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Luis Raul Calvo

Profane Uncertainties by Luis Raul Calvo Translated from the Spanish by Flavia Cosma Červená Barva Press, 2010

Calvo surveys the world and finds Heaven and Hell located close to home - in our own lives - that is to say, in our relationships to others. This significant poet is here brought home for English readers, thanks to the dexterous and careful translations of Flavia Cosma, a distinguished poet herself - in Romanian and English.
-George Elliot Clarke, E. J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature, University of Toronto

Luis Raul Calvo is a profound poet, possessor of a grand lyrical power, preoccupied by the existential limits of the contemporaneous man and by the deepest, implacable layers of his consciousness. All of these are exposed in a concentrated and natural manner, in an original language, with a very personal style which distinguishes this poet from the traditional, run of the mill poetical discourses. Calvo's poetry will never receive the kiss of death, of resignation of enunciation or frivolity, but will soar with the eternal emotion of innocence and dedication.
-Geo Constantinescu, Professor Spanish Literature, University of Craiova, Romania

This book was funded by the SUR Translation Program in Buenos Aires, Argentina who awarded the translater, Flavia Cosma and Červená Barva Press funding for the publication of this book.

October 25, 2010
Review by Zvi A. Sesling http://dougholder.blogspot.com/2010/10/profane-uncertaintiesby-luis-raul-calvo.html

$15.00 | ISBN: 978-0-9844732-7-4 | 45 Pages | In Stock

Charles Cantrell

WILD WRECKAGE by Charles Cantrell Červená Barva Press, 2020

Charles Cantrell's chapbooks are Cicatrix and Greatest Hits. His awards include grants from the Wisconsin Arts Board, a scholarship from the Fine Arts Work Center, residencies from Ragdale, Ucross, the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and three Pushcart Prize nominations. Mr. Cantrell, an Air Force veteran, received his MFA from Goddard College (now at Warren Wilson). He taught for several years at Madison Area Technical College and lives in Madison, Wisconsin with his wife and son.

"Make some music in the wreckage," fictional poet Paul Chowder advises in Nicholson Baker's Traveling Sprinkler (2013), and real-world poet Charles Cantrell takes up that challenge in poems that thrum with romanticism amid bruise and ruin, amid the clamorous machinery of America. Wild Wreckage offers homage to labor and language, and to the "great / distance between love and silence" that these poems make palpable with clarity and affection.
-Michael Waters

In a world of wild wreckage-a world of piss odors and mop buckets, salt sweat and snake skins, black rot and fodder-an alcoholic father might die drunk on the railroad tracks, a long-suffering mother might be attacked with a kitchen skillet, someone might light a fuse in his sock on a passenger plane or knock a daughter's teeth out, and sadness might ultimately be expected to win out over happiness. But if that world also contains a father who teaches his son to write his name on a fogged-up windowpane, a mother who encourages her son to dance, and a poet who manages, time after time, "to say it right, rhythm/ and tone exact," allowing that although "love and shit get mixed up," "maybe the light holds a story," then the wreckage of Charles Cantrell's title is not only wild, but wonderful and necessary. If Cantrell's is a world of blues and bruises, it also embraces Wittgenstein's "sense of care," and Lorca's "brief, but furious hope," finding ways, like Levertov, "to ease the dread and silence." With a toughness of mind and heart, in richly textured and often luminously lyrical language, Cantrell finds "the perfect knowing" as, shining through the wreckage, "love stands on every corner" of this wild and wonderful book.
-Ronald Wallace

$18.00 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-16-1 | 78 Pages

David Cappella

Gobbo: A Solitaire's Opera by David Cappella Červená Barva Press, 2022

David Cappella, Professor Emeritus of English and the 2017/2018 Poet-in-Residence at Central Connecticut State University, has co-authored two widely used poetry textbooks, Teaching the Art of Poetry: The Moves and A Surge of Language: Teaching Poetry Day to Day. He won the Bright Hill Press Poetry Chapbook Competition in 2006. His poems and essays have appeared in various literary journals and anthologies in the US and Europe. His novel, Kindling, has been called "a powerful and devastating coming-of-age story." Visit his university web site: http://webcapp.ccsu.edu/?fsdMember=249

