Translator’s Introduction to Stella Vinitchi Radulescu

I believe Stella Vinitchi Radulescu to be one of the most underappreciated living poets in any language. And she is in rare company indeed as a poet who writes in three languages.

Radulescu’s work provides a crucial historical and aesthetic link to Communist-era Eastern Europe, while also being deeply influenced by French Surrealism and American Modernism. Radulescu writes poetry in Romanian, French, and English, but does not translate any of her own work. Thus she has a distinct body of work in each language.

Radulescu began writing poetry in Romanian at an early age and published several collections in Romania. As she has put it, “Writing poetry was risky—it could have been ‘a political manifesto’ against the regime!—but it was also a refuge.” For Radulescu, it is difficult, or impossible, to translate her own poems. “I feel, think, act, perceive, smell, touch differently according to the language I write in,” she says. She has been kind enough to allow me to translate her French poetry. A book of my translations of her work, A Cry in the Snow & Other Poems, is forthcoming in an international edition from Seagull Books.

Radulescu was born in Romania and left the country permanently in 1983, at the height of the communist regime. She holds a PhD in French Language & Literature, and she taught French at Loyola University and Northwestern University for many years. She currently lives in Chicago.

Radulescu’s French books have received several awards, including the Grand Prix de Poésie Henri-Noël Villard and the Prix Amélie Murat. Her latest book of original English-language poetry is I Scrape the Window of Nothingness: New & Selected Poems (Orison Books, 2015).