Yesterday I had the pleasure to talk about the process of writing and about my new poetry book with Dr. Meena Singhal from Long Beach City College California. Below I am sharing with you the interview, which was very fun and a good opportunity to share with the audience my interest and love for literature.
If you are an educator (or someone that has discussion groups about literature and writing) , and would like to invite me to speak in your class, I would be happy to do so, if my time allows. I do not charge anything for it, I’m doing it out of my love for teaching and learning, for the young generations but also for people from all walks of life.
My new poetry book “Love poems: insights into the complicated mystery of love” is available on Amazon. You can get it here. Please write a review if you get around it. I would really appreciate it.
The bomb that fell flattened his world, And drew corridors of fire That led everywhere and nowhere, Toward a future that kept hanging.
The tearless silence was floating, Dressed with silk black cap, As faith was rewriting the lists For new havens.
His eyes were closed, but it was bright inside, He remembered the taste of chocolate And how he ran up and down the hills Over the desert.
He will soon hear the others, Crawling like him, on their canes of hope, Their skills got sharper every time.
He’ll join them in the quest for Their food for tomorrow: Wild mushrooms and rabbits. Sometimes they will go by the airfield, Wondering loud where the storks were, And why was their place taken by uniformed men.
He felt his body burning, Heard shouting, faint, then rising, He smelled his father pomade and felt the clutching of his arms. He was tired of running in a race that had no stopwatch, Besides he already won, Of all the things, this war has never been able to embargo his dreams.
This is a poem I have written few years ago. Like everything I write( like everything that we writers write), there is a story behind it. Back then I was doing field work in Jordan about war refugees, and I was spending time listening to Syrian war refugees recounting their stories. Some of them had their children around when I was taking their interview. I was struck, I knew war from far away but this was a first account, as close as I could get. I would finish the interviews, and then I’d go transcribe and I would feel these people, and their pain even more than I didn’t before. Their faces would come to mind. This poem is about one of those faces.
My new poetry book “Love poems: insights into the complicated mystery of love” is available on Amazon. You can get it here. Please write a review if you get around it. I would really appreciate it.
Image by John Samuel, Library of Congress (Source: JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post)
Shadows of souls carried by wings Embarked to paint visions of stories told and untold. A dozen missions have now been declared, In a quest to make the world safe.
A Bird’s eye view flight Carries the souls who take notes on symbolistic frontiers. They tap in sights from above Unsure yet hopeful That the “differences” they weave intense on their maps Will debunk old narratives and bring restauration of unity to the people.
A water wagon Carries the ones who feel the mist in their hearts. Between the ground down below And the clouds that swell, They’re on a quest to fertilize the seeds of existence. They tend to the youthfulness of flowers and to all other species, And in in synchronous voice, they glorify nature.
Some are in a quest to build a world without taxes, Because not everything is for sale. They fly to declare independence From all agencies that monetize the souls of human beings.
Two lovers and few others, Carry with them the rebirth of wonder. Their spirts, filled with light, Are a proof that the love in our hearts can never be muted.
Some souls are still stuck in the Age of Anxiety They’ve tried take flight, But they drop, pulled down by the weight of their fears. They too will be safe, As the others will not hit the ground, Until their stories are heard, Until the hope in a better, safer world is restored.
My new poetry book “Love poems: insights into the complicated mystery of love” is available on Amazon. You can get it here. Please write a review if you get around it. I would really appreciate it.
First dates, Walking on a pristine field of hopes and dreams, Picking the perfect apple, With color and shape that promise to deliver perfection.
First dates, You take both hands, face one another, In a very tight and balanced circle, Inside the box of your own reality.
Tomorrow’s dust doesn’t matter, For passion has turned the air pink And you’re bathing your soul in its fragrance, Thinking that that you have just been christened in the eternity of love.
First dates Are full of observations, Some of them funny… As the ones that make you smile at your human anatomy’s upmost potential.
First dates Are Darwinism in images, Where the king of the jungle is circling his new quest….
First dates, Become indexed to your stories of life.
I still hear the loud crash and the screams that followed ours, And with eyes bundled up in the claustrophobia of my own memory, I still remember our first dates, And that feeling of being christened in the eternity of love…
My new poetry book “Love poems: insights into the complicated mystery of love” is available on Amazon. You can get it here. Please write a review if you get around it. I would really appreciate it.
