
collection, Descântec For My Split Tongue, is published by Palimpsest Press /
Anstruther Books. Her multilingual poems also appear in CBC Books, The Globe
and Mail, The Ex-Puritan, Canthius, Tint Journal, and in her chapbooks:
Misremembered Proverbs (above/ground press, 2023) and Conjugated Light (Glass
Buffalo, 2019). As founder of The Polyglot, she is proud to have published more
than 250 writers, translators, and artists working in over 60 languages. She is
the editorial director at the Griffin Poetry Prize and lives between Edmonton
and Italy. Discover her work at adrianaonita.com.1
- How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work
compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
I
was twenty-five when the Edmonton Arts Council awarded me a grant to wander the
city, paint in unexpected places, and write poems in response, which became my
first translingual chapbook, Conjugated Light (published by Matthew Stepanic at Glass Buffalo,
2019). Then came Misremembered Proverbs, which you published with above/ground press rob!
These two chapbooks changed my life because they proved that I could create
collections that combined poetry and visual art, find publishers who believed
in the work, and begin sharing them with readers across Canada.
Descântec For My Split Tongue, my first
full-length collection, feels different, not only because it took sixteen years
to write, but because so much life happened in between. I learned new
languages, got married, earned a PhD, started The Polyglot, became a mother,
lost my grandmother, worked so many jobs, made homes in different cities. The
book grew alongside me. When I read it now, I can hear the voices of my younger
selves speaking to one another across time, and also speaking to my ancestors,
whose stories and silences have shaped me. It’s an indescribably beautiful
feeling.
2
- How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
“Cățeluș cu părul creț / fură rața din
coteț!” As a
child, poetry was the most captivating to me—sound,
rhythm, image, and story worked their magic on me all at once (as Coleridge
observed, prose may be “words in the best order,” but
poetry is "the best words in the best order"!)
There's
nothing more evocative to me than memorizing and reciting a poem by heart,
which I did in Grade 1 in Jilava, Romania, Grade 3 in Edmonton in Mrs. Becker's
class, all the way through to Derek Walcott's courses at the University of
Alberta (“Altogether elsewhere, vast / Herds of reindeer move across / Miles
and miles of golden moss, / Silently and very fast.”)
I
hope to explore fiction and nonfiction more deeply in the future, but poetry
still has a strong hold on me. Poetry is my private “laboratorio liberatorio,”
where I get to play and experiment (remember poiesis means to make!). It
can hold my uncertainties, contradictions, multiple tongues, and competing
truths all at once, without demanding that they be resolved. It’s the genre
that feels closest to the way I actually experience the world.
3
- How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your
writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear
looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious
notes?
These
days, it's so easy not to start a project—I even paused in the middle of
writing this sentence to breastfeed—that beginning at all feels miraculous!
Once I've arrived at the page, I try to protect that momentum and return to it
daily, even if only for fifteen minutes. I have so many books asking to be
written: children's books, hybrid books of collage, poetry, and essay, books on
language learning, and at least a dozen collaborative projects with friends. My
first drafts often come quickly, but I've found that I do my best work when
there's some form of sharing. I was most prolific when I brought a new poem
each week to my writing coach, Tara Skurtu, or to the Multilingual Art Lab of
The Polyglot, where the drafts could be shaped and sharpened in conversation.
4
- Where does a poem or work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author
of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working
on a "book" from the very beginning?
For
me, a poem usually begins with a question, a proverb, a painting, or a moment
of surprise that I can't quite shake. While I often write individual poems
first, I do enjoy thinking about the collection very early in the process.
Perhaps that's the teacher and editor in me, but I'm often asking how a poem
might be speaking to other poems, what larger conversation it belongs to, or
what themes or tensions are beginning to emerge. I love the moment when a
handful of seemingly unrelated pieces suddenly reveal themselves as part of the
architecture of the same book.
5
- Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the
sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Public
readings are a very important part of my creative process. I love open mics and
readings because I believe poetry is, at its heart, an oral art form. Poems are
meant to be spoken, heard, recited, memorized, and carried from one person to
another. Reading a poem aloud teaches me things that the page alone cannot:
where the energy falters, where the languages sing, where listeners lean in,
laugh—or when I lose them. In that sense, readings are also a form of revision.
Some of my most important edits have come from reading a translingual poem in
front of others, and discovering, in real time, how it lands in a room.
6
- Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of
questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the
current questions are?
I'm
interested in how languages are learned, lost, silenced, reclaimed, and
revitalized. I wrote Descântec For My Split Tongue as an incantation to
reclaim Romanian, my mother tongue, after years of feeling it slip away. At the
same time, I was pursuing a PhD in language education, asking what can be done
to creatively support youth heritage language maintenance in our communities.
My research drew on poetic inquiry, community arts-based research,
multiliteracies, and sociocultural theory (if you’re interested, you can
download the dissertation for free here!). I
enjoyed exploring how bilingual poetry, as well as other artistic modes like
self-portraiture, protest art, illustration, photography, video, animation, and
painting, can help us sustain our languages and ways of knowing that are at
risk of being lost. I brought a lot of what I learned to my first collection of
poems.
