Translated and edited by Lidia
Vianu, the 2020 collection Five Romanian
Poets (Cinci poeți români ) was
published by the Contemporary Literature Press at the University of
Bucharest. The five are Romița Mălina
Constantin, Diana Geacăr, Emil Nicolae, Ioan Es. Pop and Floarea Țuțuianu. They are winners of the 2019 Lidia Vianu Translates poetry
competition, run by Vianu herself and aimed at choosing Romanian poems not only
on their merits but for their translatability into English.
The writers provide short personal
statements preceding their poems but the reader will need to look elsewhere for
fuller biographical and bibliographical information. There are between five and seven poems for
each, appearing as parallel texts. These
give a flavour of their styles, but again a larger selection would have been
welcome. Translating them, Vianu says
that she could have written the lines herself, so the choices are personal and
not necessarily representative of the wider poetry scene in Romania.
Still, translation of Romanian
poetry is not a crowded field, and Lidia Vianu is to be thanked for making
these available to an English-language audience. They all work well in translation, the best
focusing on small gestures, domestic scenes, aging, and the passing of the
generations. There is little sense of
political or wider social engagement, perhaps reflecting Vianu’s own
attitudes. Leaving aside issues of
selection criteria, what we have here is a good introduction to these
particular voices, and future competitions should cumulatively make accessible
a significant body of Romanian poetry in English translation.
The e-book is available free on the
Contemporary Literature Press website:
