Description
Since her debut in 2005, Andra Rotaru has won several Romanian poetry prizes. TRIBAR is her fourth poetry collection, written after spending time in the International Writers’ residency program at the University of Iowa as well as a residency program at Romanian composer George Enescu’s estate in Tescani. Her poetic work centers around simultaneously mimicking and tracking the body in motion, often in collaboration and conversation with other artists and thinkers. Tribar explores the connections poetry can create to make sense of the world the speaker sees, a world permeated by an impossibility of all these bits of perception adding up into a cohesive image. The 5 sections of the book construct experimental scenes that explore different dimensions of anxiety through the body’s perception. That which is seen, heard or felt in the body serves as her guides, whether through childhood memories, historical events or flying abroad. Her lines make Romanian come alive, the landscape of her work not described by language but felt and embodied by the language. The narrative is constantly disrupted and disruptive, yet like a tribar, there is a cohesive voice in this interconnected sensory landscape. Rotaru takes on the challenge to write anew while facing the past. She writes about Romania’s place in the world, a question the country has been asking itself since the Revolution of 1989 that upended the communist regime and ended its isolation from the rest of the world. She asks what is the trauma embedded in language itself and explores how poetry can serve as the vessel through which the particles of language cohere.
Poetry. Women’s Studies. Romanian Studies.
Author Bio
Andra Rotaru is a poet and author of a number of projects in collaboration at the intersection of arts : the dance performance Lemur, presented in the US and across Europe by the choreographer Robert Tyree; the documentary All Together, produced during the International Writing Program 2014; the photography project Photo-letter pairing, involving the Iowa community and IWP writers. She has been the guest speaker at panels and events across Europe. Andra Rotaru is also the author of Într-un pat sub cear?aful alb (In a Bed Under the White Sheet, 2005); En una cama bajo la s@aacute;bana blanca (the Spanish translation of her debut volume, 2008); ?inuturile sudului (Southern Lands, 2010); and Lemur (2012). Rotaru was awarded The Best Young Poet of Year Award at The Writers' Gala in Bucharest (2013) for LEMUR. In 2018 LEMUR was published in English by Action Books, translated by Florin Bican and Tribar will be published in 2021 in German by Elif Verlag, translated by Alexandru Bulucz.
Author City: BUCHAREST ROM