7
– What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do
they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
“From
the moment you try to impose a path on a poet, you pave the way for
dictatorships,” Raúl Zurita recently said in an interview. I don’t
have a prescriptive role for a writer, but a task—to pay close attention,
especially to the things that are disappearing, ignored, forgotten, or
silenced. To notice connections that others might miss and make them visible
(for example, the connection between preserving our planet’s biological
diversity and linguistic diversity). In a world of speed, distraction,
neverending atrocities—a single poem can slow us down. A poem in another
language, or in translation, can slow us down, even more. It’s incredible what
we learn when we slow down and pay attention.
8
- Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or
essential (or both)?
Editors
are essential. Writing may begin in solitude, but books are not made alone. I
owe an enormous mulțumesc to the editors and mentors who have helped me
see both the strengths and areas for growth in my work. In the acknowledgements
to Descântec For My Split Tongue, I thank my writing coach, Tara Skurtu,
for her eagle eye, her steadfast guidance, and for being the poem-midwife to so
many lines in the collection. My editor at Anstruther Books/Palimpsest Press,
Jim Johnstone, also helped shape the manuscript with his tremendous care and
insight. A good editor doesn't impose a vision on the work. They help the work
become more fully itself. The process can be challenging at times, especially
when it asks you to let go of a poem, stanza, line, or word you're attached to,
but I've always found those conversations generative.
9
- What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you
directly)?
Derek Walcott taught us to aim for “ambition without conceit.” It's a lesson I've
never forgotten, in both writing and in life.
10
- What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one?
How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I’m
a work-from-home and stay-at-home mom, so in the last three years, my writing
routine has looked something like this: breastfeed, eat breakfast, chase my
son, read, play, sketch, walk, take notes in a small notebook, breastfeed some
more, cook lunch, nap, dream, breastfeed, read, translate, and then, once he's
asleep for the night, try to write some poems (while breastfeeding throughout
the night). That's why this interview took me three weeks to complete, rob lol
11
- When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of
a better word) inspiration?
I
turn towards translation. I like what Canadian poet-translator George McWhirter
says: “if inspiration in your own work falters, you can turn to translation to
keep your writing tuned up.” I couldn’t agree more. Translating Romanian poet
Liliana Ursu has been an endless source of inspiration for my own poems.
12
- What fragrance reminds you of home?
Romania:
scent of zambile, lalele, narcise (hyacinths, tulips, daffodils)
Canada:
spruce after snowfall, and wet earth as the snow begins to melt
Sicily:
the scent of posidonia drying on a beach, slightly sulfurous.
13
- David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any
other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual
art?
I
worked at the Art Gallery of Alberta for seven years, so paintings, sculptures,
installations, photography, and collage have shaped my poems just as much as
books have. I was also thrilled that Palimpsest Press welcomed several of my
own collages into my debut collection.
14
- What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your
life outside of your work?
I
love this question. There’s a constellation of writers, artists, researchers,
and educators whose work greatly shaped my translingual thinking in the book. I
name them all in my acknowledgements section, because I think it’s very
important to name your sources of knowledge and inspiration.
I
also think it’s important to put Edmonton on the map. The multilingual writing
emerging from this city is extraordinary, as evidenced by the poems, plays,
essays, and children’s books of writers like Naomi McIlwraith, Pierrette Requier, Medgine Mathurin, Mila Bongco, Leilei Chen, Sophie Gareau Brennan,
Luciana Erregue-Sacchi, Anna Marie Sewell, Gian Marco Visconti, Nermeen
Youssef, Iman Mersal, Maria Teodora Barbu, Adriana Boffa, Anita Lafferty, Peter Midgley, Candice Joy Oliva, and more. I feel so lucky to have learned from all
of these writers and thinkers.
15
- What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
It's
my dream to one day attend (or even participate in!) the Festival de Poesía de
Medellín in Colombia, Repubblica delle Idee in Italy, and Bocas Lit Fest in
Trinidad.
I'd
also love to figure out how to make our literary magazine and creative hub, The Polyglot, financially sustainable. After ten years of
building it, I'd love to see it thrive for decades to come.
16
- If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or,
alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a
writer?
My
Grade 9 teacher, Mrs. Underhill, almost convinced me to become a spy. She
thought my love of languages, combined with my tendency to both hide and
reveal, would make me perfectly suited to work for CSIS.
I
like to think poetry turned out to be a close cousin. I get to listen closely,
eavesdrop in five languages, move constantly between different cities, and
decide what to keep hidden and what to bring into the light.
17
- What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I've
always held different jobs, often simultaneously, including art educator,
festival organizer, lecturer, and research assistant. But writing has never
felt like a career choice so much as an essential part of who I am. It's the
way I make sense of the world and my place within it.
18
- What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
The
last great book I read was The Red We Silk by Nicole Lachat, an
Edmonton-born poet of Swiss and Peruvian descent. Lachat is a divine alchemist
who can take any human experience—sorrow, love, shame, grief, despair—and
transform it into something of profound belleza y bondad.
Being
a toddler parent, I have not seen a great film in a few years, but I look
forward to rekindling my passion for cinema soon.
19
- What are you currently working on?
This summer, I'm working on submitting my Italian and Romanian
poetry manuscripts to publishers, as well as finding a home for my translation
of Romanian poet Liliana Ursu's work.
I'm also hoping to finally buckle down and write / illustrate a
bilingual children's book!
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
