Rodica Draghincescu
(France)
Fence
(original: French = Cloison)
…precisely inside this lack of will,
text is in sex ))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))),
its letters have echoes, no images.
They howl YOU, WILDCAT! FEMALE
I bury my fangs in their forms
I drag them to the end of meaning
Difficulty passes for investigation, peril,
love,
GOOD EVENING!
During the day, I sell metres and
kilometres of solitude
In the name of a so-called grandpa,
Poetic theories can go to the
devil!
Long live the idea (of filling a poem with breasts,
thighs, organs, directions, distances)
that suits Rest, Nothingness, the Ephemeral!
The text rises above the closed space:
It howls horribly like a jungle penetrated
by the storm
At the level of metabolism of the image
It’s always the sounds that make dream
A talking nightmare (distances?
directions? blanks?!)
How can I count, establish the coincidences?
My text looks like
Virile germs doing gymnastics
For wanting to crush us?!
As my consciousness is raised and grows,
I feel more ill at ease, when the Adams
Recommend me to the Adams:
POETESS, that is, EVE, LOVER, erotic
notion
Usually hidden in the language
And because for me, the truth is another,
Quasi-love recalls the physics of the rocking
chair
How is woman born? Around her!
What dimension of her howling between the
question
And its solution, do you prefer?
In this rigid space, where I still measure
The footsteps of others… … … … … … … … … … …
flashing, furtive, the cocks fight, outside, for
a blade of grass… … … … … … … … … … … … … …
… … … … … … … … … … … on the other side the body
digs its ditch,
a conscience mired in holy mud
Will I escape? Do I swim? Will I get there?
Here I am: the spokesperson for the WILDCAT-IN-FREEDOM
(lover, enemy, parent, stranger)
Me? My name is YOU.
(It’s good that the broken illusion becomes
resistance)
The more gentle the wildcat (the domesticated female),
the more the image of its use will be fierce, in language, that is?
in language of course
And because for me, YOU = THE WILDCAT, since
forever,
QUASI-LOVE is only the alchemy of a certain
point
You will be there, if you stop there, but if you stopped,
you would not be there! the more the point is like a leap
to the perch, the more the position of the leap recalls
ACHILLES, the legendary,
In which language? While writing with the body,
It happens often with solitary people:
To fall in love with a wall, with a
pendulum…
And I (GOOD EVENING!) am the mason of that bizarre
space!
Nothing more legitimate, practising writing in
pain
Listen to that mmmmmmmrnmnmmmgggggggrrrrmgr
(growling through)
How can I get permission to devour my
text
(my customer? my lover?)? Head down,
flawless, until (you can distinguish a series of indivisible
acts)
ME, I, YOU, YOU (change of questions in
all the meanings that happen and that I accept as
desires, longings, desiiiiires!)
After, I run away. When I run, I judge
perfectly. If that absurd instant gives me
advantages over you, excuse me, but running
straight ahead, I feel exceptionally ….
Fence on the left,
Fence behind,
Wall on the right,
Wall on the left …
(where ARE YOU, ZENO OF ELEA? )
By killing the barriers, walls, fences,
partitions, I search for you, my love, in these
murmurings,
In all that that bla-bla …. I search for you
I keep you, I do not trick the absurdity or the meaning
of patched memories
(How could it be possible that the one that is moving
can coincide with the one that does not move?!)
Lack of lucidity turns my head:
THERE IS NOTHING BUT MY WRITING,
ALWAYS READY TO TAKE VICTIMS …
TRANSLATION: HOWARD SCOTT, MONTREAL, CANADA
____________________________________________
BIO
Writer and translator. She writes both in French and in Romanian. She is living in METZ, France.
R.D. was born in Buzias, Romania. She was part of a movement of nonconformist Romanian writers born out of the fall of the Ceausescu regime in 1989, artists and writers that critics called the « 90’s generation. » In the Romanian press, Rodica Draghincescu was for a long time considered « the female Michel Butor of Romania, the Nathalie Sarraute of the Romanians, the Amazon of Romanian Letters. »
After teaching French literature in university and doing research in linguistics and stylistics at the Romanian Academy, after publishing10 books in her native country (some of which won prizes from the Romanian writers union, the Bucharest writers Association, etc.), after five years of studies and writing residencies in Germany, after 4 books published in Stuttgart and Berlin, Rodica Draghincescu settled in France, Metz, where she became a literary advisor to several cultural institutions.
In France, Rodica has published, in addition to poetry, novels, books of interviews and literary essays. Her latest book is a poetry collection, RA(ts), illustrated by engraver Marc Granier (Éditions du Petit Pois, 2012), which won the VIRGIL prize for European French-language poetry and literature from the SOCIETE DES POETES FRANCAIS (Paris 2013).
Publications in literary magazines and anthologies worldwide – poetry, prose, essays, translations, interviews, and critics.
Participation at festivals in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Luxemburg, Italy, Sweden, Serbia, Slovenia, Romania, Moldavia, Canada.
At many festivals and literary events, Rodica has collaborated in readings of her work with Romanian, German and French actors and musicians known throughout Europe, such as Hélène Martin, Jean-Luc Kockler, Michel Biehler, Philippe Joncquel, Andrej Lazarev, Ion Caramitru, Dorothea Fleiss, Marc Granier.
In addition, she directs the multidisciplinary, multilingual webmagazine: LEVURE LITTERAIRE (http://www.levurelitteraire.com) and is a member of the editorial board of the German review: Matrix.
Personal Web site: http://www.draghincescu.com
Key publications in French:
– Fauve en liberté, poems, Les écrits des Forges, 2003
– Ra(ts), poems with engravings by Marc Granier, Éditions du Petit Pois, 2012.
– Distance entre un homme habillé et une femme telle qu‘elle est, novel, Éd. Autres Temps, 2001 (translation from Romanian by Florica Ciodaru-Courriol).
– À vau-l‘eau, novel, arHsens édiTions, 2006 (translation from Romanian by Florica Ciodaru-Courriol and Rodica Draghincescu)
awards and fellowships:
2013 : EUROPEAN PRIZE FOR LITERATURE AND POETRY « VIRGIL », CENACLE EUROPEEN & SOCIETE DES POETES FRANÇAIS, PARIS, France.
2006 : European prize for poetry, INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL & Society DANTE ALIGHIERI, METZ-NANCY, France.
1992: Special prize for poetry, Académie de Lettres et de Beaux Arts, Bordeaux, France.
1995: Special prize of the poetry festival ‘Goccia di Luna’, Pomezia, Italy.
1996: Prize of the Writer’s Union, Constanta, for debut novel (‘Distanta…’).
1998: Romanian national prize for poetry ‘Geo Bogza’.
2001: Prize of the Writer’s Union, Bucharest, for the best poetry book of the year (‘EU-Genia’).
2000-2002: Fellow of the Academy Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany.