Poetry 4x4: A Poetic Bridge New York – Bucharest

The biggest Romanian-American poetic contingent in years descends upon New York and Bucharest for two successive weeks of readings and performances hosted by popular dens of the spoken word scene. Organized in partnership with Bowery Poetry and the National Museum of Romanian Literature, the events will mingle four American poets, Mason Granger, Gabriel Ramirez, Jess Rizkallah and Myles Taylor, with four Romanian poets, Svetlana Cârstean, Adela Greceanu, Claudiu Komartin and Andra Rotaru, who have made a name for themselves on both sides of the Atlantic.

The New York leg of this poetic journey unfolds between June 21-24, 2019. You can meet this 8-strong lyrical commando at Berle’s Poetry Shop, Bowery Poetry, and the Poetry Project.

PROGRAM:

Berl’s Poetry Shop – June 21, 7pm – details here.

Bowery Poetry – June 23, 6pm – details here.

The Poetry Project – June 24, 7pm – details here.

Svetlana Cârstean published her first poems in 1994, in the collective volume Family Picture, together with T.O. Bobe, Răzvan Rădulescu, Sorin Gherguţ, and Cezar Paul-Bădescu. Her individual debut, Vise Flower (2008), was awarded several important national prizes (by the Romanian Writers’ Union, by Literary Romania Magazine, “Mihai Eminescu” Prize and Radio Romania Cultural Department Poetry Award). The volume was also published in Sweden in 2013, by Rámus Publishing House, translated by the Swedish poet Athena Farrokhzad. In 2015, Svetlana published the volume Gravity, later translated and published in Norway. In April 2016, the volume Trado, co-written with Athena Farrokhzad, was launched in Sweden by Albert Bonnier and Rámus Publishing Houses. In June 2019, the volume is due in Polish translation as well. For five years, Svetlana has been coordinating her own poetry collection at Pandora M Publishing House, and since 2016, she has been the coordinator of a new poetry series, Vorpal, at Nemira Publishing House. In 2015-2016, as a cultural manager, she was part of the curatorial team in charge with Bucharest’s proposal for the competition European Capital of Culture 2021. She has initiated and curates the “Wednesday Intersections”, a series of debates and conferences that takes place weekly at BRD Residence Scena9 and has reached its fourth season. Together with Ana Maria Sandu, she created the “Reading Incubator”, a workshop that encourages children and teenagers to read, write and exercise their critical thinking.

Adela Greceanu is a writer and journalist at the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company, the Cultural Department. She debuted in 1997 with a poetry volume entitled Title of My Collection, which Preoccupies Me So Much…, for which she won the “Cristian Popescu” Great Prize and the Prize of the Writer’s Society in Sibiu. There followed other poetry volumes such as Miss Quasi (2001), The Straight in the Heart Understanding (2004) and And the Words are a Province(2014). For this last volume she received the Poetry Prize of the Cultural Observer Magazine and a nomination for The Best Book of the Year at the Romanian Book Industry Gala. In 2008, she published the novel entitled The Bride with Red Socks. In 2018, Adela won the French Boccaccio Prize for the short story But If. She has taken part in numerous literary festivals and events both in Romania and abroad. Fragments of her books were translated in German, English, Swedish, Dutch, French, Greek, Hungarian, and Bulgarian among others.

Andra Rotaru is a poet, cultural journalist and literary activist, founder of the mixed-media and multilingual journal Crevice.She has initiated collaborations at the intersection of poetry and choreography (the dance performance Lemur, presented in the US and across Europe by choreographer Robert Tyree); poetry, fiction, and video (the documentary All Together, made during The International Writing Program 2014 with poet Raj Chakrapani); and photography (Photo-letter pairing, involving the Iowa community and IWP writers). She is the author of In a Bed under the White Sheet (2005), En una cama bajo la sábana blanca(the Spanish translation of her debut volume, 2008), Southern Lands (2010), Lemur(2012), and Tribar(2018). Andra was awarded The Best Young Poet of Year Award at The Writers’ Gala in Bucharest (2013) for Lemur. The book was published in the US by Action Books in 2018 (translation by Florin Bican). A selection of translated poems from her newest book, Tribar(translator: Anca Roncea), won the Asymptote Journal Close Approximations Contest in 2017, made it into the final of the Gulf Coast Prize in 2018 (translator: Anca Roncea) and were nominated for Anomaly’s 2018 Pushcart Prize.

Claudiu Komartin is a Romanian poet and translator, considered to be one of the most important poets of his generation in Romania. In 2003, he published The Puppeteer and Other Insomnia, a poetry book that won the most important literary debut prizes, including the “Mihai Eminescu” National Prize, Opus Primum. In 2005, he wrote the essay/manifesto The Generation 2000 – an Introduction. The same year, he published The Domestic Circus, which was awarded the Romanian Academy Poetry Prize. He also published A Season in Berceni (2009, 2010), Cobalt(2013), Dismembered(2015, signed as Adriana Carrasco and introduced as a translation from Spanish of the late Mexican poet Adriana Carrasco), Masters of a Dying Art. Poems 2010-2017 (2017, 2018), which was awarded the Romanian PEN Award and the “Matei Brâncoveanu” Prize. His work has been translated and published in German, Serbian, Turkish, and Bulgarian. Since 2009 he has been organizing regular readings and meetings which brought to the fore around 300 contemporary writers from Romania and all around the world. Since 2010 he has been the editor-in-chief of Poesis International Magazine and of Max Blecher Publishing House, an editorial project aimed at promotion of contemporary Romanian literature, relatively less-known outside of the country, as well as bringing underground Romanian authors closer to the public. He is the co-author of two plays and he translated ten books into Romanian.