Diana Boariu is born in Bistrita, Romania, out of a double fever: that of the word and the image, the letter and the light, two territories that seep into one another until the boundary between them disappears. “Scriu doar noaptea” (“I Only Write at Night”), her debut volume published by Nosa Nostra, marks the sedimentation of a slow-burning fire, the accumulation of inner layers through which the voice gradually clarifies itself into a sharp transparency. The book opens like a darkroom where thoughts develop slowly, each poem bearing the trace of prolonged exposure to the self.
Her writing moves without noise, but never without tension; a continuous, almost mineral motion in which every line finds its place with the precision of filigree. Within this fragile architecture pulses an unforgiving lucidity, while the calm surface conceals a dense vibration, a substance that refuses to be exhausted by a first reading. There is a discipline of silence in these texts, a controlled breathing, as though every word had passed through a severe filter before being allowed to exist. Nothing is gratuitous; nothing is squandered.
Beneath this restrained light, the themes retain their full gravity. Pain is not exposed, but absorbed, and from within it emerges a clarity that does not seek to impress so much as to endure. The lines neither claim nor plead; they dig. And in their depths, existential questions emerge like fissures through which reality begins to give way, revealing a harsher, more truthful terrain.
Her formation as a reader can be felt as an invisible network of tensions and balances. There is no unnecessary ornament, no ostentatious exuberance; the language remains rigorous, almost austere, yet it is precisely this restraint that amplifies its impact. Emotion is, above all, radiated, while intensity is built through subtle accumulations, through details that gather weight in silence.
Diana Boariu’s poetry seeks to capture a state of continuous lucidity, a territory where sensitivity does not weaken vigilance, and fragility does not negate strength. From this tension emerges a distinct voice, moving forward with certainty, without haste, without hesitation, through a literary space in which authenticity is no longer a promise, but a presence.
On the Edge
You run along
the ridges of silence
to hear your thoughts
crying out loud
everything you crave,
yet fear to step into.
Marshmallows
Across my mind’s walls, I painted you
in colors I never knew existed.
The irony is,
I studied art.
Then, I began to sculpt you
out of gestures
you probably made
while your mind was elsewhere.
Like that one night
when the dessert I was so excited for
was maybe meant to trigger
a memory of your past.
I was lying there thinking
of what we could become,
while you were trapped
in what had been.
Foreword
Forethought
Foresee
For…love
Meeting, healing, parting
Far too… present
in my mind.
Once again I asked about you.
We found each other
too late
to lose each other
too soon.
The Perfect Body
Now I am no longer silent,
but I have
never liked
to talk too much.
I don’t recognize
myself,
and neither does my body
recognize me.
My body keeps me alive—
both me, and my thoughts,
and I remember
how back then,
at last,
I had the perfect body.
Not for how it looked,
but for how you saw it.
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