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Among the most important Romanian literary figures who began publishing after 2000, a decade after the fall of communism, Răzvan Ţupa (born in Brăila, a city on the Danube in eastern Romania) is indeed a prime example of his own critique of ‘the problem of generations’ remarked upon in a 2007 entry on his then-website, romanianbodies.blogspot.com: ‘the usage of the term . . . proved to work against the personal mark of each writer.’
Ţupa’s stylistic signature is poetry that comes across as experimental, resistant of linguistic formulas and characterized by his interest in ‘relational poetics’. His work has been cited by Ian Irvine Hobson as instrumental in promoting the theoretical dimensions of poetry as, in Ţupa’s own words, ‘a viable tool in interpersonal and social communication and analysis’. Tupa’s books of poetry all develop from this ‘relational’ perspective. His first book, fetiş (fetish), which won the Mihai Eminescu National Prize for a literary debut, aimed at establishing ways to conceive of the body in poetic discourse, and his second book, corpuri româneşti (romanian bodies), continued this exploration.
Ţupa writes: ‘a romanian body is the other to whom you transfer all that you are’, and adds elsewhere, ‘for just a few moments our thoughts hung in the air balanced on the tenuous melody of breath’; this last image is crucial as both idea and a moment of lyrical beauty. Ţupa’s third collection, poetic. cerul din delft şi alte corpuri româneşti (poetic. the sky in delft and other romanian bodies), offers, in his words, ‘practical versions of contemporary personal poetical definitions’.
Ţupa’s ‘Poetics of the quotidian’ – a notable series of weekly literary meetings that lasted five years – became ‘Atelierelational’ in 2010, organizing writing workshops that foster an interactive understanding of poetry. In 2013, he was invited as a resident at the OMI International Arts Center, Ledig House, New York. Ţupa is a member of Pen Club Romania.
Poetry
fetiş (“fetish”). Editura Semne, Bucharest, 2001; 2nd ed., Editura Vinea, Bucharest, 2003. Awarded the Mihai Eminescu National Prize for a literary debut in poetry, 2002.
corpuri româneşti (romanian bodies). Cartea Românească, Bucharest, 2005.
poetic. cerul din delft şi alte corpuri româneşti (poetic. the sky in delft and other romanian bodies). Casa de Editură Max Blecher, Bucharest, 2011.
Prose
Poeticile cotidianului – de la seri de literatură în mişcare la Republica Poetica (The Poetics of the quotidian – from evenings of literature in motion to the Republica Poetica). Monograph. Casa de Pariuri Literare, Bucharest, 2015.
Inclusion in poetry anthologies
A gyönyör román művészete: kortárs román költők. In Hungarian. Arcuş, Bucharest, 2006
No longer poetry: New Romanian poetry. In English. Ed. David Morley and Leonard-Daniel Aldea. Heaventree Press, Coventry, 2007
Az ev muforditasai. In Hungarian. Magyar Naplo, Budapest, 2008
Iz Novije Rumunske Poezije. In Serbian. Ed. Pavel Gătăianțu. Fond Europa, Novi Sad, 2009
11-9 webstreaming poetry. In Serbo-Croatian. Ed. Tzveta Sofronieva, Manja Ristić & Ana Seferović. Supernovapoetry, Belgrade, 2010
The vanishing point that whistles: An anthology of contemporary Romanian poetry. In English. Ed. Paul Doru Mugur, Adam J. Sorkin and Claudia Serea. Talisman House, Greenfield, 2011
From a terrace in Prague: A Prague poetry anthology. In English. Ed. Stephan Delbos. Univerzita Karlova v Praze, Filozofická fakulta, Litteraria Pragensia Books, Prague, 2011
Links
www.poetic.ro. Blog, poetic: poezie de azi cu răzvan ţupa (poetic. poetry of today with ‘răzvan ţupa’)
