Celebrations Afoot at Orizont Literar Contemporan (Romania)

With Professor Donald Riggs in Philadelphia, 2011

I was delighted to receive this link today, taking me through to a summary of what has been a truly international rollercoaster of a decade for Daniel Dragomirescu and his colleagues who work tirelessly across languages and genres to produce Orizont Literar Contemporan, the self-styled 'world in a journal'.

This literary magazine, celebrating its 60th issue, has now been in production for ten years, and you have only to read the summary of its history to see how it has evolved, expanded and diversified during this time. There is a huge library of multicultural books and now a Dictionary of writers' biographies.

Thanks to Daniel, Katherine Gallagher and others, I have been associated with the journal for much of its existence. It has been a pleasure to introduce a number of poet friends from Wales and elsewhere through my early Dialoguri interviews, and friends from Suffolk and beyond through other ventures. It has been a wonderful way of making new literary friends, too, from a range of countries.

I am grateful to the teams of translators (see this post by Anne Stewart) who work so hard behind the scenes, ensuring that a poem, for example, can appear in up to three languages, most frequently Romanian, Spanish and English.

Many happy returns to Daniel and his A Team! Here's to the next decade and the next 60+ issues...

Anthology Alert: Orizont Literar Contemporan Antologia 2012

And the back cover ... 

I was delighted to receive my copies of the latest Orizont Literar Contemporan Antologia from Romania. The cover photo shows Vogaluz Miranda from Brazil. You might recognise a certain someone with Professor Don Riggs (we met in Philadelphia, USA) in the orange cover on the back. This international literary Antologia is over 80 pages long and edited in Romania by Daniel Dragomirescu. The magazine's strapline, 'All the world in a journal', is well illustrated by a patchwork photo inside the back cover of some 56 international contributors.

The anthology includes contributions in Romanian ('Un fel de-a fi Numai al Lor' by Mihai Cantuniari, Honorary Director of the journal, on p.40), in Italian ('Lucciole' by Ettore Fobo inside the front cover), in English ('Jumping In' by Katherine Gallagher on p.3), in Spanish ('El Tiempo' by Juana Castillo Escobar on p.20) - and also in German ('Basisdemokratie Besitzt Keine Basis' by Raymond Walden on p.70).

If that doesn't sound sufficiently international for you, there are also contributions from Neil Leadbeater in Scotland (whose feature on the Scottish Dizzen was so well received back in the September-October 2012 issue of the magazine), from Burt Rashbaum in the USA, from Lena Vanelslander in Belgium, from Katerina Kostaki from Greece - and from Ingrid Odgers Toloza from Chile ... to mention a few more.

The Antologia contains a good number of poems, such as 'Take My Hand' by Anne Stewart, which begins,

I'll take you to an island, any
Greek island town with winding
uphill paths ...

and has been translated into Romanian,

O să te duc pe o insulă, în vreun
orășel grecesc cu urcușuri intortocheate ...


Prose pieces include 'My Childhood and My Father', a touching family memoir from Mira Faraday in the USA; and, in a very different vein, an essay entitled 'Labor, Slavery, Exploitation and the Limits of Aid', a contribution based around the influence of Simone Veil, a Christian mystic who lived outside the (Roman Catholic) church.

If you would like to know more about Orizont Literar Contemporan and the ever-growing international family of literature aficionados it represents, do take a look at the website here. The Antologia also includes two of my poems, '1st May: Red Kite at Strata Florida' from my new poetry chapbook, The Holy Place, co-authored with John Dotson (details here) - and a short anti-slavery poem, 'Trade Winds'.

Thank you to Daniel and the team for yet another truly cosmopolitan publication!