The poetry of Nadia-Cella Pop
(After reading poems in English and Italian in The Lordship of the Word)
Language, poetic mechanisms and other interesting aspects:
Reading the poetry of Nadia-Cella Pop is quite an experience. Hers is a very powerful imagery and at the same time beautiful and lyrical. Pop’s poetry is also a game on words which when read forces the reader to exclaim, “How beautiful!” Hers is a language which goes directly to the heart. All is presented in an aura of mystery. The poet is well-tied to the present but her fantasy travels back and forth in time with great ease, as with much ease she creates very effective imagery. She also travels between two different temporal points in time which mark the limits of Pop’s fantasy: at one extreme, “a world of ruins” (the extreme point of corruption), and on the other extreme, a world where “rule the butterflies” (a world of innocence, untouched). Hers is a voice in a way tied to the present, but in other ways it surpasses the limits of time. Pop’s stature at times reaches dimensions that surpass “all the worlds we know”.
In writing her poetry Nadia-Cella Pop makes use of different lexical registers such as nature, music, colours, emotions and the Bible (the crucifix is a recurring image).
Reading the poetry of Nadia-Cella Pop is also a voyage from childhood to old age, with all that is experienced in between.
Themes:
Nadia-Cella Pop sings about love, peace and harmony through her word. In The Afternoon Tea she invites humankind to unite. Harmony is the key word, and all this in a simple but very fluent language. Harmony is also the thing common to both life and music. Human love later on transforms itself into a pantheistic love where the “I” unites “with the world of worlds for eternity”.
The poet invites the reader to reflect on huge (the macrocosm) and small (the microcosm) things, on the good and the evil, on the strong and the weak, on the conquerors and the vulnerable. Pop writes about the worlds both within (memory and emotions) and without (creation and nature), the told and the untold. Nature is seen as an open book from where the poet learns, reflects and expresses what people in general have no time to say.
Little gestures or things, like having a cup of coffee in the morning or a flower, inspire Pop to write about universal experiences, thus those lived by man and woman not only in Romania, but everywhere. In this way Pop manages to change gestures into words and words into poetry. Like the mime, the poet does not speak but makes us see what “we want to forget about ourselves”. Pop also helps us move always nearer to the “deciphering of the total”. And this can only happen through “pure thought and a virgin soul”.
And this makes us feel that her poetry is also an invitation to “remain forever children”, and to continue to feel the need for fables and adventure.
Pop also writes about the tiredness of the body and the grandeur of the spirit. However, part of this grandeur belongs also to poetry.
NADIA-CELLA POP ANSWERS MY QUESTIONS:
1. Why does the poet feel the need to publish his poetry in different languages and in different publications, local and foreign?
For all I know, the poet turns the usual words into artistic expressions, by giving them value and exquisite harmonies, offers a unique profoundness for feelings and visions with an endless horizon.
His/her thrills and imagination, illustrated by a multifarious gamut of imagery can reach to the readers’ souls, only if the lines are arranged on the “stave” of readers’ language.
And if the translations preserve the message and musicality of the lines, the triumph of emotional communication is guaranteed.
2. How important is it for you to have contacts with other poets, even foreign ones?
My contact with foreign poets is something of great value because of the exchange of literary ideas and realization about other creators’ opinions about personal and general struggles, in an era which is “strangled” by plenty of information and “the race of know-how, using only the most exact news” or by cold pragmatism.
Today, the poets are very anodyne or very rare, it’s all about the lyrical consumers’ pretensions, their desire to get thrilled by poetry readings, about how they can identify themselves with poet’s mood or to be mobilized to choose their life principles.
3. What do you consider most important: poetry for art’s sake, or poetry with a message?
Poetry must have a message, must be suggestive, bearing a huge area of human situations and “voices” of nature, all connected with feelings and with involvement of the divinities in the human “environment”.
All these quests must wear artistic forms, otherwise they remain in the zone of insignificant and mundane language. The art and social life must stay together.
I think the main sense of the word in a poem needs to be thoroughgoing, but not hidden, because in that case it disturbs the real sense of the message. The musical suggestion of the poetic speech leads towards essences and unknown inner vibrations.
4. What are the themes you write about in your poetry?
The themes of my poetry are provided and directed by my contemplative and philosophical structure within, of what I personally feel about events and moods. They were enriched by other people’s experiences and my vast cultural background. So, my books contain erotic poems, patriotic poems, poems with a mystic sense, where the intensity of feelings rules, poems of existence. I always respect the words’ aesthetics. I’m tracking a coherent base thinking about all types of readers, to let them taste the originality of my lyricism.
