Daniela Oana - Poet and Photographer
About
From Romania to Quebec and finally to Brampton, Ontario, Daniela Oana has been writing poetry since the classroom verses she’d furtively write alongside notes. While she writes in French and Romanian, most work is found in English, romanticizing sorrow, death and the calamity of tragedy, either embellishing or depicting it as heart-shattering as it is. Her ability to speak and think in several languages may at times deepen her perception and thus expresses it on deeper levels.
Having learnt to write with a fountain pen, Daniela’s old-fashioned remnants are seen throughout her poetry, with a particular delight in traditional poetry. In her more recent work, contemporary poems begin to emerge. As her work is versatile from writing style to meaning, she brings you from one setting to another, from one emotion to the other.
Daniela’s love for writing has led her to study Journalism-Print, but despite its earned diploma, it is creative writing which has always been her fervent passion. Daniela has also taken part of poetry readings and is currently a member of the Mississauga's Writers Group.
While some of Daniela's poetry is published in the Mississauga’s Writers Group 2015 anthology, she hopes to soon publish her first poetry book.
How I Started Writing
I began noticing poetry at about twelve years old. It is then that I began to take pleasure in reading sweet short poems and quotes alike. With boys suddenly in mind, I soon started writing my own longing poems. Writing remained a practiced craft I never parted from, yet one always kept to myself. Listening to soft, slow music was and remains a form of inspiration, as was my pondering nature, known to be with my “head in the clouds.”
Reflecting on these early years, I now see that I embodied many of the typical characteristics of an inner poet. Being of a timid and quiet nature, I found poetry a swell form of expression. I also constantly found myself longing for young happiness found in two. I was and still am of an old-fashioned nature, delighting in traditional aspects, in classic films, often attracted to tragedy, viewed as a form of romanticism. Though social and outgoing, my interests and comfort in my introverted nature often made me feel – perhaps like many of us – well – different. Through creating poetry, however, I perceived this as a fine, unique and thus accepted characteristic. Ironically, I later began to seek being different, appreciating it as a form of art. Being artistically-inclined – paint, draw, photograph - I also attempted applying this uniqueness in my writing and artistic sense.
My poetry has always been deeply dear and important to me, more so in the recent years in which I’ve felt more confident as a writer. What has given me this ‘boost’ is also a desire to read more poetry and learn about different styles of poetry and poets, both traditional and contemporary. Getting involved with writers from either poetry readings or writer groups, have also further fired my passion. This not only places me in a different stage in life, but also in a different stage as a writer.
Over the years, I have noticed through my writing how I both matured as an individual and as a writer.
Poetry is a passion I often wonder who I would be, and what I would do, without.