Note to the Reader
Gobbo: A Solitaire's Opera is a "natural opera." That is, it is the emotional arc of a poet's life rendered in poetry. The sonnet sequence is divided into three acts much like a formal opera, and it is loosely based on the life of the Italian poet, Giacomo Leopardi. His life, fraught with emotional and physical pain, did not stop him from writing some of the most exquisite lyrical poetry of his age, of all time. His view of human nature, of mankind in general was dark, but this was not necessarily because he was physically misshapen, though some think that is the case. Whatever his view of humanity or whatever his emotional and physical pain, Leopardi demonstrated great courage in the face of adversity while his poetry transcended his life.

Though the emotional life of Gobbo follows the life of Leopardi, his voice is, most assuredly, not Leopardi's. The voice of Gobbo is the consciousness of a poet living his life. He is the artist navigating the world. Gobbo: A Solitaire's Opera is not an historical or a biographical document.

"David Cappella's Gobbo is truly operatic as it makes us feel the heart and soul of a tortured yet remarkable poet. Through the deft use of form, Cappella maintains a constant window on a changeable man. Each aria-like poem articulates an aspect of Gobbo’s experience while creating, as in opera, a powerful emotional skein. This is a life of a poet in poems. As such, its relevance is timeless."
-Baron Wormser

"It is difficult for us who live in an anti-romantic age to grasp the consciousness of the romantic poet without the aura of the decorative, or the merely forlorn, obstructing our appreciation. We may sense a great reduction has come to pass regarding the ways of being available to a poet in today’s world. In these poems, from the first act of David Cappella’s Gobbo: A Solitaire’s Opera, we are given, again, what poets in western societies have lost, the exquisitely articulated desires and claims of the young poet who has “no loves, no friends, nothing, just [his] studies” and yet, through the exercise of an intense imagination, finds comfort and confirmation in nature, books, language itself, and encounters with the beautiful and the infinite. It is high, grand stuff, true art, when a poet can embody the dance that transpires between the imagination and life lived in response to perceptions and circumstances. This is what David Cappella has created with delicacy and balance."
-Gray Jacobik

Cover art: "One / Leopardi" by Britta Winkels

$18.00 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-15-4 | 106 Pages

Alan Catlin

Juchitan Medusa by Alan Catlin Červená Barva Press, 2022

Alan Catlin is retired from a long career in his unchosen profession in the "hospitality industry." He has published well over sixty chapbooks and full-length books of poetry and prose. Most recently his fictional memoir/ novel Chaos Management was published by Alien Buddha and is available on Amazon, as are many of his recent publications on a wide variety of subjects from art, to bar wars, to self-portraits that aren't self-portraits, to a series of book length memories which aren't "memories" per se, among many others. He won the 2017 Slipstream Chapbook Award for Blue Velvet, the first of eleven chapbooks channeling noir movies. Two of his books were named Most Neglected Books of the Year by the late Marvin Malone, editor of the legendary Wormwood Review.

Cover Photography: Susanna Lewis

$13.00 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-72-7 | 29 Pages

Ruth C. Chad

The Sound of Angels by Ruth C. Chad Červená Barva Press, 2017

Ruth Chad is a psychologist who works in the Boston area. Her poems have appeared in Montreal Poems, Lyrical Somerville, Ibbetson Street, The Bagel Bard Anthology, The Aurorean, Constellations and The Psychoanalytic Couple and Family Institute of New England, Connection, December 2015. Ruth grew up in Montreal, Quebec and now resides in Newton Highlands, MA. with her husband Mark Friedman.