Warm waves sprinkle with powder the shore You take my floral scarf and wrap it around my shoulders, And then pull me closer. The smell of your sweater gives me butterflies, As you are the keeper of my most prized emotion.
We are simply together, Heart and soul.
Promises smile in your eyes, And I’m holding my breath, As strands of hair that the wind has taken hostages Dance around your face.
Your eyes are saying more than your mouth, They murmur sights of wanted stories Predictions of future, and worldly events, Of you and me together.
I love you.
I take out of my pocket A long list of worries of my mind, And give it to you. You smile and set it on fire with your lighter.
“My love let’s make the infinity rule our time,” you say! I nod, I’m in love and hopeful.
I watch the smoke hung in the air, The paper’s on fire but it doesn’t become smaller and smaller! I point at it, And I’m trying to call you, but I can’t remember your name…… Dreams are like that…. They have no logic.
My new poetry book “Love poems: insights into the complicated mystery of love” is available on Amazon. You can get it here. Please write a review if you get around it. I would really appreciate it.
Hello everyone! To mark my collaboration with the platform Masticadores, they have conducted an interview with me which has been published a few days ago. Here is the link for it: Masticadores interview, Andrada Costoiu.
Because many of my readers are English speakers, I am going to reproduce it in English below.
When did you start writing? Can you explain that in a few words and also tell us where do you live?
I think my love of writing started early on, with my Romanian literature elementary teacher. Back then, Romania was a communist country where creativity was not encouraged. But despite that, he did encourage us to write about the simple things that we enjoyed in our lives. And that’s how it started…..
This takes me back to the way we teach children and the new generations. Creativity is the most wonderful form of self-expression. We must nurture that in our children because it is not only good for their emotional health, but it would also bring more magic into our world.
I have lived in several parts of the world, and each of them had its own charm. I now live with my family in Irvine, California, and I am affiliated with the University of California Irvine.
Do you think that the current pandemic is influencing your social network and your readership? Do you think these have expanded?
I have not thought much about this question before, so thank you for asking because it is a good way to reflect in retrospective. In my case, this pandemic has created more human connection than ever before. Not having to drive to work, not having to drive as much as before, has given me time to do other things. And one of those things is nurturing my soul, through lecture or through reaching out to people that I did not have the time to reach out before. I think the same has happened to others. So yes, there is more dialogue than before, and I do think that people are more likely reading more books as a result of the pandemic.
Is writing for an on-line platform changing your inspiration or your writing style? Do you think that writing for a reader that is using an iPad or a phone could be something that would determine your inspiration or desire to write?
We have to consider that people have different preferences, and different ways of reading. I myself prefer to read physical books, because I like to touch and turn the pagers and I like the smell of books. It is something that comes natural to me, because I have spent so much time in libraries and bookstores. Other people prefer kindle or have other ways of reading.
That being said, I think as writer we have to always adapt. But when I say adapt, I am referring to the format you are presenting your writing, not to the content itself. For example, I have recently published a book on Amazon. It is both paperback and kindle. These two have different formats and you have to be careful about the layout, otherwise the content might appear unprofessional.
The way people access my writing it is not important in my decision of writing or not writing a story, a poem or anything that tickles my imagination. I will always write. But I do care that anyone who reads me does it in a proper way, on their specific device. So, I will format my writing accordingly.
Do you think Masticadores’ focus on readers from urban areas is fair?
We live in an age where access is given to people from anywhere. I think we should always reach for a bigger audience, whether a big city, a small town or countryside. But there is something about the alienation and anonymity in the big cities. There is something about how hundreds of thousands of people pass one another, there is something about the brutal indifference of the streets. So, if through our writing we are able to contribute and bring some feeling into that, then that is a wonderful thing.
What has your collaboration with Masticadores offered you?
Diversity, diversity! I think being part of it has given me new perspectives from new writers, from different places. It is important that we always expand our horizons, and I hope I am able to do this for this audience.
