The Flying Head
poems by Ioan Flora
translated from the Romanian by Adam J. Sorkin and Elena Bortă
33 pages, paper, staple bound.
Toad Press, 2012, $5.00
Read a couple poems in this book online, at eXchanges, here.
About:
Ioan Flora was the award-winning author of twenty books and anthologies, most recently Lecture on the Ostrich-Camel (1995), which won prizes from the Bucharest Writers’ Association and the Writers’ Union of the Republic of Moldova; The Swedish Rabbit (1997), honored with prizes from both the Romanian Writers’ Union and the rival Association of Professional Writers in Romania—aspro; Medea and Her War Machines (1999); and Luncheon Under the Grass (2005).
Flora was born in Yugoslavia in the Romanian-speaking region of the Serbian Banat between the Danube River and the border with Romania. He attended the Romanian school in Vârșeț, graduated from the University of Bucharest in 1973, and began publishing books of poetry with Waltzes (1970) and Ivy (1975). Other titles include Poetic Records (1977), The Physical World (1977), Work Therapy (1981), The State of Fact (1984), A Young Owl on its Deathbed (1988), Assassin Memory (1989), and Violet Soles (1990). In 1993, after having been an editor for sixteen years, he moved to Bucharest, where he worked for the Museum of Romanian Literature and the Romanian Writers’ Union.
Ioan Flora died unexpectedly at the age of fifty-four in February 2005, only a few days after the publication of his last book of poems.
Adam J. Sorkin is a translator of contemporary Romanian literature, and his work has won The Poetry Society Corneliu M. Popescu Prize for European Poetry Translation. His recent books include three collections from the University of Plymouth Press, all translated with Lidia Vianu: Ion Mureșan’s The Book of Winter and Other Poems (2011); Ioan Es. Pop’s No Way Out of Hadesburg (2010); and Mircea Ivănescu’s lines poems poetry (2009), which was shortlisted for the 2011 Poetry Society Prize. Sorkin is main translator of Carmen Firan’s Rock and Dew (2010), in collaboration with the author. In 2011, he published A Path to the Sea by Liliana Ursu, translated with Ursu and Tess Gallagher, Ioan Flora’s Medea and Her War Machines, translated with Alina Cârâc, and My Dog – the Soul/Câinele meu – sufletul by Floarea Țuțuianu, translated with Irma Giannetti. Sorkin is Distinguished Professor of English, Penn State Brandywine.
Elena Bortă is a free-lance literary researcher and translator who has contributed translations from English and Scandinavian languages to various literary and cultural periodicals. The recipient of a travel grant from the Soros Foundation, she is working on a book-length manuscript on Mircea Eliade’s fiction, parts of which have been published in Romania, the U.S., and the U.K.
- Also translated by Adam J. Sorkin: The Factory of the Past (Toad Press, 2008)