Visit I visit my homeland the way a snail tries to fit back into his old shell. Day after day I writhe inside, counterclockwise. The shell is rough and narrow, opens sores on coddled parts But I persist, eat tarator, cry over graves, until I conform to my old contours. Finally, I am here. Snail … Continue reading Katerina Stoykova: Visit
Bulgarian Literature Month has so far brought you an - of course incomplete - overview regarding books related to our topic. (A few more blog posts are about to follow.) But it goes without saying that there are quite a lot of online resources and journals (in print or electronic form) that also give an … Continue reading Bulgarian literature: Online and print resources – and a poetic experiment
Night and Day Your transparent shoulders Your transparent eyes Your transparent brain Your transparent womb Your transparent knees At night you shine all over like a central intelligence agency Analysts are walking within calculating the odds At the other end of the world a man is blown up another’s walking on four legs with a … Continue reading Kiril Vassilev: Night and Day
There are not many books in English that are covering the recent political events and developments in Bulgaria. Bulgaria: Politics and Protests in the 21st Century by Clive Leviev-Sawyer (Riva Publishers 2015) is one of the few exceptions and I read it therefore with great interest. The author, an experienced journalist who moved 2001 from … Continue reading Bulgarian and South-Eastern European Politics: two interesting books
AND ALL THE INDIANS the other day Uncle Manfred passed away may heaven’s light shine on him! let the weather he forecasts always be nice— he was a retired meteorologist celebrated his birthdays year after year with a folk orchestra and buffet in the banquet hall of the school (I have a photo where I … Continue reading Petja Heinrich: And All The Indians
My Tongue, My Enemy Without you—blood in the mouth. I swallow, the Latin serifs scratch. My tongue, my brother. Decorated, perforated— metal ball rolls along the teeth like a perverse arrowhead. Tongue or Death. My tongue, my own carcass. My tongue, another friend whom I’ve betrayed. Shouldering guilt, the innocent start running. My tongue, my … Continue reading Katerina Stoykova: My Tongue, My Enemy
The fight for national liberation in the 19th century has been an important subject of many works of Bulgarian literature since Ivan Vazov’s novel „Under the Yoke“ (written 1887-1888; it was the first novel written in Bulgarian language). While most of these works focus on the story of an individual, a small group of people, … Continue reading Galina Zlatareva: The Medallion
Workers VI With a helmet swept off the head the strap cutting into the throat Weighing you down to the earth’s lap you’re not her son The petrol field is not mother earth but you’ve lain backwards Over clods of earth lit up like ores from the all-enveloping In this artificial heaven paraffin film huge … Continue reading Vladimir Sabourin: Workers VI
RAIN Half an hour I’ve been standing in the shower and can’t wash off this haunting dream pursuing me for years, in which you abandon me at the farmer’s market in a southern city. The tides of blood discard sand and dead jellyfish in my eyes and I can’t see how you walk away carrying … Continue reading Aksinia Mihaylova: Rain
Creative Spurt By now the moon has shrunk back to a dark comma in the sky, and I have stopped writing. Two weeks of rubbing pen and paper like a cicada its front legs, and erupting in some language I no longer use for thinking. They say the tongue you become a poet in is … Continue reading Katerina Stoykova: Creative Spurt
Global Literature in Libraries Initiative 