Emilia Naydenova
Emilia Naydenova (born in 1992) is a trained philologist and a professional digital marketing specialist, author of the ‘Flights and Words’ blog and the poetry books ‘A Sky for Birds’ (2012) and ‘Conversing with Water’ (2014).
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Her texts have been published in ‘Literary Newspaper’ and several online media outlets, and have been distinguished in various literary competitions, such as ‘Veselin Hanchev’, ‘Vladimir Bashev’, ‘Dora Gabe’, and ‘Dobromir Tonev’. She attended Georgi Gospodinov ‘s master class in creative writing at Apollonia in Sozopol, 2023. ‘The Song of Swifts’ is her latest book of poetry.
THE AUTHOR’S VOICE
Поезията е:
Онова, което ме изважда от ежедневното и в същото време – прибира у дома; това, без което светът би бил невъзможен.
Какъв е животът на твоята поезия (как се ражда, как порасва, как съзрява, как умира)?
Криволичещ – понякога бързо роден в съзнанието, търси опората на тефтера или някой онлайн бележник, пораства с времето, отлежава без моя намеса, съзрява, когато не искам да премахвам повече и остане достатъчно тишина между думите, …а умира навярно, когато написаните думи са далечни на тази, която съм в момента (понякога дори преди да срещнат читатели).
Изкуството свързано ли е с политиката и проблемите на нашето време? Кои проблеми те гнетят?
Изкуството винаги е свързано с проблемите на своето време, неизбежно е – „човекът не е остров“. Гнетят ме несправедливостта, агресията, насилието, това, че сме толкова всемогъщи да протягаме ръце над човешки животи и толкова безсилни пред злото.
Какво искаш да остане след думите?
Най-щастлива съм била след прочитането на книги, към които изпитвам благодарност, едно необяснимо усещане, че не си сам. Това искам да остане – благодарност и успокоение, усещане, че някой вече го е казал вместо теб.
Къде отиват ненаписаните истории?
Ненаписаните истории остават да живеят в своя автор и затова пътуването никога не е с лек багаж. Поне докато не бъдат забравени.
One Day We Will Look Back and See You
Memorized –
in the hands that twist
the freshly kneaded banitsa dough.
You mess up and pick up the cheese first,
then correct yourself with a move.
The exact order you wrote down in your memory book
remains invisible to the rest
You are the yeast, and the dough, and the bread,
and that which brings us together at the table.
Translated by Elitsa Chotrova
Postpartum Conversations
I dream of a house of ivy,
my child falling down the stairs.
You dream of another child,
which someone claims you’ve born.
Every mother has a few sleepless nights
(countless),
when she checks the breathing of the person
who will say tomorrow –
“you were a good mother,”
“you are a bad mother.”
You never know.
Translated by Elitsa Chotrova
Your First Autumn, or What We Saw Together
Another undelivered letter.
And the postwoman walks ahead of me
and I imagine
her life as an atlas of letters.
The sightless child collects
autumn leaves in the schoolyard.
His teacher guides him through the season
with the capacity of senses.
His world crunches – an explosion of amber.
With the diligence with which he collects
the colours of October in his shovel,
he could have learned to read.
Or at least to assert himself.
But who would remain silent then
with the sweep of the broom
before all beauty of death
of sun, of summer, of greenery?
Translated by Elitsa Chotrova
*** How attached
How attached we are to our bodies –
I keep thinking to myself.
Throughout the day, we hardly notice,
we hardly remember the eyes,
but between the shoulders
a word of gratitude humbly resides.
Translated by Elitsa Chotrova
Amsterdam
Everything here once belonged to another.
Someone once ate with these forks.
Another poured tea in fragile cups,
a third one rode home on his bike,
the padlock was inherited from his father.
A grandfather had set aside some of these tulip bulbs,
traces of a stranger’s fall can be seen in the museum,
the records have participated in couples’ dances,
the heron by sunset is actually
the dream of the stranger.
Everything here has had a different experience.
The rain in Hague has also been recorded.
If there is a way out,
you’ll find it here,
where everything has once belonged to another.
Translated by Elitsa Chotrova
What Summer Has Taught me
Birds have once again assembled,
Via Pontica is this year is above my head.
Steadily grounded in summer –
I do not think of winter.
Loss
is the price of growth
and this is not a mantra, but a truth.
Translated by Elitsa Chotrova
Philosophy
In these conversations, every sentence is poetry.
I want to remember the way
you narrate life,
how you explain the world,
and that the universe has a history.
And we are only conduits
of light.
We are here to study what has already been created.
There is nothing special about this instant,
except that we share a room.
Yet these moments are grand, and you can feel it everywhere.
Only I will be impressed
by the questions,
the track of the violins in your hands,
the song of the swifts as a proof
that all this is happening now—
philosophy par excellence.
Translated by Elitsa Chotrova
The Warmest Room
There are five rooms – but let us all be in one.
The laughter of children brings us together –
a childhood infused with mixed herbs,
where every herb matters.
Translated by Elitsa Chotrova
What is poetry?
That which takes me out of the everyday and at the same time brings me home; that without which the world would be impossible.
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Naydenova