What are you working on at the moment?
I am working at a long time imagined and delayed collection of short stories, which now, in LCB, may have transformed into something else. I don’t know exactly what – and I don’t really feel I have to know right away. I also wrote two poems, after a while of trying to rethink and reformulate my poetry after the publication of the anthology »Maeștrii unei arte muribunde« (Masters of a Dying Art). I made of one of the poems a collage, that had a lot to do with the thoughts, walks and experiences in Berlin. I’m attaching it, even if it’s Romanian.

How does your stay in the Literary Colloquium Berlin affect you and your work?
It’s definitely the most quiet place I’ve ever been in a residence. Except for the obvious thing that everything is in the right place and that I have been graciously received by everyone here, it’s probably for the first time that I managed to get over any kind of anxiety and the usual blockages I have in new and unknown places, and after a week of adapting to the new medium, I felt completely engaged in my work. And this way I think I got over a moment of sterility.

What experiences will you take home?
Wannsee at sunset, some of the most beautiful of ’soleil couchant‘ I experienced, the wonderful terrace, where I was finally able to agree with myself and go deep into some layers of my experience and imagination that seemed shut off, the peaceful surroundings, with the almost ’natural‘ distant noises of the S-Bahn, the long walks through the surrounding forests, some people I met and we shared some vibrating moments I will surely carry with me a long time from now, the discovery of a great city I barely knew, its enormous tragedies and its power to regenerate and jump over its own shadow(s).

The interview took place in July 2018.