Happy New Year to you and yours! We’re starting 2026 with a new poetry project – one I’m genuinely excited about. I know I say this often, but every book project brings a fresh sense of fulfilment, as if it were the first, and that’s because I value what I do.

This poetry project may resonate more deeply with some of you, especially those who have followed this site since its early days, when it was simply a quiet space where I shared my own poetry. Since then, both this site and my publishing work have grown and evolved together.

I’ve recently taken on a new publishing client whose poetry collection embodies many of the values at the heart of Mixed Heritage Press: authenticity, reflection, and the quiet power of words that transcend borders. While the poems are not rooted in a specific culture, they are deeply philosophical – asking questions and offering reflections that feel at home across languages and lived experiences.

The collection we’re working on is bilingual – Romanian and English.

The author, Maricica Lucian, resides in England and holds citizenship in Romania, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Her life has unfolded across multiple countries and cultures – mostly within, but also beyond, Europe – giving her worldview a layered, textured quality. This richness comes through in her reflections, which feel grounded in something deeper than location.

In many ways, her poetry suggests a home search that is inward rather than geographical. While the poems are marked by dates and places – such as Horley, UK, or Iași, Romania – these function less as anchors of identity and more as quiet coordinates in lived time. Place is present, but it is not what defines the work. She writes as a traveller, moving both within and without, observing, reflecting, and shaping lived experience into poetry without being bound to location.

I appreciate this perspective because, although place matters to me, balance in life comes from paying attention to our inner landscape as well as our external one.

What makes this project particularly meaningful for me is the linguistic journey it represents, and this return to poetry that transcends borders not only through translation, but through sensitivity and emotional truth.

Maricica’s voice is most resonant in her native Romanian, and our role at Mixed Heritage Press is to bring that voice into English without losing its organic integrity – creating a collection that holds its heart equally in both languages.

We’ve now begun developing Maricica’s work: guiding poem submissions, editing, translating, curating, and eventually preparing the work for publication.

We are still in the early stages, gathering and shaping the work, with the intention of curating a collection of approximately fifty poems in Romanian alongside their English translations. While I can’t yet share a publication timeline, I will certainly share a poem – or a few – here as the project unfolds.

At MHP, we see publishing as a way of holding space. This project reflects that philosophy, creating room for poetry to move across borders and be heard. Plus, it’s an honour to walk alongside a mature poet whose voice carries the weight of lived experience.

Wishing you a fulfilling, peaceful, and poetic 2026.

Monika

P.S. If you’re working on a book and could use thoughtful editorial or publishing support, you’re welcome to get in touch.