Ana Blandiana events
The Shadow of Words, published by Bloodaxe in February 2025, covers Romanian poet Ana Blandiana’s early collections published from 1964 to 1981, during the brief period of political thaw of Romania’s communist regime, and includes uncollected poems from that period which only appeared in anthologies. In these poems aestheticism takes on a subversive role, reaffirming the autonomy of the poetic word and freeing it from the stultifying demands of propagandist proletarian art. This collection follows My Native Land A4 (2014), The Sun of Hereafter • Ebb of the Senses (2017) and Five Books (2021), completing Bloodaxe’s presentation of Blandiana’s collected poems to date in English translation.
Ana Blandiana is one of Romania’s foremost poets, a leading dissident before the fall of Communism, and now one of her country’s strongest candidates for the Nobel Prize. A prominent opponent of the Ceaușescu regime, Blandiana became known for her daring, outspoken poems as well as for her courageous defence of ethical values. Over the years, her works have become the symbol of a moral consciousness that refuses to be silenced by a totalitarian government. She received the Griffin Trust’s Lifetime Recognition Award in 2018, and is the recipient of the 2024 Princess of Asturias Award for Literature.
FORTHCOMING EVENTS
Tuesday 11 March 2025
Romanian Cultural Institute, London
Ana Blandiana will be giving an in-person launch reading for The Shadow of Words with translator Viorica Patea and in conversation with Fiona Sampson. Introduced by Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley.
More details TBC soon.
PAST EVENTS
We were joined online by Ana Blandiana, Krisztina Tóth, Charlotte Van den Broeck and their translators Paul Scott Derrick, Viorica Patea, George Szirtes and David Colmer for our February 2025 launch event. All three poets and their translators celebrated the publication of their books by reading live and discussing their work with one another and the host, Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley.
This free Bloodaxe launch event was streamed on YouTube Live and is now available to watch below or here: https://www.youtube.com/live/SiYFLYPrR74.
[06 February 2025]
