Romani Poetics, Oral Tradition, Narrative, and Survival Trades

Romani Poetics, Oral Tradition, Narrative, and Survival Trades

Romani poetics reflect our historic resistance to oppression, and the ingenuity of our survival and expression. Roma are a diasporic ethnic group originating in the Indian subcontinent who were displaced around the 10th century, though perhaps the related Sinti people were displaced as early as the 5th century. Roma were enslaved for 500 years in present-day Romania (concurrent with the transatlantic slave trade), and over the centuries have also endured forced settlement, expulsion, multiple genocides, and ongoing state surveillance and human rights violations. Roma are one of the most disenfranchised populations in Europe, and are subject to a global human rights crisis, which is why Romani literature was primarily an oral tradition until the 20th century. Roma, Sinti, ethnic Travellers, and related groups are still underrepresented in publishing and media. We are more commonly known by the slur *Gypsies, and by the stereotypes associated with that misnomer. 

*Language note: In North America, the word “Gypsy” is more commonly used as a slur, (ex: “gypped” to mean cheat, or “Gypsy” to evoke stereotypes promiscuity, wanderlust, criminality, and magicality). In the United Kingdom and Ireland, Gypsy is used more neutrally and not always considered a slur. Roma, Sinti, ethnic Travellers everywhere may reclaim this word and use it proudly if they choose (I grew up using it for myself at home), however, it is not a word that non-Roma should use or appropriate. There is usually a correct term to use instead. For instance, call us Roma, Sinti, or Travellers (depending on the situation), and Gypsy Jazz is actually Jazz Manouche, after the group of Roma who created it. 

Because Roma have been systematically barred from education and publishing, Romani culture relied on oral tradition: song, storytelling, and survival trades such as performance and fortune telling. Romani poetry existed long before we had access to publishing, and still Roma, Sinti, and Travellers are underrepresented in publishing and media. Stereotypes perpetuated by non-Roma are far more commonly published and produced than our actual stories. Let us instead uplift our living and historic writers. 

The Polish Romani poet, Papusza (Bronisława Wajs), is often cited as the founder of modern Romani literature, but that title hides the cost of her visibility. A self-taught poet born in 1908, Papusza transformed song into written verse, recording histories of displacement, her relationship to nature, and the trauma of World War II and Samudaripen, the Romani and Sinti genocide. Her collaboration with non-Romani writer and publisher Jerzy Ficowski, who exploited her work and vulnerability, led to her recognition—but also to her ostracization by her own community, who faced persecution amid state-enforced Romani settlement policies. Papusza endured isolation and institutionalization, but she is now celebrated and remembered with gratitude. 

Suggested poem: Papusza, “Extracts from: Untitled Verse” in The Roads of the Roma: A PEN Anthology of Gypsy Writers

Luminiţa Mihai Cioabă, a Kaldarash Romni writer born in Romania in 1957, is a pioneering poet, prose writer, and cultural advocate whose work has significantly advanced Romani literature and memory. Her poetry, which spans several books and collections translated into multiple languages, resists the romanticization of Romani life, and spotlights lived experience, spirituality, folklore, and women’s stories. Beyond poetry, Cioabă has documented Romani Holocaust survivors, edited oral histories, and translated the Bible into her dialect. 

Suggested poem: Luminiţa Mihai Cioabă, “The Apparition of Choxani” inThe Roads of the Roma: A PEN Anthology of Gypsy Writers

Writing prompts after reading Papusza and Luminiţa Mihai Cioabă:

• 1. Address an element of the natural world as a family member.
• 2. Place your speaker in a close relationship with a formidable mythic or folkloric figure.

Labor, marginalization, and contested identity are central to the work of Lynn Hutchinson Lee, a multidisciplinary artist and writer of Romanichal descent. Her poem “Tobacco Harvest” foregrounds trade work and labor, interrogating how “Gypsy” identity is imposed, commodified, or reclaimed. Hutchinson began as a visual artist and now focuses on poetry and prose. Her novella Origins of Desire in Orchid Fens is poetic and lyrical, and defies genre, and her novel Nightshadeleans into these themes of labor, the commodification of “Gypsy bodies,” and folk magic. 

Suggested poem: Lynn Hutchinson Lee, “Tobacco Harvest” in Wagtail: The Roma Women’s Poetry Anthology

Intergenerational trauma and survival memory animate the poetry of Cecilia Woloch, Pushcart Prize winner, whose work confronts Romani history within a U.S. literary context that has long marginalized Romani voices. Her poems in her celebrated book Tsigan, and beyond, are an exposé on lineage as both wound and inheritance, and draw the reader into poetic history and poetic truth as a thread to navigate the unutterable.

Suggested poem: Cecilia Woloch, “My Grandmother” in KIN: An Anthology of Poetry, Story, and Art by Women from Romani, Traveller, and Nomadic Communities

Writing prompts after reading Lynn Hutchinson Lee and Cecilia Woloch:

•  Write about a concrete survival strategy that feels connected to your identity.
• Tell a secret history of yourself or a family member.

Some suggested anthologies and other resources: 

• KIN: An Anthology of Poetry, Story, and Art by Women from Romani, Traveller, and Nomadic Communities
• The Roads of the Roma: A PEN Anthology of Gypsy Writers
• Wagtail: The Roma Women’s Poetry Anthology
• A Romani Women's Anthology: Spectrum of the Blue Water
• The Permanence of Anti-Roma Racism: (Un)uttered Sentences by Margareta Matache
• The Roma: A Traveling History by Madeline Potter
• RomArchive
• ERIAC
• Feminist Collective of Romani Gender Experts
• Romanistan podcast

Some questions to consider while reading:

• What makes a poem distinctly Romani (if anything)? How does Romani history inform the Romani form?
• How do Roma write from a diasporic place without explaining themselves to outsiders?
• What role does oral storytelling play in a Romani poetic voice?
• How does folklore and a relationship to nature appear in these poems?