Doroteya Vasileva
Doroteya Vasileva was born in 1985 in Dobrich, where she graduated from a language high school specializing in French. She then studied English philology at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski and completed her master’s degree in Portsmouth, UK. She has worked as a journalist, PR specialist, and digital content author. She is fascinated by language and its physical manifestations—movement, dance, and play. She is the author of ‘Heavenly Bodies’ poetry collection (Scribens, 2022), nominated in the debut category of Peroto Awards.
Full bio >
She has been running the blog at teyadiya.com for 15 years and has had sporadic publications in various literary publications such as ‘Textile’ magazine and ‘Literary Newspaper’, and has participated in the ‘Actors vs. Poets’ stage production. In 2024, she was part of the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation’s ‘Leap Off Page’ festival, where she explored the relationship between body and text together with actor Alexander Gochev and other choreographers and writers.
THE AUTHOR’S VOICE
Поезията е:
Светоусещане. Бяло поле. Време-пространство. Игра с границите на езика и отвъд езика.
Какъв е животът на твоята поезия (как се ражда, как порасва, как съзрява, как умира)?
В момента почти не пиша, но си мисля, че поезията зрее дори в периодите на пълно мълчание и съпротива. В липсата є дочувам теми и гласове, които ме вълнуват, но сега не мога да ги задържа, защото другият живот крещи твърде силно. Това, естествено, ме кара да се съмнявам дали изобщо съм поет.
Изкуството свързано ли е с политиката и проблемите на нашето време? Кои проблеми те гнетят?
Изкуството винаги е свързано с политиката и проблемите на времето, дори когато не го заявява директно. То ги осветява. Не вярвам в изкуство, което стои изолирано – както и аз самата не искам да живея в балон и да си затварям очите „за да не се натоварвам“.
Какво ме гнети? В момента всичко ме гнети. Чувствам парализиращ срам от човечеството – как допуснахме войни в 21 век, жестокостта, изтребването на хора, насилието над жени. Отвращават ме Тръмп и симпатизантите му, „Възраждане“, Пеевски, нашенският патриотизъм, ниската грамотност, българските пътища и шофьори, липсата на грижа за децата, ограничаването на правата на ЛГБТ хората, подигравката с образованието и здравната ни система. Усещам как всяка искра на грижа и свобода се потулва и смачква, как ставаме все по-безразлични към Другия.
Какво искаш да остане след думите?
Възможности, избори.
Къде отиват ненаписаните истории?
О, всичко е вече написано.
CIRQUE DU SOLEIL
A hoop. Immortality
airbrn for a while. A ray that
skips over the ‘o’ and swings dangerously
high
(then low, close, like a panic attack).
Our green hairs run behind us
and slice the air into
warm, fuzzy slivers.
Translated by Elitsa Chotrova
CRETE
The eye sees everything.
The steep red cliffs where goats grow,
and then the flat, windswept landscapes.
Descent, ascent, catching your breath, and so on and so forth …
The turquoise of water. A trivial tear colour, excessive radiance,
something you cannot understand nor bear. But then
the sturdy blue shutters on the windows devour the sweet-swelled body like a throat.
A chill, a hunger,
a mongrel city. So many invasions, foreignness upon foreignness.
I’m still seeking the word to soothe the eye.
There are no birds. Nothing but the engine of cicadas, those disgusting locals.
Translated by Elitsa Chotrova
THIS STORY IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE
I don’t think of you every day.
But whenever I see apples
or peppers, or when a dirty wind blows
and trains pass by,
— trailing like ages,
insidiously slow like a heavy fall
that you have no one to save you from —
and whenever
someone wears a black shirt,
when they drink fresh juice, when they look
with contempt, I always think of you.
ULTRAVIOLET
On Sundays, Violeta has time to spare.
She goes out for late lunches at restaurants with tablecloths
and caresses her husband’s thigh
under the table. Since she doesn’t eat,
she drinks and glows. She has no doubt.
She is not afraid of the afternoon and has nothing
to escape from.
She always keeps her distance. (She says that
it helps her write better). Violeta talks little
and her language is a code.
She lights a cigarette on the tip of her imagination.
What a free woman, I think to myself as I
watch her through the window of the white-tablecloth
restaurant . How she has flown away from herself.
LISBON
When we leave the hotel at nine,
the soft introverted rays
offer no hint of how the day will unfold
before us like the heavy hair of Tagus.
You bear witness how land here
allowes the eye to rest on the water.
Yes, soil is a detail
To be washed away.
Still, the day never really heats up,
but tears up the list of museums we can roam.
We will walk with our mouths open,
for fish, coriander, and monuments to enter.
Our eyes will grow accustomed to the white, our tongues —
to the lace. You—to my sense of transience,
which always travels with us,
it is simply afraid to leave us alone.
Translated by Elitsa Chotrova
WE ARE STILL ON THE MAP
Be silent, archipelago…
I have come here to be water
for your islands, which
first form us, then forsake us.
Have no fear of sinking. Before we were born,
we did not exist.
Translated by Elitsa Chotrova
LOCKDOWN
From the outside-in, I reach the heart,
a coil stretched to breaking point.
Lights go out one by one,
shapes wash away their outlines,
it’s dark, but in the house I travel
a sherpa of sorts – introvert and upwards.
Translated by Elitsa Chotrova
MACHINES
Early in the morning, a bell tolls, announcing a nothing.
Perhaps the people who live nearby
are accustomed to its sound, just as God is
accustomed to not hearing our pleas.
A truck’s passive-aggressive cough
pulls back the blanket of sleep and
leaves us awake and newborn again.
Animate and inanimate nature unload
their entire arsenal on the table, with no instructions,
no preparation. They will do something with us, they’ll
teach us patience, they say, a future without
much sense, humility.
RESTLESSNESS
Anxiety, fine as salt,
rubs against the walls of my veins.
I know myself when I know
the coming of the fall, a sweet-and-sour bonbon.
the tongue rolls a stone,
nudges tumors off their nests.
VACUUM
Fish fearing darkness swim inside.
Galleries closed on Mondays,
other mothers of other children.
There is something you cannot see
with the naked eye, but only sense
its presence. Dark matter.
Something is growing inside me, but downwards,
inward. I see how it gnaws
at my walls, how it deprives me.
POSTPARTUM
I stand in the solitude of my darkness.
No one touches this membrane—
neither man, nor mother, nor son.
I count the throbbing of my bleeding out,
I hear my body shrink,
how my former self slips off me
as if following an earthquake.
I save the remnants and assemble a new woman,
who says Why does it hurt? and Why don’t I feel powerful?
Here I am, clinging to myself and gnawing at the source of the wound.
I switch roles—
I am actually the child crying for its mother,
the baby craving the breast. Mom, stay here,
don’t make me disappear.
What is poetry?
World-feeling. White field. Time-space. Play with the limits of language and beyond language.
RELATED AUTHORS
Vasileva