The world in words and images - Ioana Petrescu

Ioana Petrescu

I have always been reading and writing, I learned to read at a very early age, I liked what writers had to say and I wanted to be like them and put in writing my observations of the world around me. We had hundreds of books at home, my parents loved to read, and they both read fairy-tales to me. When I wrote my first poem at a very early age they both celebrated it as a huge achievement, even though it was only about two lines long and said something very clichéd about a butterfly, as far as I remember. This memory makes me smile to this day!

I didn’t publish much until I migrated to Australia. As a migrant I didn’t know many people and the local poetry scene was for me a wonderful place to start. It was fairly surprising for me that the poets liked what I had to say and very soon some of my poems were published in anthologies. This grew and grew until I had many poems and several books published. There is something very satisfying about seeing your poems in print and knowing that there are people who think like you and enjoy what you have to say.

Teaching poetry writing was and is for me a professional highlight. It’s good to see that more and more people put their world into words and share that with readers in a time and age when reading books has become obsolete and writing and reading is hosted online. It’s interesting for me to see that my words are now occupying a place in the virtual space. However, even though I do most of my reading on-screen, I have in my bookcase many of my parents’ books.

At present I enjoy travelling and the new places always offer so much to think and write about. Ecopoetics is a good way for me to express both my appreciation of writing and the environment. Modern technology has also helped by making it so easy for everyone, including me, to take photos of a reasonable quality and place them next to the writing to illustrate the words. I enjoy working with the two media, words and images, I feel that this combination is a good way to reflect back to the world what it has to offer. I hope the readers of this journal will enjoy the words and images!

Setu, February 2018