Ioana Petrescu, Australian Poet

I recommend these moving new poems just published in the distinguished online literary journal Asiatic, December 2011, by the brilliant Romanian-born Australian poet Ioana Petrescu

Three more of her poems, on Friendly Street Poets . Readers enjoy "Dracula".

Ioana once translated a selection of my own poems into Romanian:

Poems by James Potts, translated into Romanian by Ioana Petrescu, in Calende, No 1-2, 2000.

I particularly admire her collection, Fumigated, Ginnninderra Press, 2001.

See also two poems, different reactions to Munch's The Scream

This is one of my own poems that Ioana translated into Romanian. It was written in Bucharest in June 1990:

The revolution's not over
(Bucharest, National Gallery, 12.6.1990)


The revolution's not over,
Not in the gallery, at least.
The paintings, stacked in storerooms,
Gather dust in sticky heat.
Armed guards stand watch amidst the rubble,
Indifferent to Art's untreated wounds,
To bullets through breast, through brain and heart;
To vandalised canvases, peppered with holes;
To shattered frames, to splintered icons.
I'm shown a Brueghel, and then El Greco.
Both safe, but needing expert care.
Which priceless works went up in smoke ?
And the restoration studio ? Lost.
I'll never invest in works of art.
Slashed and defaced; such shredded flesh.
Did trigger-happy snipers
Do their target-practice here ?
They couldn't have done much worse,
If they'd ushered in a gang of thugs
To poke out/pluck out each painted eye.