Conference and presentation of the book "Romanian Poetry After Communism" (poetry anthology translated into English by Gene Tanta). Romanian Poetry After Communism does more than draw attention to the aesthetic particularities of a neglected Eastern European nation: this anthology asks readers to look between essence and form, life and art. And so, in order to address the challenges of belonging to this or that, I have invited each poet to contextualize his or her own creative output, briefly describing how his or her biography might relate to his or her formal innovation, how place, nationality, religion, language, diet, music, folklore might relate to his or her poems - how his or her everyday life relates to his or her imaginative writing. Emerging from the shadow of a totalitarian regime, these poetic statements are written mainly by the poets who have contributed their own voices.