RANJANA SHARAN SINHA

 

FROM THE EDITOR

 

What Man Has Made Of Man

 

William Wordsworth, the great Romantic poet, was reclining in a grove listening to birdsong and enjoying the spring flowers, when he began to feel rather sad: he could not help but contrast the beauty and perfection he saw in Nature with mankind's imperfections:

To her fair works did Nature link

The human soul that through me ran;

And much it grieved my heart to think

What man has made of man.

Dismayed by the materialism of his contemporaries in England, and appalled by their attitudes, Wordsworth could see that man was changing for the worse. Man, with so much power for good and destruction, has the responsibility to respect his fellowmen and the environment in which he lives. Yes, people need to respect nature and living things because the environment is important beyond words, providing vital basic services to support human survival. If we want to respect nature, we must stop seeing it as simply a set of "instrumental values" or resources and be willing to recognise that nature has "intrinsic values" because "eco-centric" ethics seem to be more relevant than " biocentric" ethics.

Indian philosophy explains environment as an organic living entity which is transcendental in nature and perceives that there is life in all kinds of things, it might be biotic or non-biotic material. There is greater emphasis on mutual dependence where living in isolation is not possible. Humans have been seen as one component of this wider reality i.e., environment. The hymns of Rig Veda view man only as the manifestation of the same reality of cosmos with equal importance. Nobody thought of an existence that was apart from nature.

In our ancient tradition and in literature Nature was worshipped with the same importance given to other deities. The sacred rivers like Ganga, Yamuna, Saraswati, and Kaveri were worshipped as mother goddesses. Vedic hymns are the prayers of man to nature goddess and man's duty is to protect Nature: its eco system should be nourished and saved. Like the Vedas the Indian classical literature also celebrates man- nature relationship. Kalidasa's magnum opus Abhijana Shakunthalam and his other works imbibed a deep ecological awareness and are replete with sublime man-nature relationship.

But in today's world things and attitudes have undergone a sea change. Amid our normal busy days away from stunning views of nature, beaches and sunsets, we hardly find time to have a feel of nature. We don't have the time to notice the birds calling, the bees buzzing and to enjoy the shades and moods of changing seasons. Parents are unable to teach their children about Nature and wildlife. Evidence is growing of how regular contact with nature boosts new-born children's healthy development, supports their physical and mental health and instils abilities to assess risk as they grow. Along with digital distractions and lack of interest in playing outdoors, the children are getting away and away from Nature. Who can blame them for thinking an apple is a gadget first and a fruit second?

The greatest danger to contemporary society is ecological disequilibrium. The illegal and unsustainable wildlife trade as well as devastation of forests and other wild places are the driving forces behind the crises. Pandemics and present crises are often a hidden side effect of economic development, greed and inequalities that can no longer be ignored. Given our interconnected and ever-changing world, with air-travel, wildlife marketing and a changing climate, the potential for further serious outbreaks remains significant.

It's now time to start addressing the nature-related risks caused by human activities. Humans may not have created the coronavirus, but the spread of COVID-19 has been hastened and exacerbated by humanity's long-term assault on the natural world. Such pandemics are the result of humanity's destruction of nature, according to leaders at the UN, WHO and WWF International, and the world has been ignoring this stark reality for decades.

Human activities have significantly altered three-quarters of all land and two-thirds of all oceans on Earth leading to a changing climate and unprecedented global biodiversity loss. The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically demonstrated how crucial the protection of natural habitats is for human health. Intact nature provides a buffer between humans and disease, and emerging diseases are often the results of encroachment into natural ecosystems and change in human activity. If wild animals lose their natural habitats, they move to areas populated by humans, thereby increasing contact and risk of transmitted diseases. By invading their environment, we break the 'natural protective barriers' between healthy human beings and animals which are infected by pathogens, so the only person at fault here is us.

