Poet profile: Michaella Mintcheff

When poet Michaella Mintcheff moved to the United States from Bulgaria in 1979, among the things left behind, one most beloved was her poetry.

“My mother and I moved (to California) as refugees,” she said. “This was a totally different culture, so (when we came) I didn’t write.”

It wasn’t until her move to Kaua‘i in 1997 that her love affair with words was revived by a call for submissions to a poetry contest.

The Garden Island Arts Council then-president Dawn Kawahara ran the council’s poetry festival for seven years.

“If it wasn’t for Dawn I wouldn’t have had my poems read,” Mintcheff said. “My poems won three prizes.”

That moment of courage to submit her poems transformed the next decade of Mintcheff’s life as she steeped herself in a community of poets and artists by attending workshops, teaching adult-education courses and facilitating a group at Borders Books Music & Movies for six years.

“The Borders group began as a place for me to bring a circle of friends to read poetry to,” she said. “It evolved into a discussion group and then into reading and writing poetry.”

In 2000 Mintcheff published her book of poems, “The Gift of Hunger.”

“I write as an emotional release,” she said. “It helps me sort things out and see them more clearly. I never thought my writing would be meaningful to anybody else.”

Another benefit of writing poetry for Mintcheff has been the relationships she’s made.

“I like connecting people with other people so they can find kindred spirits,” she said. “I like to help people be brave and write. That fires me up more than anything.”

Mintcheff continues to harvest art from those early writerly relationships.

“All of the people I have around me today are from classes and workshops from those days,” she said.

Today Mintcheff’s group participation is confined to “the plrks.”

“‘Plrk’ is a verb,” she said, “which means ‘to play and to work at the same time.’”

Their weekly gatherings are mostly centered on writing, but often spin into other explorations.

“At our last ‘plrking’ event (a member) created a 10-minute play for her husband’s 75th birthday,” she said. “She dressed us all up and we acted it out for him.”