Simona Popescu: Supra-reality
– Romania
A poet and a prose writer, Simona Popescu was born in 1965. She studied at the Faculty of Arts of Bucharest University where she now works as an assistant professor at the Department of Romanian Literature. She included her three first poetry collections in an anthology titled Juventus și alte poeme (Juventus and Other Poems). In order to explain poetry to students, she published a poetry book titled Lucrări în verde. Pledoaria mea pentru poezie (Works in Green. My Defense of Poetry). She also wrote an autobiographical novel titled Exuvii (Exuviae). She is enchanted by surrealism and feels certain affinity towards Gellu Naum, the key figure of Romanian surrealism, to whom she dedicated two books of essays: Salvarea speciei. Despre suprarealism și Gellu Naum (The Redemption of the Species. On Surrealism and Gellu Naum) and Clava. Critificțiune cu Gellu Naum (Clava. Critifiction with Gellu Naum); she also put together a critical edition of his work. “Surrealists are very perceptive towards poetics of the ordinary world, as well as the one we don’t see. It exists!” she says.