When the tunnels meet

Poets in Romania and in Ireland have been drawn deeply into the social and political lives of their countries. During the Ceaucescu years in Romania it was the poets who dared to transmit covert messages of protest, and during the December 1989 Revolution many of them risked their lives on the streets. In Ireland, poets gave voice to the sentiments of the independence movement early in this century and during recent years their work has been read for insights on the. Violent sectarian divisions in the North. This Bloodaxe anthology of contemporary Romanian poetry is the outcome of a strangely imaginative collaboration between poets from these two countries on either fringe of the new Europe. Ten leading Irish poets have produced their own distinctive version of poems by ten leading Romanian poets.