The pandemic is a stark reminder of our dysfunctional relationship with nature and emphasises the importance of living in harmony with nature. It forced us to ponder over the fact that unregulated exploitation of natural resources coupled with unsustainable food habits and consumption pattern lead to destruction that supports human life.

The current economic system has put tremendous pressure on the natural environment and the pandemic is a proof of the domino effect that is triggered when one element in this interconnected system is de-established. What can we expect to happen if we continue along our current trajectory? A recent warning from the UN that multiple famines of 'biblical proportions' could be seen within months following the pandemic, is going to be true, sure enough.

For the first time in planetary history, humans are the drivers of climate and environmental change or what is being called by the scientists as the Anthropocene. We are steering the planet towards a future where hazards and disasters will have no limits and crisis will become an all-pervasive metaphor.

Let us be contented with what God and the bountiful Nature have given to all of us. Let us get rid of greed, ignorance and disregard in exploiting the natural resources. Let us preserve the environmental or rather ecological balance for our future generation to whom we must transmit a "natural patrimony”. Then--and only then--we'll be able to wipe out negative footprints of man's relentless march and stop the devastating impact we are having on the planet and to achieve a more sustainable system.

With this edition of OPA, we are glad enough to introduce poet JULJANA MEHMETI of Albania, as the Poet of the month. Poet ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA of Romania has taken an exclusive interview of her for this edition. Let’s hope our readers will enjoy both her interview and her poems along with the whole issue consisting of more than hundreds of poems of the poets all over the world. So, thank you once again and I welcome everyone to this newest issue of OPA.

-- Dr. Ranjana Sharan Sinha

From The Editorial Desk

OPA

A

WORLDWIDE WRITERS’ WEB

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JULJANA MEHMETI

 

ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA TALKING WITH POET OF THE MONTH

JULJANA MEHMETI

DECEMBER 2020

ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA: Do you come from a literary background?

 

JULJANA MEHMETI: I started writing at a young age, short poems, creations on a free theme, etc. I read a lot and I liked literature as an opportunity to express all my passion but also to pursue visions, which only through poetry could fulfill my creative desire. In the created art I see discharging of emotions but also the pursuit of those ideas, which words can not even describe.

 

 

ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA What inspired you to start writing?

 

JULJANA MEHMETI: Since I was a child, I have always liked to observe the world around me and to look in every aspect for the meaning of things, giving them my interpretation. I have always sought to understand and study what lies behind what inspires us beyond the hidden meanings and consciousness, the invisible, an interpretation that I later felt necessary to reveal and put on paper. However, this is not all because the emotion conveyed firstly to myself and then shared with the reader was so great that it always pushed me to be in search and discovery of that consciousness, which wakes up only when you follow it and try to decipher it with your own way.

 

 

ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA: What writers did you enjoy reading as a child?

 

JULJANA MEHMETI: I was curious to read every book or magazine, writings by local authors like Adelina Mamaqi, Dritëro Agolli and those few books by foreign authors that the regime allowed us to read, such as Gustave Flaubert, Mark Twain, Gianni Rodari, Theodore Dreiser, etc.

 

 

ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA: What literary pilgrimages have you gone on?

 

JULJANA MEHMETI: I have always preferred engaging literature and philosophy, mysticism. The poets who attract and inspire me are Emily Dickinson, Saffo, Anna Ahmatova, Sylvia Plath, Rumi, Osho, Bodler, Haruki Murakami, etc. Influenced by them I have certainly created my own poetic style, which is always moving between Hayk or free verse, why not with hermetic tendencies and surrealism, which give me the feeling that I can overcome the imagination and transcend myself.

 

ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA: How did you get started as a poet?

 

JULJANA MEHMETI: I do not remember a certain starting point. I have always written that art that was guided through the creative muse and creative thinking, a psychology that pushed me to look at my invisible. . If I say that written art became a motto for me, I can say that this coincides with my settlement in Italy, so in 1999, I wrote my first book directly in Italian and published it in the Publishing House "Leonida Editrice", a competition, where I was selected in the final with a two-year publishing contract.

