1) What am I working on?
I am currently working on a long and almost
“boring” poem about nothing in particular but a stupid well-known political
message; not a very profound one (stupidity can be quite profound sometimes,
but my message is just a simple stupidity): “We all are capitalist bitches. So,
face it and smile (if you can do it any longer)”. My poem consists of parts of
discourses from different time periods, from XIXth century to nowadays. The
blank page become a space, a homeland for all that different public and
personal voices. A real war seems to burst out there; in fact, nothing happens
and, in the end, everybody kisses everybody in the marketplace. That’s our
daily dramas making us feel like tragic figures.
2) How does my work differ from others of its
genre?
Now I have to get a little more serious, because
I am to boast about my originality which consists in not being original at all.
That’s why I try most of the time not to speak about that authorial I – the denial of the
powerful/strong inner subject by getting out from my inside body and creating
an extra-corporal network-like subject. In this respect, speaking of “I” is a
self-delusion. Yes, of course,
that’s a utopian attempt, but I try just to uncurtain that utopia and become
aware of it. I don’t want a poetry of
personal communication, I want a map-like poetry. The white paper sheet is
nothing else, but the space of the poem, of coming into being for a large
number of dead voices, powerless or powerful voices, dead and forgotten
languages. The subject who writes must be a witness and a mark, an emptiness
and a rhizome.
Most of my colleagues are still indebted to a
specific type of personal discourse. The presence of a powerful I at the center
of a poem is what I like to call: “return stroke”. In fact, that is a
perpetuation of the old image of the dictator from communist era. In those times,
those techniques worked like a mirror but also as a resistance attempt. Today
such a discourse is useless and harmful. The distinction between aesthetical
discourse and simple and everyday language is also misleading; the poems as
such still promote the centered speech, built around that utopian I (more or
less directly expressed).
In this respect, I admire a lot the works of Chris
Tanasescu (MARGENTO) and Elena Vlădăreanu
(her last collection of poetry: Spațiu privat).
Both of them, although in different ways and using different techniques,
succeed in atomizing personal discourse (I), making it marginal or drowned in
an impersonal speech.
3) Why do I write what I do?
Why? Because I am suffering from Bartleby syndrome—a
craving for writing and an impossibility to write. This impossibility stems
from the absence of inner life. What we still have today are the remains of a
socio-cultural constructed subconscious. It isn’t a mystery anymore. Bolaño put it to us quite
right: “We are moving by in no time inputs… Something as such will destroy the
subconscious and we’ll be free hanging. ”
4) How
does your writing process work?
I am
trying not be impressed by anything around. Not represent anything. Run and
hide of what could express myself.
I was born somewhere between the end of the twentieth
century (a century of death and resentment) and the beginning of twenty-first,
somewhere between the end of a dictatorship and the beginning of capitalism.
The most suitable concept for this place where I live is the one of border or
frontier. My whole poetry is an attempt to define that kind of existence,
borderline existence. A border has its special meaning as closure or barbed wire,
an inheritance from the death camps of the last century. But, this concept
might become a crossing point to the other side. There will be always this
space, this border, between you and the others and it has to be turned from a
barbed wire into a median space or a war zone.
On the formal level, the border as a
barbed wire theory means to work with different kinds of speech, put them
together and try to understand in-between relations. This meeting point
of all those already written speeches is not a harmonious place, but under
pressure. Poetry respects your right to being different.
--Iulia Militaru
Next week's blog tour participants are:
Caius Dobrescu – born 1966, at a still young age,
around 15, became part of the Romanian underground literary scene inspired by
the free experimental spirit of the counterculture of the Sixties. As a poet,
he should be a disappointment for the Western mind in search of ethnic-exotic
thrills. Together with Andrei Bodiu, Marius Oprea, Simona Popescu, Sorin Matei,
Marius Daniel Popescu, he was part of the so-called Braşov group, developed in
the eraly 80s around the influential poet and cultural critic Alexandru Musina,
which had no taste for exploring the deep roots of the native Romanian spirit.
On the contrary, such an archaic etno mystique, rather encouraged by the
national-communist cultural policies of the local dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu,
was felt as totally false and revulsive. In his earlier poetry, Dobrescu
explored the ,,rythms and blueses‘‘ of everyday language, simultaneously paying
attention to the moral conundrums of life under the ,,real existing
socialism‘‘. His work was published only
after the fall of the Communist regime (Efebia/Efeby, 1994, Spălîndu-mi
ciorapii/Washing my socks, 1994, Deadevă/‘ndeed, 1998). In a later phase, he
tried to mingle poetry with the theoretical reflection on social change,
emerging order and the complex functioning of our adaptive mind (Odă liberei
întreprinderi/Ode to the free enterprise, 2009 – the German version of this
volume received the Prise for European Poetry of the city of Münster, Germany,
in 2009).
Alberto García-Teresa (Madrid, 1980) is
doctor in Hispanic Filology with Poesía
de la conciencia crítica (1987-2011) (Tierradenadie, 2013). He has also
published the study Para no ceder a la hipnosis. Crítica y revelación en la
poesía de Jorge Riechmann (Universidad Nacional de
Educación a Distancia, 2014). He has been coordinator of the magazine about
speculative fiction Hélice, codirector of Jabberwock, annual
anthology of essays of fantastic literature and editor-in-chef of Solaris.
He writes critic of Literatura and Theatre in differents media: Diagonal
newspaper –where he was coordinated the “Books” divison–, Culturamas –where he was
directed the contents of poetry–, Espéculo,
Castilla. Estudios de literatura, Verba Hispanica, Quimera, Artes Hoy, Literaturas.com, El Viejo Topo, Viento
Sur, cnt, Rebelión, La República Cultural,
Ariadna-RC, Bibliópolis, Gigamesh or Prospectiva.
He has published the poetry
books: Hay que comerse el mundo a dentelladas (Baile del Sol, 2008), Oxígeno
en lata (Baile del Sol, 2010), Peripecias de la Brigada Poética en
el reino de los autómatas (Umbrales, 2012) and Abrazando vértebras
(Baile del Sol, 2013), and the plaquette Las increíbles y suburbanas
aventuras de la
Brigada Poética (Umbrales, 2008). Also he has published
the book of micro-tales Esa dulce sonrisa
que te dejan los gusanos (Amargord, 2013). His poems has been
translated into romanian, english, french, serb and macedonian.
Elena Vlădăreanu was born in 1981, in Medgidia (Constanţa). She
studied Romanian and French Litterature at the University of Bucharest and
Visual Studies at Image Studies Centre in Bucharest (CESI – Centrul de
Excelenţă în Studiul Imaginii). She published her first collection in 2002, Pagini
after an underground collection, din confesiunile distinsei doamne m.
She published also: Fisuri (2003), Europa. Zece cântece funerare (2005),
Spaţiu privat. A handbook (2009 with drawings by Dan Perjovschi). She
published also poetry in several anthologies, like The Vanishing Point That
Whistles. An Anthology of Contemporary Romanian Poetry (2011, USA) or No
Longer Poetry. New Romanian Poetry (2007, UK). She
works as a radio journalists and presents every week a very short contemporary
poetry programme for Romanian Cultural Radio, named Poezie şi atât (Poetry and
Nothing Else). Some poems in English on her website: http://www.elenavladareanu.ro/Multimedia--and--texts.php
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