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Writer's pictureA Too Powerful Word

Dimana Ivanova


Dimana Ivanova (PhD.) was born in Varna, Republic Bulgaria, in 1979. She earned her Masters in Slavonic philology at the University of Kliment Ochridski in Sofia with a minor in French philology. She has been awarded twice with the Grigor Lenkov prize at the Czech center in Sofia and with the Prize of the Bulgarian Union of translators in Sofia for the best translation of Bulgarian literature into foreign language for the year of 2017. Her translations have been published in Literary magazine, Panorama, Homo Bohemicus, the Anthology of young Czech authors translated by young Bulgarian translators (2008). She is also the translator of several books from Czech and Slovakian language. In 2006, she started her doctoral studies in Comparative literature at the University of Charles in Prague. She is also an author of a number of critical studies published in Bulgarian, Czech, Slovak and Hungarian conference proceedings. Since 2008, she has also been a regular author of the Czech electronic newspaper www.iliteratura.cz. and since the year of 2008 to the year of 2013 has been a member of the editorial board of newspaper Balgari in Prague. In the year of 2008, she was also awarded a scholarship for a foreign doctoral student in Slovakia and began research at the Slovak Academy of sciences. Her doctoral dissertation is about the comparative aspects of Czech decadent poetry and has been successfully defended in the year of 2011 at the Charles University of Prague. She is the author of two poems' books "Invitation for a Father" (Ergo, 2012) and “Alphabet of the desires” (Scalino, 2016). Her poems have been translated into English, Czech, Slovak, Spanish, Romanian, Russian, French, Arabian and Macedonian languages and published in many journals in Bulgaria (as “Literaturen vestnik”, “Stranica”, “More” and many other) and abroad as the US. literary journal “Tower journal”, Spanish journals as “Purple words” and “Hambre” and Canadian-Romanian review “Destine literare”. She has participated in International poetry festivals as Ars poetica in Bratislava, Poetry Nights in Curtea de Arges in Romania and many other festivals in Czech republic and Slovakia. She has been working as a teacher of French, Arts and culture at High language school in Slovakia and is currently working as a teacher of Bulgarian language and literature in the Bulgarian school Boyan Maga in London. She is also a member of the Czech alliance of the journalists, Bulgarian Union of the translators, poetry movement Poetas del mundo and the Czech-Slovakian Association of comparative literature.

She has been awarded for her poetry in the year of 2018 three times: by the festival “On the Morava banks” in Czech republic, by the poetry competition Melnicky Pegas in Melnik, Czech republic and by the Prize “Name of the rose” of the Polish literary association “The roses yard”.






(Un)Known

He is the known-unknown,

he often travels

on the 37 bus.

He always gets off

at Kerepuski.

He is the man

who stands in the back row

of the audience

at my book launch

and smiles enigmatically.

Then he says: “You don’t

look like a Bulgarian woman.

You don’t have a Bulgarian soul.”

And he disappears.

He is the man – a connoisseur,

a seeker after the female spirit.

You can see him

in the Art Forum bookshop on Kozya Street.

He goes in and takes a book, here he is again –

he opens it, he reads, he smiles

enigmatically … he leaves it and takes another.

Then another and another …

Then he goes out and loses himself

in the city’s embrace.

And visibly anxious

I head for the bookshelf

whose things the known-unknown was holding.

Mila Haugova,

Vera Prokeshova,

Stanislava Repar –

female pens

with a fierce hold

in literature’s flesh.





Allegory

In one dead square

of this wholly forgotten palace,

I saw a crowd of shadowy figures

reaching out to the coach

in which Ignorance sat,

shameless, inglorious,

vain,

Kafka, Beckett, Herbert are dead,

Botev, Yavorov, Debelyanov are dead,

two sad silver horses pulled her carriage,

it’s cold in this palace

of death,

even the figures who crowned her are soulless.

Grey

mists dance around a black sun –

there’s no hope

of revival.





Queen Elizabeth I

In the gloom of old London,

in a sad but frivolous world,

the queen remains behind

the palace’s impregnable walls –

beautiful, intelligent, cold.

Elizabeth, bold, daring queen of England and Ireland,

ghosts and demons wrap you in an enchanted veil.

Heads bow before your might –

actors, poets, artists, envoys, mummers, magi –

but beside your regal path

an ominous grey sorrow lurks in blue shadows.

Shakespeare’s tragic ghosts guard you.

And time protects you –

watching like a huge lion, a mute page,

ready to leap on your enemies

with terrible force.





Mermaid

Your love is as hot

as a spice from a Hungarian market.

I love to feel

your lips –

as peppery

as the taste of fish soup,

burning

on my skin.

Undress me.

Make love to me

for a long time

and in silence

then let me go,

go back to where

I came from.





Librarian

An old book was left out

of the city library’s catalogue.

But it wasn’t fate – it fell

into the hands of a young school librarian,

a lover of rare titles.

“Oh, how beautiful!” he cried

the moment he saw it.

Rather than with a kiss or his bookplate

he tattooed it with the school library’s seal.

The old book shook off the layers of dust

and stretched out on the shelf with pleasure

waiting for him to reach for it again.



Translated by Tom Phillips



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