I always feel vulnerable talking about the poetry aspect of my career because it's little diary entries that I need to sometimes close read, and to reveal that much, it's a bit nerve-racking.
Being as restless as I am by nature, I couldn't simply just be on set, wait for my turn to rehearse for the week. And I kept reading, but it wasn't enough for me.
I think as actors we need to close read scripts and we need to fully understand the intricacies of dialogue as well as the symbolisms of what the actor wears and what they hold in their hand because that only adds more layers to the character.
My experiences there truly defined who I am to this day as far as my humanitarian work because I was a refugee in Albania.
I love making pizza with cauliflower dough. Again, can't taste the difference once you add enough ingredients.
I feel like I try not to limit myself. So every experience so far, I've just gone headlong into.
I've been to Asia, but I'd love to go to Thailand. I'd love to go to some rural areas in China.
Through my former experiences, writing poetry and learning other languages leading up to English I find ways to stitch words together that may seem a bit odd, but somehow, sometimes they do work.
That's the best part about being an actor though. One of the rewarding aspects of it is you're actually traveling in parts of the world that one wouldn't necessarily go to just because it's so far removed, but also like even beyond the metropolitan areas. You're in the woods.
I feel every medium of art needs to heal to some degree. It can't live in it's own void, and this came from my earliest experiences as a young refugee.
I need to be able to write a poem after every film and to kind of cleanse myself from the character because for about three months or so, I'm constantly living through the character's eyes.
I'm thinking like the character in order to be as authentic as I can. But after a while, how would I be able to cleanse myself from this unless I do something that's a different medium but also creative. That's what I do. It's my little ritual. After every filming, I just write a poem about it and my character specifically and I can let her go.
Sometimes I feel too transparent in my poetry, but that's what I think the beauty of poetry is, because as transparent as the author can be, it's usually only a reflection of what the reader can interpret, and based on their own personal experiences.
I know that there's this one Albanian myth that's always reflected on, and I think it reflects on the actual core culture. That myth is called The Besa. B-E-S-A. The Besa is a word that Albanians use to mean avow, but it's such a strong promise, that even past death, one cannot break that promise. It is unfathomable. So if you give someone your besa, life or death, heaven or hell, you have to fulfill that besa.
There's always an added element of a poem when it's read aloud because then you can really hear the rhythm, and the cadence, and even the pronunciation sometimes adds another layer to the poem.
I didn't even know what acting was at 11 years old. I truly believed that acting was hidden cameras everywhere. And I felt that these actors on the screen were somehow real people.
If I'm not writing a poem to decompress from my experiences on a movie set, I usually just cook and it's like meditative. Especially since I'm at the stage now where I don't really use measuring cups. Kind of instinctual, I just kind of prepare my own dishes as I go along.
As a poet and as an actress, we're taught to be far more elaborate with our words and - I wouldn't say generalize, but definitely stronger with our choices.
Definitely routine is the bedrock of our relationship.
I'm an actress, primarily. I love to write poetry. I've been writing poetry since I was 12 years old.
Bound in primal longings, we pine to be understood by ourselves.
I felt it's vague enough for the reader to pull their own story and their wisdom out of the poem, but for me, it's actually very painfully transparent what I've written. Sometimes very literal, which is scary.
I think going back to school, studying as much as you can, especially literature and close reading some of the most beautiful works. You can always apply that to acting.
As poets, our lamentations are glorious, filled with the virtues angles would learn to envy.
English was my fourth language. I arrived, I enrolled in public school, as a child, I believe I was about six years old when we finally landed in Michigan. And I was initially put in special education because I couldn't quite wrap my mind around the English language because I was listening to Hungarian and Albanian and German. My mind broke down like I couldn't quite wrap my mind around the fourth language.
