Monuments to a Stolen Revolution
Over the summer, I had the great pleasure of meeting Fr James Ramsay in the tea room of Norwich Cathedral. Fr James was Chaplain of the Church of the Resurrection from 2002 - 2005, and we talked about all sorts of aspects of life in Bucharest, some of which have changed significantly in the last twenty years and others which haven’t!
Fr James recently published a collection of poems, ‘Monuments to a Stolen Revolution & Other Poems from Bucharest,’ (Small Stations Press, 2022). He describes these poems as “verbal snapshots” of his time in Romania and they draw on a whole range of sights and experiences, elegantly illustrated by Fr James’ wife, Celia Ward. After meeting Fr James, I promptly ordered a copy - and devoured it as soon as it arrived.
Some of the experiences that he describes are instantly recognisable (most notably the taxi journeys!) and some point to the specific moment in Romania’s modern history in which it prepared to join the EU (for instance in the poem ‘A Shake-up in the Justice Department’). There is a poem on the confusion of the transition to the Leu greu, when four noughts were knocked off the currency, and descriptions of the city that are unchanged. Reading the collection, you feel caught between the past and the present - seeing what has changed and what has stayed the same. There are poems on explicitly religious themes and subjects, and others that riff off the sights and sounds of the metro or the piata. The poems are astute observations, that are often poignant, profound and funny all at the same time. At the centre of the collection is a longer poem called ‘Monuments to a Stolen Revolution,’ written at the fifteenth anniversary of the 1989 Revolution. It captures all the complexity of Romania’s relationship with its recent past through the gentle observation of people’s grief, hope, doubt, and expectation.
It is a collection to which I will definitely return and read more slowly, and Fr James’ witty, profound and insightful observations have deepened my love for this extraordinary city and country.
