Together with the La două bufnițe bookstore, we invite you on July 16, 2024, from 6:00 PM, to the Art Encounters Foundation (Timișoara, 46C Take Ionescu Boulevard, Casa ISHO). Here, the exhibition space will be transformed into a veritable stage where literature and visual art will merge, in a unique performative reading, in relation to the exhibition Marius Bercea: This Side of Paradise.
As part of a series of interdisciplinary events, this event offers a personal and immersive journey into the poetic world of Andrew Davidson-Novosivschei, inspired by his most recent volume, Lazy Heart, a series of moving verses about the poet’s artistic journey from the American coasts to the lands of Romania, exploring the cultural encounters and vibrant landscapes that shaped his vision and inspiration.
The performative reading will be by the author himself, Andrew Davidson-Novosivschei.
Author Biography
Andrew Davidson-Novosivschei (b. 1987) is a professor, poet, and translator from Arizona, who has been based in Bucharest since 2015. He writes and publishes poetry in Romanian and English. His poem “The Taste of Freedom” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize (2021) in the USA. He exhibited his verses alongside drawings in the solo show “Pop-Up Book” (2022) at Diptych Art Space. He translates and publishes prose and poetry from Romanian into English. His debut in poetry, Lazy Heart, won the Radu Demetriades Debut Prize in 2024 and was published by Desarticulat Books in the same year.
About the volume of poems
“lazy heart” is a book written in Romanian by a young American, poet and translator, Andrew Davidson-Novosivschei. (…) Here, then, is a completely unusual debut. A description of the volume in a few words? Minimalism, (self)irony, directness, paradox, a special expressiveness that also stems from the way of using a foreign language – and this comes with a perception of reality marked by unusualness. Alternating humor, absurdity, perplexity, frankness. Each text sequence is a kind of box by Joseph Cornell (the famous American artist, surrealist, pioneer of collages, montages, assemblages) where elements from reality are metonymically brought together which, through juxtaposition, create an effect of strangeness. Like “boxes”, therefore, one after another, poetry “with money” / “with more children” / “with happiness” / “with a fountain” / “with centimeters” / “with drawer”/ “with birds”/ “with taylor swift”/ “with cristiano ronaldo”/ “with bear”/ “with two knives” etc.
Poetry about poetry (as Bogdan Ghiu writes, in our country, but Andrew Davidson-Novosivschei does it so differently!). Sometimes, flashes that remind of the avant-garde, of Tristan Tzara, for example, or of the early poetry of Gellu Naum (which, incidentally, he also translated into English). Photograms, biographs, snapshots. Maximum meaning in minimum words. A surprise volume, therefore.”
– Simona Popescu on a lazy heart
