World-renowned Romanian poet Liliana Ursu will be visiting Portland State tomorrow evening joined by her colleague and translator, Washington native Tess Gallagher. Ursu will give a reading of her poetry, both in English and in its native Romanian.
World-renowned Romanian poet Liliana Ursu will be visiting Portland State tomorrow evening joined by her colleague and translator, Washington native Tess Gallagher. Ursu will give a reading of her poetry, both in English and in its native Romanian.
“To describe [Ursu’s] poetry, I would say that it really offers a lot to several different audiences,” said professor John Beer of PSU’s MFA creative writing program. “On the one hand, I think it has a really deep sense of history, both of European history and literary history. At the same time, it’s very accessible.”
One need not know a great deal about Romania or Romanian history to enjoy her poems, according to Beer.
“They’re very clear, even as they offer that cultural richness,” he said. “She uses a lot of direct imagery.”
Ursu has an impressive resumé, including over 20 published works. Much of her work is published in English, including The Sky Behind the Forest (1997) and, most recently, A Path to the Sea (2011). Both works were translated with the help of Gallagher and another colleague, Adam Sorkin.
Beer, a professor of poetry who is among those responsible for Ursu’s appearance, pointed out the value in bringing translated work to the university.
“I’m very interested in translation as a practice in poetry,” Beer said. “Most of our readings in the department happen to be by native English speakers. It’s nice to have an opportunity to have work from other languages coming in.”
Ursu’s work ranges from the personal to the political, the mythical to the mundane. She writes on the themes of love and loss, using vivid imagery to portray and redefine life’s little moments. In her poem “The Silver of our Moment,” she compares in poignant detail the ignorance of a snail as it “crosses both good and evil” in its path and the similar ignorance of humans.
Having written in Romania during the Communist regime of Nicolae Ceasescu, which collapsed in 1989, Ursu’s work also depicts the struggle of life under a repressive government.
“You can feel the uncertainty, the constriction of choices, an ominous sense of cruelty and fear in some of the images, which no doubt flow forth from her years under the Communist regime,” Gallagher said.
But even more notable than the tension of autocracy in her work is a sense of hope and wonder above and beyond such illegitimate authority. Gallagher said that she “felt the strength of someone who more than endured” in Ursu’s poetry.
“All the suffering had been absorbed and an alchemy had been performed, which had somehow carried it into images and music that the poet,used to reaffirm her own life and the lives of those she loved,” she said. “Over and over in the poems, one encounters the image of the alchemist.”
Gallagher is also an accomplished poet with several published works to her name, including Midnight Lantern: New and Selected Poems (2011) and Dear Ghosts,: Poems (2008). Gallagher—a close friend and colleague of Ursu since their initial meeting at a writer’s festival in Spain in 1990—will host Ursu’s during her stay and remarked that she may do some reading of her own at the PSU event.
“I have written some poems for and about her and our times together,” Gallagher said. “It may be that I would read one or two of these.”
Ursu’s visit was arranged by Paulann Petersen, Oregon’s Poet Laureate, who put Gallagher in contact with Beer. Ursu was able to visit the U.S. with the help of Darlene Pagan of Pacific University’s English Department. Pagan wrote the grant that paid for Ursu and her translators to travel from Romania. Ursu will also read at Pacific University Tuesday, Feb. 28, at 7 p.m.
The Portland Review, a PSU-based literary magazine that publishes three times annually, also co-sponsored the event.
“We’re very excited both to have an international guest as distinguished as Liliana Ursu. I think it’s a terrific opportunity both for undergraduates and graduate students at the university,” Beer said. “Also, to have a poet of the stature of Tess Gallagher. It’s an opportunity for students to see one of the world’s premier poets, a very highly respected European poet coming to Portland State.”
