Life as a Free Woman

Poems

Life as a Free Woman brings together a powerful selection of poems by Victoria Milescu, one of the most distinctive voices of contemporary Romanian poetry. Written with intensity, lucidity, and emotional courage, these poems explore freedom not as a slogan, but as a lived condition—fragile, costly, and deeply human.
Victoria Milescu’s poetry moves effortlessly between love and solitude, faith and doubt, tenderness and revolt. Her language is precise and resonant, rich in imagery yet stripped of ornament. Everyday scenes open suddenly toward metaphysical horizons; personal experience expands into existential reflection. The poems speak of the body and the soul, of time, loss, desire, and resilience, always with a voice that refuses simplification.
At the center of this volume stands the figure of the woman—not idealized, not reduced to symbol, but fully present: thinking, loving, aging, remembering, resisting. Life as a Free Woman is not a manifesto, but a sustained poetic inquiry into what it means to remain inwardly free in a world marked by pressure, compromise, and impermanence.
Victoria Milescu is a major contemporary Romanian poet, with a literary career spanning several decades and tens of published volumes. Her work has been widely recognized by critics and readers alike, translated into several languages, and awarded important national and international prizes. She is known for a poetry that combines emotional depth with intellectual rigor.
Carefully translated from the Romanian by Anamaria Poenaru and Vasile Poenaru, this edition preserves the intensity, rhythm, and inner coherence of the original poems, offering English-language readers direct access to a mature and compelling poetic voice.
Life as a Free Woman is part of the Romanian Poetry Around the World series, which brings significant Romanian poets into dialogue with an international readership, inviting not only discovery, but a genuine encounter with living poetry.