Paula Erizanu

Voices of Freedom: Romania at the London Book Fair

Time & Location

13 Mar 2024, 19:30 – 21:00

Conway Library Hall, 25 Red Lion St, London WC1R 4RL, UK

About the event

We continue our journey into the world of literature prompted by Romania’s participation at the London Book Fair 2024 with an event dedicated to the literary world of Central and South-Eastern Europe. The event is organised in partnership with the Bulgarian Cultural Institute in London and brings together editor Susan Curtis of Istros Books; writer, editor and journalist Maria Stadnicka; writer and critic Bogdan Crețu and cultural manager Milena Deleva, President of Elizabeth Kostova Foundation/Open Letter Books. The evening will be hosted by writer, editor and cultural journalist Paula Erizanu.

You can book a place on this link.

Romania’s 14th participation at the London Book Fair (LBF) celebrates generations of astonishing writers, who offer strong, original voices and well-crafted language through their awarded books. 35 years since the Romanian Revolution, we celebrate freedom in all its creative forms, with a focus on Romania’s literary scene.

Join us for a rich programme that unfolds at our stand at Olympia Exhibition Centre as well as at the Romanian Cultural Institute, Barbican Library and Conway Hall. Four packed days of book launches, dialogues and spoken word performances that will to give you a flavour of our effervescent contemporary literature.

Our brilliant guests are writers and academics: Mădălina Căuneac, Liliana Corobca, Hannah Dawson, Paula Erizanu, Suzannah Lipscomb, Cosmin Perța, Florentin Popa, Alina Purcaru, Maria Stadnicka, Matei Vișniec, Elena Vlădăreanu. Authors, journalists and critics Marius Chivu and Bogdan Crețu, editors Eli Bădică, Alex Ciorogar and Susan Curtis; artist Iulian Morar; as well as translator Gabi Reigh, and cultural manager Milena Deleva complete our line-up.

The Romanian participation at the LBF 2024 is organised by the Romanian Cultural Institute’s National Book Centre and the Romanian Cultural Institute in London, with the support of the Romanian Embassy, Conway Hall, Barbican Library, the Romanian Publishers Association and the Ministry of Culture. The project is funded by the Romanian Cultural Institute.

‘Buried Gods Metal Prophets’ is now available.

Buried Gods and Metal Prophets is based on Stadnicka’s experience as a teacher at St. Stelian Orphanage, north Romania, which cared for three hundred children diagnosed with HIV and AIDS. Exposing the reality of living in state care during the Cold War, it explores the spectre of political and human tyranny that can contribute to a generational socio-cultural trauma. Buried Gods Metal Prophets explores childhood experiences during the Cold War in Romania following the Decree 770 imposed by the Communist Party in 1966. Issued as a measure meant to stimulate the population growth, the disastrous Decree 770 banned contraception and abortion, while awarding women with more than five children an Order of the Heroine Mother. As a result, an estimated twelve million illegal abortions took place between 1967 and 1989 while over 250,000 children were placed in orphanages or care homes.

Stadnicka builds a polyphonic poetic documentary inspired by Julia Kristeva’s idea that poetry can establish ‘space and infinity’ beyond the restriction of linear poetics. The juxtaposition of narratives builds a world in which the omnipresent voice of the government echoes in the mechanised communication between the state and the individual, in a society where the private ownership of a typewriter without state permission, meant prison sentence.

‘Buried Gods Metal Prophets’ 2021
Image © Antonia Glücksman 2021, in Buried Gods Metal Prophets published by Guillemot Press, 2021, UK.

‘UK-based Romanian poet Maria Stadnicka’s forthcoming Buried Gods Metal Prophets, published by Guillemot Press, is an astonishing collection of poems, and a testament to the tens of thousands of children who grew up in Romanian orphanages under Nicolae Ceaușescu. Bringing together historical documents of the era, lines of other authors with her “censoring” interventions, and Stadnicka’s own moving poetry, this is the poet’s fourth collection both written and published in English.’ (Paula Erizanu, The Calvert Journal, 2021)

The full article is available here: https://www.calvertjournal.com/articles/show/12466/romanian-english-poetry-ceausescu-orphans-buried-gods-metal-prophets-maria-stadnicka

Buried Gods Metal Prophets (2021) is published by Guillemot Press. Editors: Luke Thompson and Sarah Cave. Design and illustration: Antonia Glücksman. The book is available here.