Daniel Ioniță (born 16 January 1960) is an Australian poet and translator of Romanian origin, who has been published bilingually in Australia, USA, and Romania.

[4] In 2018, together with Maria Tonu (from Toronto, Canada), and with the support of Eva Foster, Daniel Reynaud, and Rochelle Bews, Ioniță also edited and translated the volume The Bessarabia of My Soul, which is a collection of poetry from the Republic of Moldova (MediaTon, 2018).

[5] Like Testament, this is a bilingual edition in English and Romanian, and represents some 40 Bessarabian poets starting with Alecu Russo and Alexei Mateevici, and including contemporaries such as Grigore Vieru, Leonida Lari, Leo Butnaru and others.

[citation needed] For this volume, Ioniță was awarded the "Antoaneta Ralian" Prize for Translation from Romanian into a foreign language - of the Gaudeamus Book Fair - Bucharest 2019.

His poetry has been generally well-received by literary critics: Constantin Cubleșan[9] wrote that it is "difficult to pigeonhole... conversant across a number of styles... a confronting lyrical tone... a poet with no hang-ups, unlike many other contemporary ones"; Ștefan Ion GhilimescuB[10] described it as having "a trenchant manner, very direct linguistic approach and high expressivity"; and Lucian Vasilescu observed that, "although he left Romania a long time ago, Daniel Ioniță [poetically] inhabits the Romanian language".

In fact, this Romanian from Australia rediscovers poetry, employing picturesque words like Nichita Stanescu, or transforming metaphor as a means of discovering the world, like Blaga.

[12] In 2016 and in 2018, Daniel Ioniță's poems were included into a biennial anthology series of contemporary Australian poetry, All These Presences[13] and On first looking,[14] published by Puncher & Wattmann from Sydney, Australia.

This series, initiated by Dr. Carolyn Rickett of Avondale College of Tertiary Studies in New South Wales, Australia, blends the work of established poets (e.g. Jean Kent, Judith Beveridge, Martin Langford, David Musgrave, Judy Johnson, Kit Kelen, Linda Ireland, Stephen Edgar) with emergent talent.

Ioniță's first full published volume in Australia, Short Bursts of Eternity (Flying Islands, 2020), has been described by poet Jean Kent as "often enigmatic and paradoxical...

The poems have a forthright energy and openness, a flair for drama and a desire to connect as well as to entertain...The imagery may be appealingly whimsical, but this is not going to be simple poetry which will make its meaning instantly clear.

The controversy arose mostly from the perspective of literary politics, regarding the choice of poets and poems and therefore how representative the anthology was of Romanian poetry.

"[26] In addition, two notable literary critics, Pavel Perfil[27] and Alex Ștefănescu[28] describe the book-launch of Testament in Australia as an exceptional opportunity to represent Romanian poetry outside Romania.

Both single out specifically the recital by actor Tug Dumbly of a poem from it (Eminescu's "Glossa") in the Parliament of New South Wales in Sydney on the occasion of Romania's national Day (1 December 2012).