"Ruth Chad is a poet of whispered intimacies, of living and of dying, of laughter and of sorrow, of the natural world and the metaphysical beyond. She writes as both observer and participant in the ordinary and extraordinary dramas of our existence. Her portraits of her family and especially of her dying father are poignant reflections of experience like our own. There is a tenderness in all of her writing as her short stanzas tumble out into our consciousness to demonstrate and to remind us of our human condition and the contexts within which we live. Hers is a sensitivity to the world about her as she answers the question posed to a spider in her poem 'The Children Have Grown.' She asks the spider to teach her to spin. She has, in fact, spun a web of poems full of insight, fine writing and intimacy."
-Philip E. Burnham, Jr., Winner of the Loft Poetry Prize

"There is both deep sadness and sweetness in Ruth Chad's meditative, moving, imagistic poetry. The sadness comes from loss-lost youth, the change of seasons, children moving away, a parent dying-but that loss breeds a deeper appreciation of life's sweetness, often symbolized by affecting natural imagery. I can't imagine anyone reading these poems without feeling more alive."
-Lawrence Kessenich

$7.00 | 39 Pages | In Stock

Sami Shalom Chetrit

Jews by Sami Shalom Chetrit Červená Barva Press, 2014

Teacher, poet, writer, filmmaker, and scholar Sami Shalom Chetrit was born in Morocco, raised in Israel, and lives in New York City. He has been writing and publishing poetry for thirty years, with five books in Hebrew: a new book, Broken Times, is due out from Bimat Kedem (2014); this was preceded by Yehudim (Jews), from Nahar Books (2008). Chetrit’s Shirim BeAshdodit (Poems in Ashdodian) became a bestseller in Israel where a popular musical, based on the poems, was produced. He has published countless poems in literary magazines, periodicals, newspapers, and anthologies, as well as several performing shows with leading Israeli musicians. There is a growing body of critical work on his poetry in both Hebrew and English and a generation of younger poets and artists have been inspired by his work. He was recently included in a list of the top 40 Modern Hebrew poets. Though a selection of his work appeared in Ammiel Alcalay’s Keys to the Garden, this is Chetrit's first full-length book of poetry in English.

Chetrit’s novel Doll's Eye came out from Hargol Am Oved in 2007, and in English from Xlibiris in 2013. His groundbreaking study, Intra-Jewish Conflict in Israel: White Jews, Black Jews, was published by Routledge in 2011.

Producer and director of three documentary films, Chetrit’s latest film, Shattered Rhymes: The Life and Poetry of Erez Bitton, depicts the renowned Moroccan born poet, an inspiration to Chetrit's generation. The film came out in January, 2014, appearing in festivals as well as broadcast on Israeli television, and is available in English.

Chetrit is Associate Professor of Hebrew and Middle Eastern Studies at Queens College, CUNY, and is on the faculty of Middle East/Middle East in America Studies at The Graduate Center, CUNY.

Cover Art: "A painter without words" water on canvas, 2014
by Igal Fedida

With unflinching courage, clarity, and wit, Sami Shalom Chetrit has gone places no contemporary Israeli Hebrew poet has dared venture. These are places in which the brutality of separatist ideology, enforced identity, militarism, and military occupation, have attempted to blot out the ethics of memory and human relations. It is in these ruins that Chetrit's rage, irony, and compassion create new ways of imagining realities we thought had reached a point of utter saturation. This collection finally allows English readers a chance to hear Chetrit's vital and inspiring voice.
—Ammiel Alcalay, professor of comparative literature Queens College and CUNY Graduate Center

$17.00 | ISBN: 978-0-692-33628-1 | 100 Pages | In Stock

James Claffey

The Bitter Kind A Flash Novelette by Tara Lynn Masih & James Claffey Červená Barva Press, 2020

In this spare novelette, acclaimed flash fiction writers James Claffey and Tara Lynn Masih collaboratively create an original tale of loss and love, as The Bitter Kind deftly alternates between Stela, the daughter of a ship's captain, burdened by her family secrets, and Brandy, a Chippewa orphan, haunted by ghost wolves and spirits. The authors cross genres and borders between historical and contemporary, speculative and realistic, presenting two unforgettable characters on a journey toward their inevitable, fateful destination.

