Featured Writer: Adriana Oniță
On creating space to write and writing advice.
Welcome to Women Writing! It’s my pleasure to feature Adriana Oniță in today’s issue of Women Writing.
About the author…
Adriana Oniță is a poet, artist, educator, editor, translator, and researcher with a PhD in arts-based language education. She writes and teaches in English, Romanian, Spanish, French, and Italian. Her debut poetry collection, Descântec For My Split Tongue, is published by Palimpsest Press / Anstruther Books. Her multilingual poems also appear in CBC Books, The Globe and Mail, The Ex-Puritan, Canthius, Tint Journal, and in her chapbooks: Misremembered Proverbs (above/ground press, 2023) and Conjugated Light (Glass Buffalo, 2019). As founder of The Polyglot, she is proud to have published more than 250 writers, translators, and artists working in over 60 languages. She is the editorial director at the Griffin Poetry Prize and lives between Edmonton and Italy. Discover her work at adrianaonita.com.
On a writing routine …
I don’t have a writing routine, but I do have certain rhythms, obiceiuri, formulas that bring me to the page: walking, drawing, reading, translating, taking photographs and videos, chasing after my toddler, transcribing what he notices, names, invents. My best time to write has almost always been late afternoon (around 4:00pm, when the sun softens), or deep into the night, between midnight and 2:00am, when everyone is asleep and I can finally be alone and transcribe i miei pensieri.
On writing spaces …
My writing desk is always changing. We move between several cities throughout the year, and that movement regenerates my writing practice (resets my attention, my language, my pace). I love how each place carries its own feeling, its own way of thinking: the sunny kitchen in Marsala, the ficus trees at Bar Comunale, the pear tree in grădiniță, the cherry trees in livada la Jilava, the porch of the Purple House in Edmonton, the palm trees at Bar Triestina in Gaeta.
On writing communities …
Yes. Community is central to my writing life. Through The Polyglot (a multilingual literary magazine and community hub that I founded in 2016) and other arts spaces, I’m constantly in conversation with writers, translators, editors, artists, and youth. I learn a lot just by witnessing how others move through language, doubt, form. Also: supporting other writers (editing, translating, publishing) feeds my own practice. It keeps me open, attentive, and really attune to innovation in poetry and other genres, not just in Canada, but across the world.
“The best advice I received, from friends in The Polyglot community, was to resist that tendency, and to allow myself to write in all the languages I think, feel, dream, and love in—while also tenderly inviting the reader into this world.”
On challenges …
Yes, especially since becoming a mother three years ago. Time is one part of it, but also attention. The ability to arrive at the page. Some days I feel completamente scattered, needed in too many directions. Writing feels far away, even though the material is right there, in the day itself. I’ve had to learn to carve time (not wait for it), but also to reframe what “counts” as writing. Caring for my child, talking to family, moving through the world: all of this enters the work. It always has.
On the best advice …
To trust my voice in its multiplicity: to keep my tongue wild, as Gloría Anzaldúa said. Writing across languages, I’ve often felt pressure to smooth things out, to translate myself more fully. The best advice I received, from friends in The Polyglot community, was to resist that tendency, and to allow myself to write in all the languages I think, feel, dream, and love in—while also tenderly inviting the reader into this world.
On the worst advice …
To make my work more “accessible” by totally reducing the presence of my mother tongue (Romanian) and other languages I live in. It made me feel split (like I had to choose between clarity and truth). I carried that for a long while. I even wrote a poem with verbatim advice I received from others called “Pălăvrăgeală,” which is part of my debut collection, Descântec for My Split Tongue (Palimpsest Press, 2026).
Eventually, through teaching, researching, and editing a magazine, I realized most writers and readers in the world are either multilingual or curious monolinguals. So I let the languages live alongside one another in my writing and judiciously worked at points of entry into the work. I trust that the right readers will meet my debut collection, just as I have met incredible multilingual authors through The Polyglot.
On advice from personal experiences …
On her blog, Transactions with Beauty, Shawna Lemay wrote: “I want to be generous, but I don’t want to squander my gifts.”
I have no set advice, but a list of questions that might help raise awareness so that we may be more generous with ourselves, not only with others:
What habits and formulas actually lead you to write? What brings you to the page—and what pulls you away from it? Are you giving so much to others that you’re not being generous enough with yourself? Can you practice saying “no” until it feels as natural as your “yes”? What would it look like to keep a “to learn” list for your writing, instead of a “to do” list? Can you allow yourself to write today, even for ten minutes?
"No woman has ever written enough," as bell hooks said.
On rekindling creativity …
Drawing what I see around me is often my entry point into writing (it quiets my body, opens up a more attentive mindspace). Translation does something similar: it places me inside another poet’s thinking, which often unlocks my own. Movement helps too (dance, walking). But more than anything: a feeling of spaciousness. When I have that, the poems tend to find me.
On a recent publication …
I am the author of Descântec for My Split Tongue, out with Palimpsest Press, which explores language loss and reclamation through poetry. I also have a poetry chapbook coming out in August with Agatha Press in Edmonton. Right now I’m working on a manuscript of Italian poems, and trying to find a publisher in Italy for them.
Adriana’s online spaces …
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Happy writing!
What an amazing person Adriana is! I love what she said about knowing more than one language and how that impacts you as a writer and human being. It encourages me to write in French, which, though fully bilingual, I have never done creatively. It’s my second language so I always felt I couldn’t do it well enough. I used to dream in French, when I was working in immersion and Francophone schools, but I don’t anymore. I really resonated with Adriana’s dilemma about time, and heck, I’m retired! I thought I’d have all the time in the world to write. But I don’t. We have to live with it and enjoy living fully! That will inform our writing in deeper ways.
Love Shawna Lemay’s work. I’ve read all her books. I’ll be reading Adriana’s! Thank for this!
Lise