 

 

ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA: How do your poems develop? Please guide us through the stages of a poem!

 

JULJANA MEHMETI: My poetry today is the trend between surrealism and the run towards the absurd. To the impossible I manage to search and look beyond myself, creating that sensitivity that I think will be followed by a trace of knowledge of tomorrow. The human being follows his visions, he/she also follows the light that sows hope and in this radiation he finds that motive or effort to travel with time and represent the era in which he lives.

 

 

ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA What, in your opinion, are the most important elements of good writing?

 

JULJANA MEHMETI: In my opinion a writing would be called good if the basic structure of the construction, the conveyed message and the metaphorical construction would create that harmony, which would immerse the reader to understand the idea and under the idea of all the conveyed art. If we would talk about a normal prose whose fable must have been intriguing, full of mysticism and one-soul pursuit of each chapter, to understand or enter into discussion with the conclusion or solution the author gives to the written work. In poetry it is something else, as poetry is elitist and the selection of words, the figuration, but also the construction of the whole poetry should be not only an emotional thrill but also a long taste of the words that remain in the mind and sounds to the eloquence of a music, that whispers continously and fills you with intoxicating breath

 

 

ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA: What is the most difficult part about writing for you?

 

JULJANA MEHMETI: The most difficult part of writing is those moments that after the discharge of adrenaline must take the right shape, but also conclude the meaning of everything that is written in the highest aesthetic form. The final emotional but also exciting conclusion with the word in this case, which first faces itself, after reaching the creative awareness, that this poem can already be presented to the wider circle and the reader, is the anxiety of how it will be expected, but also the spirit. how critics will judge it afterwards. 

 

ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA: How did you manage to fit writing in with other demands on your time? Are you good at managing your time?

 

JULJANA MEHMETI: The time to write a poem can not be determined and consequently not even organized. As I said above, poetry is not programmed, it comes freely, I can not say how, but of course from other dimensions. It can happen that an element from everyday life, a word, a sky drawn with strange cloud shapes, manages to create the magic, the atmosphere that suddenly transports us to the temple of poetry. After this muse it is our duty to concretize it on paper and this can happen anywhere, anytime, in any kind of situation. It has often occurred to me to urgently ask for a piece of paper and a pen even in the most unusual situations. It has happened to me, for example, in the restaurant to write, on the card napkin, sometimes even with cosmetic pencils, or to miss a train that I had been waiting for hours at the station. Like any poet, night is the moment I make the most of.

 

 

ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA:  Who are your favourite living poets?

 

JULJANA MEHMETI: Of course I read many current poets but among the most favorite I would mention Enrico De Luca, Italian poet and writer, Agron Tufa and Flutura Acka, Albanian authors as well as many young authors whom I follow closely

 

 

ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA:  How did you first get published?

 

JULJANA MEHMETI: I started publishing my works after I decided to donate my art to readers and participate in various literary competitions organized by various Publishing Houses here in Italy. I have always liked discuss among other poets, perhaps even more affirmed than I am and also in a language that is already my second language after Albanian.

 

 

ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA: Have you ever had a work rejected?

 

JULJANA MEHMETI: Of course. It happened in the beginning that I sent my art to an Italian Publishing House without receiving any response, but this was not a motive to stop, on the contrary I worked much harder with the phrase and then competed with dignity.

 

 

ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA: Can you give any advice to someone wanting to write and publish poetry?

 

JULJANA MEHMETI: My advice to young authors is to focus as much as possible on quality reading, to write only when they really feel the need to express their poetic spirit, and to work hard until they create their own poetic style, a style that will identify them in the future. 

 

 

ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA: What is the imagery or mood in your poem?

 

JULJANA MEHMETI: Eh ... My imagination is like an unproduced film yet, it is a mix of early experiences and a constant catapult into new, invisible worlds, spaces that are complicated by fantasy and reality, but always somewhere in the middle of the clouds ... It's a world which I always seek to explain by drawing it through verses.