"With two writers as well matched artistically as Tara Lynn Masih and James Claffey, a collaboration is cause to celebrate. This richly woven, haunting novelette transcends the confines of its brevity; feels tender, sprawling, immersive. The Bitter Kind is an alchemy, a duet, a gorgeous melding of two of our most treasured literary voices."
-Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life: Collected Works from 2003-2018

"With short, alternating passages, James Claffey and Tara Masih vividly illuminate the separate and commingled lives of Stela and Brandy in this original and elegantly textured novella. It is a story, human and soulful, of place, mysticism, and the hard-won ground we all struggle toward."
-Robert Scotellaro, author of Nothing Is Ever One Thing

"From ghost-soaked frontier towns to leafy waterways, frozen river basins, and the open road, Tara Masih’s and James Claffey’s parallel narratives tumble along through stunning landscapes of loneliness and beauty. The writing is evocative and tender, exploring both the haunted and the haunting; touching in its examination of broken things and masterful in its prose."
-Kimberly Lojewski, author of Worm Fiddling Nocturne in the Key of a Broken Heart

"With beautiful imagery and a seamless voice, Masih and Claffey move us through decades as two parallel lives seek solace and healthy human connection. Stela, long plagued by abusive relationships, and Brandy, spurred by tragedy and unlucky in love, are shaped and steered by the things that haunt them, and, perhaps, the things that will someday guide them to heal. This winning collaborative effort is both stirring and satisfying."
-Mel Bosworth, author of FREIGHT and coauthor of Second Acts in American Lives

"With their binocular lyric lenses, Masih and Claffey provide a lacquered and sanded depth to this compilation set in the chambered karst of our heartfelt heartland. The book is a layered lanyard, a laurel wreath, an ouroboros, Mobius’s Mobius, an effortless enso, and a terrific torqueing torus. The diastolic/systolic dub-Dub, a syncopated sink or swim, of the call and response had me reeling, a time step timed to hit the one and the three. What I am saying is that this is a tour de force, a fait accompli."
-Michael Martone, author of Brooding and The Moon Over Wapakoneta

Reviews:

"To read The Bitter Kind is to witness two writers who, in this slim 68-page volume, manage a marvel by beautifully performing two seemingly impossible tasks... the first astonishing thing about The Bitter Kind: Masih and Claffey blend their styles so seamlessly that, aside from a very few turns of phrase, it's nearly impossible to tell the difference between their voices. The second astonishing aspect of this book is that Masih and Claffey create a rivetingly cohesive central narrative from flash segments... Even more extraordinarily, they form a novelette with the scope and sense of fulfillment one would expect of a much longer work."
Emma Bolden, Tupelo Quarterly
To read full review click here...

$18.00 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-40-6 | 68 Pages

Flavia Cosma

New Release: In the Arms of the Father Poems by Flavia Cosma

In the Arms of the Father Poems by Flavia Cosma Translated from the Romanian by Flavia Cosma with Charles Siedlecki Červená Barva Press, 2021

A recipient of the John Dryden Prize for poetry in translation - edition 2007, the poetry collection In the Arms of the Father by Flavia Cosma is a remarkable representation of the high poetic accomplishment of a true "international" author. Flavia Cosma is a Romanian born poet, living in Canada and published widely in numerous countries and languages. Deeply metaphysical, this book gathers between its covers the permanent osmosis of the poet's state of mind and consciousness with the divinity and the wealth of nature. And just under this perspective, wonderful glimpses of the passage of time are coming to life, filtered through Flavia's particular sensitivity. Cosma seems to possess the magic of touching things with words, to caress them, to vivify them. Her inner world finds and receives its necessary living space from a true and real coincidence between man and his surrounding. The influence of multiple poetic traditions, combined with the poet's personality, find in the "Arms of the Father" the dimension absolute that opens up from the concreteness of reality to the mystery of life.

