THEME

CONTEMPORARY ROMANIAN POETRY

Poetry written in Romania today often works with biographical material without being confessional. The interest has moved from testimony to observation: what is visible in an emptied room, what remains of a village once the second generation leaves, what a photograph looks like when you no longer recognise it.

Alexandru Vlad’s volumes, "The Echo of the Sea" (2016) and "The Last Fragments" (2026), belong to this direction. The poems are short, concrete, built on image more than metaphor, and avoid conclusions — the reader is left with the scene, not with its meaning.

Being a filmmaker as well, the author brings an editing reflex into the text: the abrupt cut, the shot held too long, the missing explanation. You can read a few poems before buying anything — excerpts are published on the site.