Short bio:
Andrada Costoiu is an academic and writer of stories that come from the heart. She lives in California, where she spends her time between academic research and writing books. Her academic work and her literary endeavors have been published in various international journals and publications. Her work on political issues has been published by Cambridge Scholars and has also appeared in international political science journals such as the Journal of Identity and Migration Studies. As a literary author, she has published poems in literary magazines, such as Spillwords Press, Visual Verse,Literary Yard, Scarlet Leaf Review and others. She is the author of the poetry collection “Love poems: insights into the complicated mystery of love” and also the author of the upcoming novel Under the Iron Curtain, which is set in communist Romania.”
I would like to continue, until it ends, Everything ends, doesn’t it? Or maybe it doesn’t….. Some physicist says that there is no such thing as the past and future, And that the order of time is not a one-way street.
I try to believe him, but I cannot devoid myself of the trace of temporality, And strangely enough, it doesn’t bother me. My silent thoughts summon and acknowledge past memories, And piece by piece, each memory is filled with love, fear, desire or passion.
From my smallness I see the footprints of our humanity, It’s not silent and aimless, It makes me smile watching how we are all striving and longing to get what we desperately want, And I can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.
We don’t suffer from a tragic misconception of time, We take what we understand and we strive to understand more. We have time. Everything that doesn’t work will work one day, And I would like to continue.
My new poetry book “Love poems: insights into the complicated mystery of love” is available on Amazon. You can get it here. Please write a review if you get around it. I would really appreciate it.
You probably remember this poem, it as been published on my website before and it is also part of my poetry book, “Love poems”. I am going to reproduce it here, with a link to Masticadores, where it has been published few days ago. Masticadores is a year old platform that tries to unify authors from across the world; many of their writers and readers are from Spanish speaking countries ( Argentina, Chile, México, Brasil, Italia, Colombia and Spain).You can see it at their website if you click here : Masticadores.
Swimming, she used all her might to get to the surface, Fighting the currents of reason that sought to keep her in her world. Sure and unsure walked hand in hand on the beach where she surfaced, She stared them in the face, Took her first breath, and then the first step, And followed the voice that had long cuddled in her heart.
“Ariel,” the sand carried his whispers, From the place where he stud locked up in the man made prison. She whooshed through the sand and she found him, Trying to bend the bars that ruled his world.
“You are not allowed to love a mermaid,” said the chorus of ethnocentric voices, Singing decades old rules. He saw her, she saw him, And oblivious they reached for each other, Bending the bars under the heavy weight of their love.
Unafraid, they walked hand in hand by the wall of “virtue” where others were bowing, relenting their feelings to the man made rules. He picked a piece of charcoal and wrote “Love!” Not as a rule, but as guidance…..
They left, walking side by side. It wasn’t easy for her, She was just learning to walk into his world, But she had him….. And he had her…..
My new poetry book “Love poems: insights into the complicated mystery of love” is available on Amazon. You can get it here. Please write a review if you get around it. I would really appreciate it.
Another time, same wind gusts are witness, to a world of ever changing, uncharted sands of red and tan. No tribal conflicts are troubling this place, The hammer of the modern world has already been cast.
I hear the music of the shifting dunes Chanting to worlds that have been here long before the present, With a faint hum, low throated, drum like sealing sound.
Glowing under the moon, the lights of a thousand stars hanging from the sky, Drench the desert like whiffs of wisdom. I know, That I have lived my entire life in the company of them, Kneeling together to the same universe, Feeling the life force.
Some girls wear different hats, Mine is to thread the beads of civilization into the eternal loop, and prove that that nothing disappears into the unknown. I have been searching to make the Atlantis of the Sands real, To find the lost city that was forgotten for thousands of years. I keep planning my route, And this is certainly the most spectacular adventure of my life.
My feet are aching, for days I’ve been begging for new feet, new arms, stoic in my quest that I hope to carry through the next day and on.
Tonight, I feel so thirsty, Drinking water from my canteen, barefoot, I see my crew stretching, The feeble sounds of their hymn sung in unison Express visions of life that undulate across miles of silent sand. “We’ll go at first light”, says the main porter, I nod, Knowing that the greatest honor bestowed upon us humans is survival. Tomorrow is another day, Neither bound nor free, we will keep walking.