5. At what time and in what environment do you usually write poetry?
Poetry is about to be settled on the blank paper when the inspiration takes the poet’s soul by storm, when the anxiety turns into artistic expression of wisdom. And then, all the things around vanish and the space is haunted by inner voices, emotions and feelings that become marks and senses, links of the same chain in poems. The confessions and abstract thoughts of the poet need silence, that is created by areas in the dark or peaceful nature’s charm in the daylight. Of course, this is my personal opinion…
6. How do you react to people saying that the poet is only a dreamer?
I can’t be angry when someone says the poet is only a dreamer. In part it is true. The dream’s paths leads us to realms beyond our possibilities, at least as an idea, and the excessive sensitivity might raise imagery and visions of a rare beauty. But the poet could be a militant for justice and truth, a fighter of mankind’s treasures. The dreamer is romantic, passionate, picturesque, a thinker of profoundness. The dreamer’s flights are powered by imagination.
7. Your poem “The Afternoon Tea” made these questions come into my mind: what do poets and politicians have in common? How do they differ?
My poem “The Afternoon Tea” has the romantic purpose to gather together all mankind and a possible contact with the possible worlds in the outer space, due to the friendly inner rhythm of our global harmony.
I don’t think the poets and the politicians have something in common, they just live under the same sun, that’s all. While the politicians think and act for the benefit of their own clique of interests, using often “the trumpet of democracy” for many of their selfish actions, the poets unveil a world of questions, hyperboles, senses, touching suggestions, without reaching the border of theories, rules, percepts and laws. The poet remains to rule the world of metaphors.
8. The poet is someone who lives with his feet well rooted to the ground but also somebody who looks at mankind and the world from high above. What does Nadia-Cella think about this?
The poet should be a “symbiosis” between a person who lives on Earth, our beautiful planet, and another person who can climb the peaks of aspirations, imagination, majestic ideals that are waiting to be discovered and given, out of the personal retort, to the sensitivity and understanding of all the people. But, all without any seclusion or vanity from the poet.
The new reality, which the poet created this way, will be artistic and positive.
9. What does poetry have to do with love, nature and discovery, according to Nadia-Cella?
Love, that moves all the beauties of human soul, nature, that brings us harmony, protection, dangers, the discovery of all phenomena, events and quivers that give emotions to human beings, all mean the ideas which are directed by the muses to poets (bards), the real parents of life’s anthems.
10. Reading the poem “A Cry” in “a world of ruins” can poets be considered as the ruling “butterflies”?
In the poem “A Cry” I did not think of poets like “ruling butterflies”. But, after a possible apocalypse, some fragile life forms, as the butterflies might survive. So, there is hope, even little, in the splendour of a new beginning. One with gentle forms and multiple colors, charming…
11. Describe Nadia-Cella Pop as a person. Describe the city you live in, Brasov. Does Romania inspire you to write poetry? How?
Honestly, I wish to be described by others as a person, maybe by people who know me since a long time. I’d like to be considered as a sociable person, the one with the sense of honour, sympathetic, a woman with principles, joyous and full of compassion for the unlucky or unhappy ones. I hope that people around me appreciate my tact, wisdom, kindness or courage, even if I respond impulsively to impudence, lies, meanness, offensive behaviour or treason. I try to increase the good things inside me, despite other things.
Brasov, a former fortified city in Transylvania, located in Tara Barsei, is an old settlement, presented in documents since 1235; it has been settled by isolate communities since prehistoric ages. ARIUSD, my birthplace, a small village located some kilometers north from Brasov, is famous because of its neolithic settlement, so-called “Ariusd-Culture” (exquisite painted pottery). This is a reason for pride for me.
Of course, the ancient inhabitants of the city, the Dacians and the Daco-Romans lived and rode on the paths of history in the defense and development of this city. There were craftsmen, traders, artists, even artists and scholars.
Located at the foot of Mount Tampa, Brasov has beautiful landscapes of wilderness, which the tourists and locals like much. The areas of natural charm are in the neighbourhood of monuments, historical sites, cultural institutions and churches. The scientists and researchers find Brasov as a rich source and the people who like the arts and beauty think the same.
As many other creators (using words, notes, painting brush or carver’s chisel), I’m nourished by the inspiring springs offered by my country: history, places in the wild, other people’s experiences, the interferences of my own feelings. Any human involvement is a condition for a vast gamut of ideas and emotions, which I want to use as best I can, in my poems.
Thanks Nadia-Cella Pop :-)
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