Daniel Petrila - Premio giovani
Saturday 29 june 2024
14:30h

Young Romani poetry: writing to overcome the shame

CONVERSATION with

Daniel Petrilă, Youth Prize
by Marco Ghezzo

Romani language

Biography

Daniel Samuel Petrilă (born August 24, 1993 in Salonta, Bihor County) is a Romanian poet and translator of Romanian origin. He graduated from the Universidad de Bucharest (Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures) in the sections of Romani Language and Literature and Romanian Language and Literature and did his Master in Literary Studies at the Faculty of Letters (Universidad Bucharest). Born to a Romani mother and Romanian father, Daniel lived his childhood in a traditional Romani community where Romanes (a Romani language spread throughout the world) is practiced daily.
At the age of 19 he began publishing poems for “Adolescenţa Tini,” the magazine of the National College “Arany Janos” from Salonta. The first bilingual publication (Romani, Romanian), was Memorrie si infantería, Memorria e infantería, Ediciones Metropolis, Oradea 2017. He has also published the book Am strigat- o pe mama de la capătul pământului (in Italian: “I shouted for my mother from the ends of the earth”), Bucharest, Editions of the National Center for Roma Culture – Rromano Kher/Roma House, 2018.
Parallel to his poetic and literary activity, Daniel is involved in linguistics and in particular Romani linguistics, and his most important publication in this area turns out to be “Dicționar dialectal al limbii rromani,” dialectal dictionary of the Romani language București: Editura Centrului Național de Cultură a Romilor, Romano Kher, 2019.
In 2022 he published the volume of poems Feet of Clay, Slatina, Alana Publishing House.

He was editor for online magazine “Literatura de azi,” (“Today’s Literature”).
He currently coordinates the online magazine “Rromano Vak” (“Voice of the Roma”), where he organized the “Bronisława Wajs” International Competition for Literary Creation and Translations. Daniel is today an important and recognized voice of the young Romanian intellectual world.

Award motivation

The presence of the Rom population (originating in northern India and spreading throughout Europe and the world over the past 700 years) has generated the most mixed reactions from indigenous European groups. While in literature the so-called “gypsies” (or tsiganes, gypsyes, gypsies, etc.) are described as prodigious artists endowed with an innate talent passed on by blood, social reality sees the Roma as a segregated population on the margins of society, bearers of innumerable stereotypes and prejudices, with limited prospects for social fulfillment and job placement. This is particularly evident in Romania, where Roma until 1861 were purchased along with the land they worked, a condition of slavery similar to medieval “serfdom.”

People like Daniel Petrila are a hope for the Roma population. The transmission of Rom culture and tradition has always been linked to orality, but recently, in 1961, we see the birth of the written language, there is a standardization of the language, and with time excellent poets and writers are born. Daniel Petrila is one of these and receives the Ostana Prize Youth Prize since in only thirty years of life he has published so much in his mother tongue Romanes (Romani) as well as in Romanian and Spanish. In Romania he’s already a leading figure in the Rom intellectual world, which is flourishing despite the fact that a high illiteracy rate remains in the Rom population. The dissemination of writing represents a tangible hope for bridging the socio-cultural gap and enabling those who are Rom to access better social conditions.Daniel Petrila-along with other young artists-is doing invaluable work in this direction.

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Comune di Ostana

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The Ostana Prize celebrates the international support received

from the UNESCO International Decade of Indigenous Languages, and from two reference institutions in the linguistic field: the ELEN network (European Language Equality Network) and the NPLD network (Network to Promote Linguistic Diversity).

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