Princeps Poesis

Princeps Poesis is the current name of the website you're reading right now and of the project. Its founder is Yigru Zeltil. The project received in 2026 the Gheorghe Iova Award.

The earliest form of the project was a Blogger page made in early 2011, with a post collecting basic information and front covers of less than 50 poetry books published in Romanian throughout 2010. At that time and during the next few years, my page was conceived as a reaction to how Romanian literary critics made yearly retrospective lists where only 3-5 poetry books were ever included each year. Initially, I tried to be selective and only include volumes that may be more or less significant.

Within several years, the project evolved into forming an increasingly broader overview. I was frustrated by how there wasn't a single ultimate resource for tracking down the poetry books that are being published, and it would turn out even the National Library of Romania can't keep up with everything that's being published, and while the law obliges publishing houses to send copies of all the books they publish, some publishing houses still don't comply! (that is why if one of my yearly lists now has 2,500 poetry books, only 1,000-1,500 of them are held by the National Library)

That's how I decided that it does not make any more sense to try doing gatekeeping (at first, I was giving in to the expectation of the literary world that if I want to be perceived as a serious author, I shouldn't be "promoting bad poetry"), so it became a free-for-all - no notability standards (due to which Romanian editors of Wikipedia unfamiliar with literature have been deleting pages of living authors they deem "non-notable"; conceptual poet Gregor Weichbrodt published an entire book with such examples of power tripping from all across Wikipedia, Dictionary of non-notable artists), open to everyone from academic poets to self-published authors, stereotypically thought to be unimportant, unprofessional, "outsiders".

I reject this hierarchal view partly due to two influences: Roman Jakobson's theory on how the literary quality of a text is not innate and objectively measurable, but is contextual (one of the consequences being that the canonical status of any given author shifts in time), and Franco Moretti's "distant reading" approach, which takes into consideration as valuable data large quantities of books in any given genre that did not achieve "success" nor received any attention from critics.

The scope of the project also expanded by including not just lyrical poetry, but also adjacent genres, such as children's poetry, dramatic poems, epics, experimental writing, prose poetry, short-form poetic prose, or novels-in-verse.

Lastly, I decided, upon having gathered data on over 50,000 books published in Romanian during the last century, that I want to expand the project towards all poetic languages!

Up until 2024?, this project was known as either Proiectul Poezie Românească - The Romanian Poetry Project - or, in the last few years, Institutul /rupere de rând/ - The /line break/ Institute, as I wanted a name that suggests it's covering all sorts of verse, not just poetry, word which in Romania tends to conjure strictly lyrical poetry.

One last thing: the methodology. Academics such as Andrei Terian and Mihai Iovănel cited my project in their research, but I must admit that, up until 2026, my methodology was a little sloppy: I didn't include sources.

I manually scraped tons of data and I'd search individually each title if I were uncertain it was truly published; I included even books for which the only proof of existance was a single book launch announcement, despite there being at least one editor who even failed to print the book they were going to launch! In some cases, I confirmed books based solely on circumstantial evidence, such as being numbered volumes prior to others that have certainly been published.

There are even a handful of books that apparently did not exist online at all; I found them offline, scanned their covers and introduced them right away in the database!

All the way back in 2018, I had started - on a different Blogspot - a very short list with French poetry books, a pet peeve of mine. In 2024, I took the bold decision to push the project towards covering potentially all languages.

One reason is that I always wanted to be even more aware of what's going on in worldwide poetry as we speak, more than I could afford even by the means of the excellently curated articles from Asymptote, for instance.

Another aim, to do full disclosure, is that, if circumstances are any favorable, I might use the project as a trambouline for forming a transnational network of keen poets that would be more based on affinities, as opposed to a thing like the poetry festival in Curtea de Argeș, where poets from many countries - even names like Adonis - have paid to get their work poorly translated and published and get invited to Curtea de Argeș for the sake of tourism...

Future aims?

MediaWiki decentralization - Blogger was becoming increasingly frustrating, as I couldn't even insert pictures anymore if I used a more hardened secure browser!

Acknowledgments

Rho - thanks for hosting!

Răzvan Țupa, Doina Iova, Paula Erizanu, Teona Galgoțiu, Dmitri Miticov, Vasile Leac, Adriana Gheorghe - the Gheorghe Iova Award this project received is all thanks to them

Grigore Șoitu - for suggesting the use of MediaWiki

Nicu Ilie - for covering the project on b-critic.ro

Nada Gordon, Iosif-Vladimir Zifceac - for showing their support in the crowdfunding

The town libraries of Constanța, Dâmbovița, Teleorman - for accepting my presence

Countless authors and readers who brought suggestions or modest contrubutions by email or on social media.

Thank you all!