Ana Blandiana

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Ana Blandiana (pen name of Otilia Valeria Coman; b. 1942, Timişoara) is one of the most distinguished contemporary Romanian poets, an essayist, and political figure. She took her name after Blandiana, near Vinţul de Jos, Alba County, her parents' home village.

Literary career

After her debut in 1959, in Tribuna, Cluj-Napoca, where she signed for the first time as Ana Blandiana, she was published in the anthology 30 de poeţi tineri ("30 Young Poets"). In 1963, after a four-year interdiction, she again published in Contemporanul (edited by George Ivaşcu).

Her editorial debut took place in 1964 with the booklet of poems Persoana intâia plural ("First Person Plural"), with a Foreword written by Nicolae Manolescu. She imposed herself with Calcâiul vulnerabil ("Achilles' Heel", 1966) and A treia taină ("The Third Secret", 1969). In 1966, Blandiana appeared for the first time at the International Poem Contest (in Lathi, Finland).

In 1967, she settled in Bucharest; until the following year, she was one of the editors for Viaţa studenţească, and then (until 1975) worked as editor for Amfiteatru. She gave two televised readings in 1969, in the company of Andrei Şerban and the actors Irina Petrescu, Mariana Mihuţ and Florian Pittiş.

Between 1975 and 1977, she was a librarian at the Institute of Fine Arts in Bucharest. In 1976, her works were first printed in a French translation, in Anthologie du Club des Poètes (Paris); in 1978, she took part in the First International Festival of Poetry in Paris.

In the late 1980s, assuming risks of reprisals of the communist regime, Blandiana started writing protest poems, in answer to the increasingly harsh demands of the system in general.

After the Romanian Revolution of 1989, she entered political life, campaigning for the removal of communist remenants from administrative office, as well as for an open society. She left literary work in the background, although she did publish Arhitectura valurilor ("Waves' Architecture", 1990), 100 de poeme ("100 Poems", 1991), and Sertarul cu aplauze ("The Drawer of Applause", prose, 1992). Her work was translated into 16 languages.

Ana Blandiana has also published:

50 de poeme, ("50 Poems"), 1970: Octombrie, Noiembrie, Decembrie ("October, November, December"), 1972; Întâmplări din grădina mea (Occurencies in My Garden), 1980; Ora de nisip ("The Hour of Sand"), 1984; Întâmplări de pe strada mea (Occurencies on My Street), 1988; În dimineaţa de după moarte ("On the Morning After Dying"), 1996; La cules îngeri ("Angel Gathering"), 1997; Cartea albă a lui Arpagic ("Arpagic's White Book"), 1998
6 books of essays
4 books in prose

Affiliations

Member of the Writers' Union of Romania
Member of the European Academy of Poetry
Chairman of the Romanian PEN Club, after its re-establishment in 1990
1994 - Founder and leader of the Civic Alliance Foundation, a Romanian non-party movement, whose aim was to alleviate the consequences of more than fifty years of communism in Romania.

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