Over 100 poets from more than 30 countries attended the 8th Bucharest International Poetry Festival held in the Romanian capital city between May the 15th and 21st
Over 100 poets from more than 30 countries attended the 8th Bucharest International Poetry Festival held in the Romanian capital city between May the 15th and 21st. The Festival included events like roundtables, panel discussions, performances and jazz recitals, book launches, conferences and, for the first time this year, events devoted to children. A novelty this year was also the PEN Club anniversary, which brought to Bucharest PEN members from most European countries. Claudiu Komartin, a poet and the editor in chief of "Poesis International" magazine and head of the Max Blecher Publishers, one of the longest-lasting and well-known book clubs in Romania, moderated a number of reading sessions as part of the Bucharest International Poetry Festival.
Claudiu Komartin: "I believe it is important for us to showcase, for those people who are interested in poetry, the variety and plurality of styles that exist in today's literature and, in particular, in this very special area, contemporary poetry. The reason I say this is that contemporary poetry has its own particular public, and a specific type of explorations, of quests. I'm not sure how important my role is within this Festival, but I was entrusted with organizing these reading sessions, at the centre of which are young poets, aged between 20 and 40 years. Moni Stanila and Alexandru Vakulovski are among the oldest, so to say, young poets who are presenting their works these days. We have very different poets, coming from Cluj, from Bucharest, from Chisinau, a very diverse range."
One of the poets featured in the Festival is Radu Vancu, who is also, according to writer Mircea Cartarescu, one of the leading poetry critics Romania has at present. We asked him about his impressions after the Bucharest International Poetry Festival:
"Until a decade ago, each generation used to have some sort of prevailing rhetoric, a kind of group poetics that a writer had to adopt, otherwise they would appear detached from the trends in contemporary poetry. For instance, a member of the '60s generation had to be somewhat neo-modernist, those from the 80s were necessarily textualist and sort of bookish. Today, however, what I notice is an amazing diversity of techniques and approaches, some of them are very corporeal, others are sentimental, others focused on writing techniques or are very experimental. I believe that the Romanian poetry of today has succeeded in using all poetic formulas. I could even say that Romanian poetry has managed to document the whole world and mirror its diversity. And this is a very good thing, as I don't believe we've seen such diversity in Romanian poetry so far. And I also believe that it is not the internal logic of poetry that has brought us here, but the fact that Romanian poets and writers are very connected to the global trends in poetry and they travel a lot more than they did ten years ago, for instance. And this has triggered an infusion of new poets, and also new ways to see the world and new names of writers. This whole process has prompted a diversification in poetry. And the results can be seen now. I hope that the cultural institutions in Romania, that promote Romanian literature, from the Romanian Cultural Institute to the Ministry of Culture, will not see this national identity that they have approached lately in institutional terms, as a form of tribalism, of autarchy, of closing the borders. It is obvious that only by traveling the world, by keeping borders open, culture can be enriched and diversified."
One of the events moderated by Radu Vancu within the Bucharest International Poetry Festival has been the debate held by translator Adam J. Sorkin from the US, dubbed "Putting a Blotch across the Sun, Tripping up for Good at the Soul: A Translator's Evolution". Radu Vancu explains:
"Adam J. Sorkin has done a lot for our poetry as he has translated tens of poets throughout time. He also initiated this shift of Romanian poetry from our localism towards Western policies a time when it was difficult for Romanian poets to travel and to reach the US for instance, in order to get in touch with the cultural movement there. So at that time Adam J. Sorkin played the role of a sort of 'cross-border elf' taking Romanian poetry to the US and bringing American poetry to Romania. I believe that Adam J. Sorkin, beyond his merits as a translator, worked as a 'cultural facilitator' in the sense that he managed to ease the transfer of poetry-related information to and from the US and to somehow catalyze Romanian poetry writing, which makes him more of a cultural agent, rather than a mere translator."
"The International Poetry Festival in Bucharest is a cultural initiative absolutely necessary in the context of the European Union and the common cultural values promoted through it. At the moment of its first edition, back in 2010, Bucharest had been among Europe's very few capitals to not host such a wide-scale festival. Shortly after its appearance, however, this festival has made up for this deficit in the Romanian culture, bringing poetry - as a major literary genre as well the poets and their voices - up to the forefront, to the attention of the big public interested in the various forms of poetical expression" says Ioan Cristescu, director of the National Museum of Romanian Literature, the main organizer of the event.
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