Pain is a Foreign Country

This anthology captures the bold evolution of contemporary Romanian poetry, where deeply rooted local sensibilities meet a global literary vision. With original translations from Romania, it offers English-speaking readers a rare opportunity to experience a new wave of cosmopolitan, boundary-crossing verse.

After joining the EU, over the last decade, as a consequence of both the free cultural exchange with Western Europe and with the world in general, facilitated by the new technologies and the social media, Romanian poetry evolved significantly, fusing a sort of emerging “global poetics” with its strong local neo-realistic cosmopolitan sensitivity.

The poems included in the anthology by highly-accomplished younger Romanian poets bear witness to a poetics rooted in Romania but with branches spreading all across Europe and the Americas. The poems included in the book are all original translations from Romanian and have been specially prepared for this anthology.

This is an extraordinary collection that will appeal to a many types of poetry readers.