Flavia Cosma is a Romanian-born Canadian writer, poet and translator. She is also a professional photographer and producer, director and screenwriter for television documentary films. Flavia has published poetry, prose, children's literature and travel memoirs. Her books were translated and published in various countries and languages. Flavia has a Master's in Electrical Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest, Romania. Cosma's poetry books Leaves of a Diary, Thus Spoke the Sea and The Latin Quarter were studied at Universities in Canada and USA during the school years 2008, 2014, and 2017. A recipient of several international literary awards Flavia Cosma is the director of The Biannual Writers' and Artists' Festivals at Val-David, Quebec, Canada. www.flaviacosma.com

Charles Siedlecki is an educator, writer, translator and poetry editor living and working in Toronto, Canada. He received a degree in English Literature and Art History from the University of Toronto, and later took a fellowship at AKADEMIA SZTUK PIEKNYCH w WARSZAWIE (The Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts). He received the Third Prize in the 2007 Dryden Translation Competition for co-translating together with Flavia Cosma her poetry book In the Arms of the Father-prize awarded by British Comparative Literature Association/British Centre for Literary Translation. Charles Siedlecki's poetry collection Somewhere in the Universe was published by KCLF-21 Press, Toronto in 2008.

Embraced by lush foliage and endearing forest friends in the real and imagined world, Flavia Cosma's poems are inhabited by all of these in a larger cosmic understanding; lit by a spiritual incandescence that few possess in this worldly world. Her poems are havens of precious moments lingering over metaphors of porcupines and snakes, spiders and dogs, lion-fish, peacocks and crows, the wind and rain, seasons, blue snow and a purple wave that spills onto blank sheets of paper. Her lines "The returning steps of the Poet / On silks filled with grace" is for me Flavia walking her words. While her words have soft contours, they also alert us to the harsh realities of "Air no longer reaching the lungs / Dissolves into fog / And screams," reminding us of the current pandemic in the world. As a line in her meditative book says "He, who is consumed by fire will never rot," I believe this is true of poet Flavia Cosma who is a gentle flame and her words will live forever.

"All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one." T.S. Eliot

-Bina Sarkar Ellias, Poet, Art curator, Editor, Designer & Publisher Int. Gallerie, Mumbai, India

Flavia Cosma always delivers. Her latest book, In the Arms of The Father, is a delight. Evident once again is her exemplary language of the senses that is startling and beautiful as it expresses harmony with self and the universe. The spirituality inherent in Cosma's language is undeniable. Enjoy the lyrical journey that is provided by this fascinating poetry collection.
-Alan Britt, Dream Highway
Towson University

$18.00 | ISBN: 978-1-950063-05-5 | 102 Pages

Les cahiers de Val-David Festival Notebooks Los cuadernos de Val-David 2009-2014 Anthologie brève by Flavia Cosma (Editor) Červená Barva Press, 2014

The Trilingual Anthology "Les cahiers de Val-David, Festival Notebooks, Los cuadernos de Val-David, 2009-2014" reunites, thanks to a generous grant from CLD Laurentides, some of the most talented international writers who participated so far in the Festivals at Val-David. (The International Writers' and Artists' Residence at Val-David, Quebec, Canada) The anthology is in English, French, and Spanish with many translators bringing the language of the International writers available for us to read. The International Festival of Writers and Artists is held twice a year at the International residence and is directed by Flavia Cosma, a well-known writer whose poetry, prose and children literature is published in English, French and Spanish, as well as her native Romanian. She welcomes at her residency, year after year, new talents from all corners of the world. They have the opportunity to share their poetical-artistic experience with other fellows through festivals where poetry and prose readings, book launches, conferences, round tables, improvisations, music and exhibitions are giving poets and artists of all ages and styles an opportunity to perform their work in the language of participants, most frequently English, French, Spanish, Romanian and even Ancient Greek. (www.flaviacosma.com) This anthology will take you on a journey reading the work of international writers from so many different countries and cultures.

