This was the subject of the email I sent yesterday to a dear artist friend, Tom Phillips. Today morning, I woke up with an email saying that Tom died and it was his funeral yesterday. I guess we can hope, but death is final.
You know, Tom was old. When I met him he was old still. He was one of those people you meet in life, just a very few times, and they have the power to help you see who you are and what are you really doing. Memories, to which I keep going back. Precious ones, important, prefferably unforgettable.
I met Tom when I was living in London. In Peckham. It was after new years celebration, 3rd of January most probably. I was reading a small book from the Penguin by Orwell. They printed this collection of 24, I think, books from classics, with essays, short but concise and a delight to read. In white and red covers. I loved them. Got three of them as a present from a writer buddy, Kaly Temmink. The thing is, at that New Year celebration, 2013 – 2014, I went out and got spiked. I couldn’t speak but managed somehow to hook up with a guy who ended up staying for the first two days at my place and…creepily…didn’t want to leave. Mainly because his life was shit and he saw me as some kind of an escape or whatever. So I decided, strategically, since he was also a dickhead, to take him out for a coffee at this nice cafe by the University of the Arts. I took the Orwell book with me, because I knew I would get bored and it has been two days after new years and I haven’t done any work.
So, we sit at a table and I open the book and start reading. He is silent and tells me he is going to the loo. Suddenly, I hear this voice, of an old gentleman next to me, Tom:
– You are working.
– I feel as if someone went: busted! How did he know that I wasn’t just reading?
And then I realise that I have been underlining various words, expressions and phrases.
– Your friend looks really sad…
– Yeah, he dreamed of being a football player and ended up being a guitarist, I replied with a real account of my newyears gift of a man.
Tom had this white massive santa beard, and it was colored brown from him smoking…a pipe…I think. Can’t really remember. And he was wearing two scarfs, entagled, which I found to be quite artsy and tasty. The girls working in the cafe were fussing a lot around him so I went
– You must be very important.
– Neah, I’m just old.
I laughed and we agreed to meet for tea one of the next days. At his place. Which was a house within houses, you know…the classical English house mash, and he had the two or three floors as his home and studio. My god, was it crowded with stuff! Plus all the walls and ceilings were drawn with various sketches. The man didn’t care about ups and down.
– Where can I find an ashtray? I asked when I entered while holding a freshly lit cigarette between my frozen glove-fingers.
– Anywhere, he said.
He meant anywhere on the floor. I hoped his cleaning lady was properly paid.
We met three or four times. I moved from London back to Romania and then to Berlin. He always told me to start writing in my own language and to go back to Moldova where I should do the work that had to be done. I knew he was old-school and I appreciated his input.
– English, just like Latin, is going to die, he told me once. When a language becomes lingua franca it’s on its way to disappearance.
Should I have listened? Yes. Did I? No.
Last time we met was on my birthday. I was turning…hmm…29, I think…which would be about 7 years ago. It was one of the most horrific times of my life. I had no money but I wanted to see him. I didn’t tell Tom it was my birthday. I figured it didn’t matter. He took me to a Greek restaurant he really loved. He paid. I still owe you, Tom…a dinner and a ping pong match. Looking forward to our redezvous in the afterlife. RIP my dear friend and thank you for reminding me that we don’t really need ashtrays and that we can do many many many various amazing things with our talents. I wonder what will happen to your collection of Shakespearean hairballs?!
My friend Gréta Timea Biró and I met in Porto this June. We decided to create a video for one of my poems – The Paths We Travel Alone, which gave the title to my first poetry collection.
If you wish to get a paperback copy of the book, please leave a comment. The book is comprised of thirty five poems, written during a period of eight years. I see them as stepping stones across infinity.
THE PATHS WE TRAVEL ALONE
Some things make me sad,
Like spending too much time on
Social media
Or smoking on an empty stomach
Or waking up without a window in front of me.
There’s also this knowing that from some
Of the people I love I will have to depart
Because there is only so much space in one’s life
For path-sharing. Some roads are as narrow
As needed to be travelled alone, maybe a good book
Could be a great companion. On the roads
We travel alone,
We must move in one pace only, our pace,
We must think as ourselves only and we
Must listen to only our hearts.
On the paths we travel alone we learn about
What drives us, what makes us different, what
Makes us click and turn and jump and sing and
Laugh and love, and who are those we truly
Fall in love with.
What makes us fly?
What we take on these paths is very little,
We don’t want to be carrying the past, it’s too
Consecrated,
Maybe a few lessons extracted from courageous mistakes.
We cannot keep in mind a future either,
As we cannot expect to tame a hungry lion,
Or a gorgeously looking snake;
But we can read the signs carefully,
We can rely on our inner compasses…attuned carefully
By those very few who have inspired us to travel
And we can stop to take a good deep breath
As often as needed, because there is no rush
And there is no ending, except the shedding of the
Body which, thank goodness, won’t happen in a prison
Of our own minds.
