Live Encounters Poetry & Writing May 2026
The Word War, poems by Valentina Teclici.
The Word War
In my dreams, words are creatures
with different shapes and feelings.
The word war, for example,
appears to me as a wounded human shadow.
Sometimes it has amputated hands and legs,
other times, a disfigured head.
Most often, the word war is killed by bombs,
shot in the chest or in the back,
crushed under rubble.
Clothed in blood, it spreads the smell of suffering
and heroism, paid with life.
If it lives, it’s only a ghost adorned with traumas.
The word war drinks from the cup of fear
until the last drop.
It knows that the bridge between despair and hope
is carpeted with unexploded grenades.
It knows that the defeated and the victorious ones
are twin brothers.
In my dreams, the word war,
which has never been warmed by the sun of LOVE,
longs for one of its divine rays,
and cries like a child at the breast of peace
while those who give orders to kill polish it
like a silver trophy
and dream with open eyes of platters of glory.
I wonder how the history of Earth
would have looked
if the word war – written or unwritten –
had never existed.
Dialogue Between Poet and Reader
“Poet, how will your poetry look
when wrinkles will deeply furrow the field of your face,
when your sight will be a misty curtain,
your hearing, a prison of silence,
your fingers trembling like violin strings,
your legs, woollen skeins, too soft to carry you?
How will your poetry look, poet,
when you will feed yourself,
with the bitter bread of loneliness
or live together in a nursing home
with brothers who have also lost their independence?
Aren’t you overcome with worry and fear
at this image?”
“Not at all, dear reader,
because I know that my soul, divine spark,
is forever young and eternal.
If a long life is written in my destiny,
when my body will be a wreck
my verses will express the truth
of my experiences and reflections.
I will see with my blurred eyes
what others, blinded by the temptations of the material world,
cannot even glimpse.
From the prison of my lost hearing, I will listen to music
and divine words, impossible to be heard
by those deafened by their muddy thinking.
My helpless physical body
will be the bird of imagination reaching the peaks of creation.
Poetry, the eternal youth of my spirit
will spring from cosmic thinking,
from the depths of my past lives,
from searching within,
from acceptance, forgiveness, blessing
but especially from the ocean of unconditional love
into which I pour and am poured.
Poetry would appear to me
as a sphere of light and love,
as the beginning without end,
as the answer to the suffering of humanity,
as the flame of universal harmony,
which you, dear reader, will also carry
on your journeys towards enlightenment.”
© Valentina Teclici
Valentina Teclici was born in Romania and immigrated to New Zealand in 2002. She holds a Bachelor in Philosophy from the University of Iasi and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Bucharest, where her doctoral thesis focused on street children. Her debut book, De la noi din gradiniţă (From our Kindergarden), Ion Creangă Publishing House,1986, was awarded a national prize. Poems and excerpts from her books for children are included in the bibliography and textbooks for primary and secondary education in Romania. She has published several books of sociology, poetry and stories for children in both Romanian and English. Her work has been translated into French, Te Reo and Spanish, and published in many magazines and anthologies in New Zealand and overseas. Valentina has been a member of Writers’ Union of Romania since 1993, and of The Theosophical Society since 2022. In January 2026, she stepped into the role of Theosophy Hawke’s Bay Affiliated Centre Coordinator. She lives in Napier with her husband Robert.