Contributors: David Brême, Alan Britt, Christopher Bowen, Gordon Bradley, Philip Brunst, Julie Burtinshaw, Claudia Cáceres Franco, Luis Raúl Calvo, Rodica Gabriela Chira, Flavia Cosma, Carmen Doreal, Hélène Dorion, Sharl Dubé, Louise Dupré, Denis Emorine, Adrian Erbiceanu, Anna Louise E. Fontaine, Jacobo Fijman, Antoine Gravel-Bilodeau, Talleen Hacikyan, Eva Halus, Diana Haïk Hambardzumyan, Hugh Hazelton Louis-Philippe Hébert, Clelia Ifrim, Jeanne Jutras, Anna Levine, Ana López, Frédérique Marleau, Gilles Matte,Felicia Mihali, Ljubica Milicevic Gertrude Millaire, Gloria Mindock, Michael Mirolla, Pierre Mondou, Ofelia de Santos, Mel Sarnese, N. A’Yara Stein, Czandra Mostly Luminita Suse, JÜRI TALVET, Patricia Gonçalves Tenorio, Jeremiah Wall, Cheryl Antao-Xavier

$17.00 | ISBN: 978-0-692-28317-2 | 122 Pages | In Stock

On Paths Known to No One Poems by Flavia Cosma Červená Barva Press, 2012

Flavia Cosma is an award winning Romanian-born Canadian poet, author and translator. She has a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest. Later she studied Drama at the Community School of Arts—Bucharest, Romania. She is also an award winning independent television documentary producer, director, and writer, and has published seventeen books of poetry, a novel, a travel memoir and five books for children. Her work has been represented in numerous anthologies in various countries and languages, and her book, 47 Poems, (Texas Tech University Press) received the ALTA Richard Wilbur Poetry in Translation Prize.

Cosma was nominated three times for The Pushcart Prize with poems from Leaves of a Diary (2006), The Season of Love (2008) and Thus Spoke the Sea (2008).

Flavia Cosma was awarded Third Prize in the John Dryden Translation Competition- 2007, for co-translating In The Arms of The Father, poems by Flavia Cosma, (British Comparative Literature Association & British Literary Translation Centre)

Cosma's Songs at the Aegean Sea made the Short List in the Canadian Aid Literary Awards Contest, Dec. 2007. Her translation into Romanian of Burning Poems by George Elliott Clarke was published in Romania in 2006. Her translation from Spanish into Romanian of work by the Argentinean poet Luis Raul Calvo was published in 2009 under the title Nimic Pentru Aici, Nimic Pentru Dincolo. Her translation of work by the USA poet Gloria Mindock was published in 2010 under the title La Portile Raiului. Her translation into English of Profane Uncertainties by the Argentinean poet Luis Raul Calvo was published by Červená Barva Press in 2010.

Flavia Cosma was appointed International Affairs Chair for The League of Canadian Poets in 2008.

Cosma’s poetry book Leaves of a Diary was studied at the University of Toronto E. J. Pratt Canadian Literature during the school year 2007-2008. Flavia was decorated with the Golden Medal and was appointed Honorary Member by the Casa del Poeta Peruano, Lima, Peru, 2010, for her poetry and her work as an international cultural promoter.

Flavia Cosma is the director of the International Writers’ and Artists’ Residency, Val-David, Quebec, Canada

Flavia Cosma: http://www.flaviacosma.com

As in Flavia Cosma's whole literary production, nature isn't reduced here to the role of a neutral backdrop to the poet's life; it influences her imagination and consciousness in innumerable ways becoming a source of inspiration for a thorough studying of existing ideas and for awakening new ones. Flavia is an expert in using nature as an adequate space for metaphors, comparisons, symbols. She humanizes nature, granting it an interior life, with the highest intensity, at the supreme level.
—Dr. Irena Harasimowicz-Zazecka PhD Philology, University of Bucharest, Romania

$15.00 | ISBN: 978-0-9844732-6-7 | 128 Pages | In Stock

The Season of Love by Flavia Cosma Červená Barva Press, 2008

Once again in The Season of Love, Flavia Cosma offers us those momentary glimpses and sensations briefly felt and viewed which hide and yet reveal the testament of life. Through the transient sensations of reality, the poet lures her readership deep into the mystic world of her eternity. Each poem serves to lead the reader through the pain, suffering and loneliness of life while searching for truth's hidden mysteries which serve to make life meaningful and beautiful, yet remain to be discovered in that continual renewal and rebirth of life.
David Mills, poet and critic
Toronto, Canada

One of prevailing themes in Flavia Cosma's poetry is love, but not as a banal, run-of-the mill experience. Instead, it has the elemental intensity of natural phenomena, which best picture both the breakdown of feelings and the undying hope. And that's where the poet places her wise optimism.
Dr. Irena Harasimowicz-Zarzecka
PHD Philology, University of Bucharest, Romania
Toronto, Canada

Excerpt from the Introduction:

"...Cosma employs

No such wasteful rhetoric. Her poetry—

Analytical, elegant, eloquent—

Is as superb as poetry demands.