_______
If you want to collaborate on video/music/performance/poetry…do not hesitate to get in touch 🙂
If you are reading this, then most probably you have been writing poetry for a while now and feel kind of ready to bring your collection together. But how to decide which poems go into it and which don’t? And how many poems are enough? These are important questions and I will try to answer them below based mostly on my own experience as a self-published poetess.
Before coming to the moment of feeling ready to start putting the book together, I felt that everything was everywhere. I have been writing poetry for about eight years. Luckily, I had a bit of organisational skills which saved me some time. I had various files/folders in my computer and in my phone with ‘poetry’ in the title, so I could find them easily. Also, in the last few years I began writing in googledocx and I had one file open every year where I wrote down poems, tryouts, everything poetical. Also, I had a blog where I began publishing my poetry, and that was…besides the organisational aspect, a very important step into getting the book together. And so, while you are going through all your ever written poems, I would advise you to start publishing on your blog.
a) Publishing your poetry on a blog
Honestly, it doesn’t matter if you have many followers, or any, on your blog. What matters is that you put your poems out. Why is it important to have your poems published (on your blog)? Because it offers you the possibility to read your poems from an outside perspective, that of a random imaginary reader, and then…as it happened very often for me…you see the typos, the mistakes, those sneaky little letters hiding from the writer’s eye.
Another good thing about publishing your poems on the blog is that it offers you the possibility to get over the fear of being read/exposed/rejected. It’s a block of feelings and it gets more loose with every poem that goes online. I did it for months until I was totally comfortable and even excited to check the stats and see the countries from which my readers came from…but still…if I didn’t publish for even a few days…the block would start solidifying again. Therefore, for a while, before the actual publishing of your book, it is advisable to constantly work through the fear of rejection by publishing on your blog. Make yourself public and work through your inner fears. It works wonders and also allows yourself and people who get to read you to pick on the fact that you are, indeed, a dedicated poet/ess. The poems I chose to publish were the ones I was writing on that day. I would write it and put it out. read it. See the mistakes. Edit. Done.
#beyourownreader #beyourowneditor
Another thing I did after a while of putting my poems up on the blog, was to share a link of the freshly published poem to my FB page and/or make a story with ‘new post’ on IG. I used these platforms in order to completely get myself out of the closet.
b) Start by selecting through your poems
What I did at first, was to open a new document and start writing titles of poems, one under the other, to count how many poems I might consider for the book. It’s a really engaging process of filtering and selection. At first, I had over 100 poems. I went through all my poetry files and began selecting everything that I felt had something in it. Something which I liked, enjoyed reading. Eventually, when I began feeling into the poems, I knew precisely which ones are meant to be part of the book. The poems which I selected were the ones that meant something, that my mind would go back to from time to time. They stuck to me and kept reappearing in key moments of my life. It was as if the words were imprinted in my mind. Or, to put it in another way, as if I knew the poems by heart. And beyond all that, those were poems in which I felt I was truly myself. I could stand their ground. I could speak about them. I knew their story.
c) The extra poems
I call ‘the extra poems’ the poems that have not yet been written (at the time of compiling the book), but will go into the book (once they will be written), or those that do not necessarily have a meaning but are maybe dedicated to someone you know. When I first collected the poems for the book, I was still missing a few, around five of them. Luckily, at the time I was doing the selection, I wrote the poem ‘The Paths We Travel Alone’ which also became the title of the book.
d) About the title
Don’t worry about the title, it will come.
e) Why self-publish
I decided to self-publish because of many reasons, the most important one is that I didn’t want to stress while having full control of the process. Also, I believe that self-publishing the first book can be a valuable experience because we learn about the steps of bringing a book out, we take the main decisions (the fonts, the placement, the paper, the cover etc) and therefore gain valuable experience in knowing more precisely how to go about publishing the next books.
And the most important part – You really start understanding the value of your work!
f) The feeling of completion
I realised I had a feeling of completion when I began writing poems in a completely different pace, tonality, rhythm. The subjects changed and the technicality of my poetry felt much more advanced. Therefore I knew, I am already writing the second book…which meant one thing – the first book was complete!
g) The first sample
I have to mention that once I decided to publish the first book, while already working on the second, everything went easily and smoothly. The pressure was off. I had the PDF, sent it to a typography/printing house and in no time I had the first sample. I finally read it from cover to cover. Thirty four poems. A perfect morning coffee companion. I decided to add another poem and, together with the typography, we decided to change the cover and adjust some minor details. Then came the next two big steps. How to get the money to print three hundred copies and how to spread them around. I will go into the details regarding these two steps in the next blog posts. Meanwhile, good luck collecting your poems…and trust me, the first steps are the easiest.
