Oana Avasilichioaei, 2010 - 2011 Calgary Canadian Writer-in-Residence
Oana Avasilichioaei is the 2010 - 2011 Canadian Writer-in-Residence. She will be in residence at the U of C from September 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011.
Avasilichioaei's work explores history, geography, public space, textual architecture, multilingualism, translation, and textual and collaborative performance.
Her first book of poetry, Abandon, wandered amid abandoned markets, voices and forces in a forgotten corner of Eastern Europe, while her second collection, feria: a poempark, delved into the fissures and fractures of a public park. Her recently completed manuscript, We, Beasts, steps through the beastfullness and foliage of language to compose debauched poetic tales about a child, a tyrant and a wolfbat.
She has translated poetry of Nobel-nominated, Romanian poet Nichita Stănescu, published as Occupational Sickness, and collaborated with Erín Moure on Expeditions of a Chimæra, a dialogic work on authorial experiments and translational impossibilities. Currently, she is translating Les Îles by Quebecoise poet, Louise Cotnoir, to be published in 2011 as The Islands.
Avasilichioaei has performed her work and given talks on poetics and translation at readings, conferences and festivals in Canada, USA, Mexico and Europe and was the founder and curator of the Atwater Poetry Project reading series in Montreal from 2004 to 2009. In the fall of 2009, she was the Canada Council writer-in-residence at Green College, University of British Columbia.
While in Calgary, she will be exploring a new body of work that will cross between performance, orality and the book object, as well as expanding a poetry project inspired by her own field translation of the early Romanian works of Paul Celan.
Listen to Oana on CKUA's Bookmark here.
Read the UToday Q&A with Oana here.
Read The Calgary Herald story with Oana here.
Click here for a sample from feria: a poempark.
Click here for a sample from Expeditions of a Chimæra.
Click here for a sample from We, Beasts.
Click here for a live reading from Expeditions of a Chimæra.
Contact Oana:
Oana Avasilichioaei
2010 - 2011 Canadian Writer-in-Residence
Calgary Distinguished Writers Program
Faculty of Arts, University of Calgary
2500 University Dr. NW
Calgary, AB T2N 1N4
cdwp@ucalgary.ca