Her devotion delights; her lines instruct.

The Season of Love is a fresh gospel,

Skewering our pretensions forcefully.

Its lush richness of imagination,

Singing through Cosma’s and Siedlecki’s English,

Is compelling and a consummation,

Marrying music and morality."

George Elliott Clarke
E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature
University of Toronto
Laureate, 2001 Governor-General’s Award for Poetry

Flavia Cosma is an award winning Romanian-born Canadian poet, author and translator. She has published thirteen books of poetry, a novel, a travel memoir and three books for children. Her book, 47 Poems, (Texas Tech Press) received the ALTA Richard Wilbur Poetry in Translation Prize. Červená Barva Press published her chapbook, Gothic Calligraphy and will be publishing her newest collection, Songs at the Aegean Sea.

$15.00 | ISBN: 978-0-615-20097-2 | 89 Pages | In Stock

Gothic Calligraphy Poems by Flavia Cosma Červená Barva Press, 2007

Flavia Cosma is an acclaimed Romanian-born, Canadian poet, author and translator. She is also an award winning independent television documentary producer, director and writer. To date she has published nine books of poetry, a novel, a traveling memoir and a book of Fairy Tales. Her work is represented in numerous anthologies in various countries and languages.

Gothic Calligraphy, translated from the original Romanian by Flavia Cosma with Charles Siedlecki, is Flavia Cosma’s tenth poetry collection published in Somerville, Massachusetts by Červená Barva Press (2007). These poems are candid, romantic and metaphisical. What is particularly striking about the poems is their originality and the daring force of their imagery and metaphors, wonderfully rendered into English by this tantalizing, entrancing translation. The language is straightforward, spare, yet so bold in image as to seem extravagant.

Ioan Tepelea, poet and publisher, Oradea, Romania:
“The inner equilibrium and the uniqueness of voice, but most of all the interior fervor to be oneself when faced with life’s adversity, turn these poems into an existential suffrage, revealing an authentic and personal vision.”

George Elliott Clarke, Department of English, University of Toronto:
“Flavia Cosma’s vision is dark and Gothic, but also saturated with Mediterranean sun, romance and vine. Her style – imagistic, cryptic – reminds one of other powerful women writers such as America’s Emily Dickinson, Russia’s Anna Akhmatova and Canada’s Marie Uguay. Their poems are miniature fairy tales that enjoy being both sprightly and grim.”

David Mills, poet and literary critic, Toronto:
“Flavia Cosma’s poetry has been designed to waken sleeping consciousness. These poems lead the reader through the pain, suffering and loneliness of life while searching for truth’s hidden mysteries which serve to make life meaningful and beautiful, yet remain to be discovered in that continual renewal and rebirth of life.”

Irene Harasimowicz-Zarzecka, foreword to Gothic Calligraphy:
“A poet of extraordinary depth and sensitivity, combining in a permanent osmosis her state of mind and consciousness with the wealth of nature, always searching for the eternal, timeless values of our earthly sojourn. The baroque opulence of Flavia Cosma’s diction is worthy of a genuine master of the word.

Alexander Sfârlea, poet and literary critic, Oradea, Romania:
a review of Gothic Calligraphy:
“What strikes the reader in Gothic Calligraphy is an anxious and intense perception of the existential struggle, which melts irreversibly into extinction and forgetfulness, an intangible and tragic descent into the inevitable nothingness, combined with the ultimate deliverance of coming to terms with oneself.”

Fragments from Gothic Calligraphy appeared in their Romanian version—In Bratele Tatalui, Cogito Press, Oradea, Romania, 2006.

$8.00 | 41 Pages | In Stock: 10

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