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.