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Here are poems that were posted on my Instagram account during the month of January and February. Enjoy!
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About three weeks ago, a poet on Instagram found out about my poetry book, contacted me, and asked to meet in a café. That is the first thing I noticed about Christina Strigas, the poet in question: how comfortable she is to DM a stranger. It struck me, as someone who has sometimes great difficulty to share her work online and even greater difficulty to promote my book, that another poet would be interested in my book. That alone made me admire and respect Strigas from the first second of our encounter. I mean, who has nowadays the guts to reach out to people, to share talent, and to pour out their soul online for everyone to read it? A whole lot of us, of course. However, the majority of this whole-lot-of-us, so-called poets or writers, write the same quotes repeatedly and have the nerve to call this annoying and atrocious piece of “art” a “poem” or “prose”. Nevertheless, Christina Strigas is different. She is an incredibly inspiring and youthful woman. Her personality radiates a humbling and positive energy. She is the kind of woman a 20 year-old would like to become in the future: confident, thick-skinned, and young at heart. At now 48, Strigas, who studied in literature at Concordia University, has now three novels (a trilogy), and three poetry books under her belt, including Your Ink On My Soul, and the newest one Love & Vodka. She is the proof that you can make your dreams come true anytime, but only if you have the passion, the courage, and the will to do it. (more…)
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I was quite excited yesterday. Excited to scream GOODBYE to 2016, goodbye to friendships that don’t bear fruits, goodbye to tears buried in prayers, goodbye to overthinking, goodbye to lack of confidence, goodbye to uncertainty, goodbye to judging, comparing, and psychologically killing myself, goodbye to unhealthiness, goodbye to complaints, goodbye to laziness and procrastination, goodbye to dark thoughts, goodbye to (self-)hate(rs), goodbye to holding grudges, goodbye to my demons, goodbye to the lack of energy, goodbye to failures, goodbye to bullies… Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye! (more…)
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Exactly a year ago, I was in Cairo, capital of Egypt. A day before my departure, I went to visit Saint Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral. Right next to it was Saint Peter & Saint Paul’s Coptic Orthodox Church, which I also visited. The members of the cathedral, as well of the church, were such humble and kind people that I remember leaving a bit teary-eyed, asking God to bless and reward them.
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How does it feel to perform more than one of your poems in front of the Egyptian Consulate? Undeservingly thrilling.
The first time I ever performed a poem in front of people was at the Divan Orange bar, in Montreal, this summer. I’m not used to bars, neither am I used to perform, but I thought I could give it a try because I knew I would regret it if I didn’t. The result was me being so nervous I interrupted myself setting up the microphone properly for a good five minutes. I was then judged by amateurs and was given an average of 6.9/10 for my performance. That stabbed me, right through my heart. However, I left there with a bag of lessons learned. Yes, one night can indeed teach you a hundreds of things, but for the sake of this article, I’ll only list the two most important.
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It seems like summer 2016 isn’t the summer for movies and no one is freaking over a particular movie either. Thus, when it came to go to the movies with my mother, the choice was a bit difficult. I mean, my mother is my best friend, she’s pretty opened about everything, but my friends warned me about taking her to watch Bad Moms featuring Mila Kunis. However, after making her watch the trailer she seemed quite excited to watch a movie to which she wouldn’t relate at all, whether on a social or cultural level, yet I feared her Egyptian side would be disappointed. We ended up watching Nerve, and although, its average on Metacritic is 58%, I have to defend it and say it wasn’t bad at all. On the contrary, we were both entertained, but also disturbed.
MARIA MAGDELEINA 