Mircea Florin Şandru

Mircea Florin Şandru (born 20 April 1949) is a Romanian poet, journalist and member of Writers' Union of Romania since 1976.

He was born in Făgăraș, Brașov County, Romania, the son of Elena Şandru (born Preda) and Victor Şandru, school teachers.

Education

 * 1956–1963 – "Badea Cârţan" Primary School, in Cârţişoara, Sibiu County
 * 1963–1967 – "Ion Codru Drăguşanu" Theoretical Highschool, Victoria, Braşov County
 * 1967–1972 – Faculty of Electrotechnics, "Transilvania" University of Brașov
 * 1972–1974 – Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, no bachelor degree
 * 1984–1986 – post-graduate studies, Faculty of Journalism, Bucharest

Scholarship in the United States awarded by the Foundation "Friendship Ambassadors" in 1974 in Washington, D.C., and in 1977 in New York City.

He participated in training sessions at the Centre for Research and Analysis of the United States House of Representatives (1996).

Şandru participated in training sessions at the National Institute of Administration (INA), Bucharest (2003).

Employment record

 * 1969–1972 – chief editor with the students' magazine Sigma
 * 1972–1983 – editor with the magazines Viaţa Studenţească (Students' life) and Amfiteatru (Amphitheatre)
 * 1983–1989 – head of department with the newspaper Scânteia tineretului(Youth Spark)
 * 1990–1993 – deputy chief editor with the newspaper Tineretul liber (Free Youth)
 * since 1993 – parliamentary counselor with the Press and Public Relations Service of the Romanian Senate
 * since 1976 – member of the Romanian Writers' Union

Literary works
Debut in România literară (Literary Romania), 1 February 1973, in the column "We propose a new poet", supervised by the writer Geo Dumitrescu.
 * Elegie pentru puterea oraşului (Elegy for the City Power), Eminescu Publishing House, 1974
 * Luminile oraşului (City Lights), Eminescu Publishing House, 1975
 * Melancolia (Melancholy), Eminescu Publishing House, 1977
 * Flacăra de magneziu (Magnesium Flame), Eminescu Publishing House, 1980
 * Maşina de scris (The Typewriter), Eminescu Publishing House, 1981
 * Trupuri pe ecranul de radar (Bodies on the Radar Screen), Cartea Românească Publishing House, 1982
 * Viaţa în infraroşu (Life in Infra-red), Eminescu Publishing House, 1985
 * Oraşe suprapuse (Superposed Cities), Albatros Publishing House, 1986
 * În sala vastă (In the Vast Hall), Kriterion Publishing House, 1988
 * Paşi pe acoperişul fierbinte (Steps on the Hot Roof), Eminescu Publishing House, 1988
 * Legătura de sânge (Blood Link), Albatros Publishing House, 1989
 * Podul Grant (Grant Bridge), Domino Publishing House, 1992
 * Colinele Paradisului (Hills of Paradise), Domino Publishing House, 1993
 * Rugă pentru cei blânzi (Prayer for Meek People), Domino Publishing House, 1999
 * O fiară desăvârşită (A Perfect Wild Beast), Eminescu Publishing House, 2001
 * Miere neagră (Black Honey), Arvin Graphics Publishing House, 2002
 * Îngerul pe gheaţa subţire (Angel on the Thin Ice), Arvin Graphics Publishing House, 2003
 * O femeie second-hand (A Second-hand Woman), Arvin Graphics Publishing House, 2004
 * Orbul la fereastră (The Blind at the Window), Arvin Press Publishing House, 2006
 * Faţa ascunsă (The Hidden Face), Eminescu Publishing House, 2010
 * Ca silabele unui mare pian (Like Syllables of a Great Piano), Eminescu Publishing House, 2011
 * Unda de şoc (The Shock Wave), Eminescu Publishing House, 2012

Selective Critical References

 * “Mircea Florin Şandru (very talented poet) is the author of some admirable sentimental poems dedicated to the modern city: gentle and ironical, «realistic» and full of imagination, crammed with objects, concrete to sensuality and, at the same time, fantastic, magic, enchanted. These cultivated and original elegies rediscover the poetic speech: poetry without rhetorical shyness, of a vibrating, incantatory discursivity.” (Nicolae Manolescu, in România literară, nr.34, 1974)


 * “Mircea Florin Şandru is just fascinated by the city, the place in which the maximum density of real, fantastic, silence and loneliness can be recorded per square meter. The poet feels this mixture - made up of frenzy and absence, music and noise, colour and chromatic horrors, social and individual - as a magic fuel that confers unicity to this universe, which is the «city», that ensures it «power», above all.” (Dorin Tudoran in Luceafărul, nr. 38, 1975)


 * “Mircea Florin Sandru is one of the rare autochthonous poets for whom the urban environment becomes a poetic element not only by virtue of the traditional function of the contrasting term, of the opposing element. However, in our poetry, when it is not seen in relationship with the village, the city is seen in both extreme and extraordinary situations, at the same time, the city-inferno and the city-utopia of industrialization, then, being the current representations. Organically incorporated into such sensitivity for which civilization becomes nature, the urban space is for Mircea Florin Sandru, neither an opportunity nor a pretext for futuristic images; from a symbolical or decorative presence the city is turned into a unique and unitary reality in which the whole existence takes place. Thus the urban congestion carries «a deathless mystery in its matrix», the labyrinthic aspect suggesting eternity.” (Mircea Iorgulescu in “Scriitori tineri contemporani”, Eminescu Publishing House,1978)


 * “Mircea Florin Şandru’s voice has had freshness and credibility, due to the naturalness with which he assumes the urban poetry, not as a theme, but as a constituted world. Released of the assumption of the artistic originality, the poet has taken over his territory with the lucidity and sensitivity of one who has understood that any song about us is a song about the urban civilization, as well, a song through which «the city enters into eternity».” (Doina Uricariu, in România liberă, August 13th, 1980)