To pre-order my first poetry collection ‘The Paths We Travel Alone’ send me an email to cburdu@gmail.com #supportpoetry
Tips:
1. When starting to collect the poems and putting them in a doc/x, make sure to have as examples a few poetry books which you like or enjoy the way they look. Have them close, because they will help you decide on the small, mind-bogging, details such as: paging, fonts, spacing, what is and what isn’t ok, blank pages etc. Just feel free to steal from them.
2. Keep a personal journal. Write down your feelings and thoughts every day. Build your inner trust. Don’t write beautifully, or literally, or creatively, just write. Take it all out. This is the debris which is best placed in a separate journal rather than letting it weave through your writing. Be honest with yourself as a person first, and then you can be honest with yourself in your creative writing.
3. Don’t let others dictate you how to do your thing. See the book, visualise it and feel into it. The book will slowly come to life and you’ll be flexible enough to not get influenced.
3. From time to time, take your shoes off and go for a walk.
I remember how it felt The pain Releasing guilt Old roles falling away The understanding that not all mothers love their children And not all lovers believe in love. Those were the hardest times of my life and yet I was smiling Beneath all pain and hurt and endless ramblings of a changing Mind Was silence and a deep sense of liberation. I stood up. I said yes to freedom. My knees were hurting. I could barely move. The pains of growth were unbearable Yet I felt lifted up, Held in the hands of grace Encouraged to see myself for who I am, A being filled with an endless capacity to inspire A being born for greatness A warmhearted woman A child of Lorde. One of the kind ones in a world Which constantly forgets That life is a miracle.
To pre-order the first poetry collection by Cristina Burduja, The Paths We Travel Alone, please send an email to: cburdu@gmail.com with the subject: Pre-order!
Sometimes there’s a battle within us Between the old and the new Between who we used to be and whom we have become. The old sides are seen on our faces; The hurt, the suffering, the betrayal, the parts that still struggle to integrate the love which was mistreated. The new sides are yet unrecognisable Only by separating the old, can we see ourselves in a new light Another perspective Revealing that which is behind the conditioned portrayal of one’s desire to belong To stay safe To be accommodated.
This battle can take a while, and sometimes it might come back due to The personal takes on the wins and the losses. But each time it does, Its strength to disturb us is less For in kicks the new The forever Saying: and this too shall pass.
The good and the bad. Everything passes. What remains is silence A mind no longer rumbling A stomach no longer hungry A wallet no longer empty A vice no longer hated A look forward without looking back.
On our ways through life, we sometimes need companions. They don’t have to be people. A great companion could be a book…one of those we could take to an island and read in solitude. What makes us choose a book or another…I guess a great companion for a lifetime, just like a great life partner, is a book we can always go back to and discover something completely new, something so obvious and so sweet that the taste of it lingers within us, invades us with a warm feeling and puts a smile on our faces. As it is with life partners, so is with a book as a great companion, we choose it because we just can’t stop falling deeper and deeper in love, every day, we can’t stop the desire to know, to ask, to find out, to discover, to be surprised. It’s like falling in love over and over again. With every read…while feeling safe to go through the most unexpected storms.
‘The Paths We Travel Alone’ is such a book. A companion on the paths of life. A compass during tricky crossroads. Every time I read it, it reminds me how precious everything is, reminds me of the main goal: to be kind to ourselves and to one another. To find out for ourselves that we are never truly alone and that THAT which we seek is to be found right now, right here.
To pre-order the book, send me a message and in no time…this great companion shall knock on your door.
Much love and appreciation to those who already pre-ordered. You are now part of the poetic revolution. Congratulations to you, to us all 🌐
After eight years of collecting poems, I have arrived at a moment of completion. As I write this, my first poetry book ‘The Paths We Travel Alone’ is being printed by Terra Design (Romania). The book is available for pre-ordering. If you want a copy or more, please write me a message and I’ll give you all the information on how to go about it.
The book is comprised of thirty five poems written on subjects such as love, womanhood, mysticism and home. I see them as stepping stones over infinity.
‘If there was one of thing I could say about my poetry is that it’s magical and those who would truly penetrates through it will soon discover that their hearts have been touched and their lives have been transformed forever.’
I am also currently co-curating a poetry exhibition in California at @villagerockshopofficial where women from around the globe have been and are invited to contribute by recording a video of the poem ‘I Raise a High Praise’, a poem dedicated to women’s beauty, creativity and elegance. More updates on this will follow.
In May, 2021 me and Laura began a collaboration of photography with poetry. It came out of a push, a push to not let our connection grow weak but rather go deeper into our friendship and into our art. We know each other for many years, time in which we both grew stronger in love with what we do. Her photography inspires every single word, I connect with her, with us…and from us…comes poezia noastră.
cristinaburduja.wordpress.com 