We’re a band of loyal warriors fighting to assemble the puzzle that reveals the truth: The past, the present, and the future are all connected, We don’t own time, but we do own our history.
I believe in us, Nothing is dust in the wind And our songs will not fade mute. Ancient flames of light flicker inside us, Giving us purpose, We will dive and emerge from the sea currents of time, And trace past and present trails of human survival and civilization.
My new poetry book “Love poems: insights into the complicated mystery of love” is available on Amazon. You can get it here. Please write a review if you get around it. I would really appreciate it.
Because you’re here and you have read it, I’d like to tell you the story behind it. There are actually two stories, one is that of Gertude Bell and the other of a lost city.
I’ve written about Gertude Bell before. There is little written about her, but she was remarkable woman who left traces in our history. She was a misfit, one that naturally went against the stereotyped woman of the early twentieth century. She was born in England, in 1868, into a wealthy family. Her mother died while when Gertrude was seven years old.She studied at Oxford. In fact, was the first woman to graduate in Modern History at Oxford. A lot of records list her as an archeologist or as a writer, but for me the accent should be put on her travels, on her quest to uncover unknown paths and on her cultural and political power in the Middle East. Her desert odyssey started in 1900 and she travelled across the Arabian desert many times. Many people thought of her as a specie of lunatic British explorer. I think the fact that they underestimated her was her lucky charm.
Her knowledge helped the European powers decide how to carve Arabia after the war. There is a movie made about her and her travels: “Queen of the desert”.
Under the cover of archaeological research, she traveled to Hail, to assess the Rashids, a historic Arabian House who were the most formidable enemies of the House of Saud. I don’t know what she saw or what she said but we all know that Ibn Saud was the one that became the founder of Saudi Arabia. Many say that Gertrude was a spy. I don’t know how I feel about this, I guess if you’re not there, you don’t know the reasons, or if you didn’t read enough, you should not speak. So, I will not speak. I want to highlight her courage rather than the political games. She was also involved and played a big role in the creation of Iraq, she played the role of mediator between the Arab government and British officials and later on she played an important part in the administration of Iraq.
So this is Gertrude’s story. Now, the Gertrude in my poem, it’s a combination between the way I see the real Gertrude and myself. I guess I must have some Indiana Jones DNA because I too, love adventure and I am fascinated by these things.
The second story behind this poem is the one of a lost city of Ubar, or the so called The Atlantis of the Sands. The quest to find this city started early on, in 1930. But it wasn’t until 1992 that they actually found something, that might be remnants of this city. Here is what they said about it :
“In February 1992, The New York Times announced a major archaeological discovery in the following terms: “Guided by ancient maps and sharp-eyed surveys from space, archaeologists and explorers have discovered a lost city deep in the sands of Arabia, and they are virtually sure it is Ubar. When news of this discovery spread quickly around the newspapers of the world, there seemed few people willing or able to challenge the dramatic findings, apart from the Saudi Arabian press. The discovery was the result of the work of a team of archaeologists led by Nicholas Clapp, which had visited and excavated the site of a Bedouin well at Shisr (18° 15′ 47 N” 53° 39′ 28″ E) in Dhofar province, Oman. The conclusion they reached, based on site excavations and an inspection of satellite photographs, was that this was the site of Ubar, or Iram of the Pillars, a name found in the Quran which may be a lost city, a tribe or an area.” A contemporary notice at the entrance to an archaeological site at Shisr in the province of Dhofar, Oman, proclaims: “Welcome to Ubar, the Lost City of Bedouin Legend”.[9]However, scholars are divided over whether this really is the site of a legendary lost city of the sands.
“A contemporary notice at the entrance to an archaeological site at Shisr in the province of Dhofar, Oman, proclaims: “Welcome to Ubar, the Lost City of Bedouin Legend”.[9]However, scholars are divided over whether this really is the site of a legendary lost city of the sands.” Source: Wikipedia
I think it is an interesting story, and there are a lot of resources on the web where you could read more about it.
Check out these two dueling neighbors in my area :). I think it is so funny:).
At first I thought about who is going to sell their house first?:) But now I am worried about them, I hope everything will be fine and none of them will need repairs on Tuesday night or after…
I respect everyone’s political views. Democrat or Republican, we are in this together!
Andrada Costoiu 