Professor Anthony Caleshu
Glad to be accepted to be a part of the amazing Poetry and Covid (2020-2021), a project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, University of Plymouth, and Nottingham Trent University, together with so many and distinguished worldwide poets! A true global interactive online poetry anthology, with poems being published daily.
Many thanks to the
principal investigator, Professor Anthony Caleshu, University of Plymouth and to the co-investigator, Dr. Rory Waterman, Nottingham Trent University and to research-assistant, Sam Kemp, University of Plymouth, who selected my three poems for this project.
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In 2000, after over 20 years of dreaming in the realm of poetry, I felt that I wrote too much and I finished my main projects, the first one being a long poem dedicated to the huge cities, megalopolis, „Wall and Neutrino. The Poet in New York”. I even made public statements that I will no longer write poetry and I will focus on oil painting, my first love, and on writing novels.
This Spring I discovered that in a strange and dangerous period, characterized by fear, death and fake-news, the best way to express myself and to fight against despair and solitude is to write poetry. I found myself, my family and my friends in the middle of a true Carnival of Death (my home-city, Suceava, was the first to experiment the lockdown in Romania) and unexpectedly since April until July 2020 I wrote a new book of poetry, „The Carnival of Death”.
I hope that soon we’ll regain our normal life and I will no longer be frightened that the word „closeness” will be deleted from the dictionary.