 

 

ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA What are the structural or stylistic techniques you use in your poetry?

 

JULJANA MEHMETI: As I wrote it and in the beginning, I wrote a lot of Hayk poetry, which is defined as form, structure and rule (5-7-5). But mostly my poetry is poetry of free verses based on hermeticism and tendencies that fluctuate towards surrealism and why not absurdity.

The verses follow each other towards those meanings where the creative space transcends in some cases also the strict rules. So the form of the free verse is what makes me feel better and express the creative space as a concept, vision, message but also the philosophy of expression

 

 

ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA: What's the worst advice you hear authors give writers?

 

JULJANA MEHMETI: The advice or statement that bothers me the most and that is often used by some so-called poets who wants to achieve is "I would have written it one way or another" seeking to enter the other's fantasy in their own way. Another piece of advice I do not like at all is the one often given to me by those who fail to understand my verse. Poetry must be understood to the limits of eloquence and figuration used, as it is the elite genre

 

 

ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA: What does success mean to you? What is the definition of success?­

 

JULJANA MEHMETI: I will not consider my achievement a success, as I like all other authors are trying to decipher time poetically. "Centuries of poetry and we have not yet reached the starting point," Bukovski said. So this statement summarizes it all and needs no comment.

 

 

ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA: How do you handle literary criticism?

 

JULJANA MEHMETI: Literary criticism is important for a literary work. Referring to a large number of reviews of my poetry, I would say that critical art is necessary to shed another light and perspective on the written art and through it is achieved to realize an ideo-artistic breakdown, as necessary but also as much important to be understood later by the reader

 

 

ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA: Are you working on anything at the present you would like to share with your readers about?

 

JULJANA MEHMETI: I am working on my first novel, a rather complicated thriller based on an experienced occurrence.

 

ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA: If you had to describe yourself as a writer in three words, what would they be?

JULJANA MEHMETI: Discovering the invisible.

 

JULJANA MEHMETI was born in the city of Durres, in Albania. Since she was a child she became fond about literature and writing, especially poetry, a genre that in the following years will turn into a real life motive, a way to better express her ideas, her thoughts, her visions and metaphysics , her point of view according to her consciousness but also improving the awareness of the same suggestion that surrounds the human world. The first book “Soft – Poems” published in Italian language attracted the attention of publishers and Italian literary criticism, not only for its particular style, but also for new words, the language used, the philosophical message and the currents present in her poems that go from Hermetism to Surrealism. The second book comes from the field of translation entitled “Vramendje” – (Rimugino “) of the Italian author Alessandro Ferrucci Marcucci Pinoli, which will constitute the first experience in this field, but will also strengthen his long-standing conviction, to know and translate in his language, many popular Italian authors.. The collection of poems “Oltrepassare” is her new book, which presents itself with the new tendencies of Albanian literature, postmodernism and universal consciousness, from experimental currents to absurdity. She currently lives and works in Ancona, Italy.

 

ANCA MIHAELA BRUMA: Educator, lecturer, performance poet, eclectic thinker, mentor with staunch multi-cultural mindset and entrepreneurial attitude, Anca Mihaela Bruma considers herself a global citizen, having lived in four continents. Her eclecticism can be seen in her intertwined studies, she pursued: a Bachelor of Arts (Romania) and a Master of Business Administration (Australia). The author labels her own writings as being “mystically sensual”, a tool and path for women to claim their own inner feminine powers. She uses poetics as a form of literary education, self-discovery and social.

 

JULJANA MEHMETI

 

JULJANA MEHMETI

 

The Shredded Fogs

 

When I got lost in the middle of the equinox of time

I left behind a rasping crack

of the shredded fogs

to the windows of the galaxy

unexpressed echo

mazes complicated with fugitive souls.

than disappointment blew away salty rivers

lifeless glasses,

where a forgotten candle

ignite the light of hope

that as an image descended from heaven

reflected life …!

 

 

 

Provisional Amphitheatre

 

Remove the night braids from my chest

let the breath become scent

to whisper in those hidden forests

where the smile of a dream returns back in spring.

 

Dark nights always sow sadness

cover the promised paradise for centuries

the dust of oblivion left behind in the shapes of fog,

like the years that turn their back on me every day

with one more sigh

laughter as in Genesis

when life was flying freely

yet without building the walls

of the provisional amphitheatre,

where everyone is crushed to the mirror of Narcissus

shifting to the essences of things that already occurred

the challenge of life,

crossing over the ancient times

borrowed observation

in lights that transmit lost traces

hidden to the visions

felt, where in addition to desires we sacrifice ourselves.

 

 

Abandonment...!

 

It is a strange endeavor the inner one,

which does not slide on the whole body,

but stretches its wings around

to the emptiness which divides the spaces

of the strained air

choked spirit,

as in the nine invisible circles,

descending through the stairs to the deepness

to the eternity of eunuchs

long awaiting

for the last bite

of satisfaction.

 

It is a painful fatigue, the one of the disappointments,

and teeth clenching to the unsaid word

chaos evolved to a rebus of trees

raised like obelisk to the ravine of misery

an abandoned quay

on the devastated boundary.

 

 

It is more than a sweet vanishing

abandonment of the thought…!

 

 

Overtaking …

 

An instant … and colors are wiped out

the air remains hanging on the eyelids

Cold ices penetrate to the whole body.

the darkness spreads slowly its wings

to a thin haze …,

 

where everything is dissolved ..

... to the eternity of the being.

 

Shapes in the cloud

are dissolved abruptly…

deformed during the journey...

they reaper and disappear...

 

a sweet vanishing..

to the empty spaces of the unconsciousness  …,of misery

and to the untold

to the far end boundary,

where the thrilling wheeze

wraps the wandering spirit…

the altered image,

the pale vision of the dying light

distant voices,

forgotten yell.

 

In the mirror of the universe the spirit is designed

refracted to the invisible circles

reflecting stars.

Appearing in continuous sequences…

reborn loves

and sinful desires

 

... in overtaking of oneself

through the night

with the only memory.

 

We wander,

between the nothing and eternity

language of the bygone footprints

particles in eternity

… always further

to understand the boundaries ...

@ julja

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY ARBEN HOTI

 

 

Blue Crystal

 

I will give everything

the purity of the soul in the clear sky,

where meteors ignite and burn

in the bright fire strips

inflamed to the galactic backgrounds

most recent stars

blue crystal grabbed by angel wings

and brought to you.

 

I will wait for the brightness of this light

to highlight the shadow hanging from the window

coming from the outer space

refracted to the fainting prism

descended from a dream

silent,

speechless

whitened with kisses until dawn

 

I will tear the curtain of this night

I will sacrifice it in a sea tide.

 

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY ARBEN HOTI!

 

JULJANA MEHMETI

 

JULJANA MEHMETI was born in the city of Durres, in Albania. Since she was a child she became fond about literature and writing, especially poetry, a genre that in the following years will turn into a real life motive, a way to better express her ideas, her thoughts, her visions and metaphysics , her point of view according to her consciousness but also improving the awareness of the same suggestion that surrounds the human world. The first book “Soft – Poems” published in Italian language attracted the attention of publishers and Italian literary criticism, not only for its particular style, but also for new words, the language used, the philosophical message and the currents present in her poems that go from Hermetism to Surrealism. The second book comes from the field of translation entitled “Vramendje” – (Rimugino “) of the Italian author Alessandro Ferrucci Marcucci Pinoli, which will constitute the first experience in this field, but will also strengthen his long-standing conviction, to know and translate in his language, many popular Italian authors.. The collection of poems “Oltrepassare” is her new book, which presents itself with the new tendencies of Albanian literature, postmodernism and universal consciousness, from experimental currents to absurdity. She currently lives and works in Ancona, Italy.