Reneta Bakalova
Reneta Bakalova was born on May 12, 1991, in Plovdiv. She graduated from Ivan Vazov High School (German and Russian languages). She studied Philosophy at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski.
She has received numerous literary awards, including first prize in the Poetry section of the Boyan Penev Competition (2015) and first prize in the Dobromir Tonev National Poetry Competition (2020).
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In 2009, her debut poetry collection, The Dream of the Violins, was published. In 2020, Ars Publishing House published And Other Languages, which was nominated for the Hristo Fotev competition and awarded a prize by the Association of Bulgarian Writers. In 2023, her poetry collection The Awakening of Eurydice was published.
She has been an editor for the online literary magazine Crossroads and has interviewed authors such as Etgar Keret, Jordi Galceran, Milenko Jergovic, Tsruya Shalev, Hasan Blasim, Pierre Meylak, and Nevena Mitropolitska. She writes literary and theater reviews. From 2017 to 2018, she taught theater and German to children as part of Caritas’ Refugee Project.
THE AUTHOR’S VOICE
Поезията е:
Светоусещане. Да улавяш светлините и сенките и да ги разказваш така, че някой да се огледа в тях, но и да се вдъхнови. А разликата между поезията като изкуство и поезията на делника е в това колко внимателно и отговорно се отнасяш към думите.
Какъв е животът на твоята поезия (как се ражда, как порасва, как съзрява, как умира)?
Редовете скитат сами, припознават се, развиват се и излизат от очертанията на улицата, на която са писани, докато минувачите се припознават в усещанията зад значенията на думите. Стихотворенията заживяват свой живот при всеки нов прочит. Така нищо не се губи.
Изкуството свързано ли е с политиката и проблемите на нашето време? Кои проблеми те гнетят?
Всяка форма на изкуство е свързана с политика и проблемите на собственото си време, дори и това да не е ярко изразено. В своята поезия се интересувам и от миналото и бъдещето време, защото историята не прощава на онези, които нямат памет. Лично аз се вълнувам от редица социални и емоционален проблеми, защото вярвам, че изкуството трябва да в ангажирано.
Какво искаш да остане след думите?
Хоризонти. И това мисля, казва достатъчно.
Къде отиват ненаписаните истории?
В отношението към малките неща, към непознатите, в старанието и умението да виждаш и знаеш, че всяко нещо е разказ, от който не познаваш всяка страница.
An angel
An angel,
invisibly positioned on the shore between the left and right shoulders,
whispers in the ear:
greet the woman cleaning the stairs,
clothes don’t make the person, their eyes do
go out after the rain and move the snails to safety
be a safe space yourself—
a bomb shelter or a house
where there is always tea and extra cutlery.
Over the years, the voice dries up.
Throughout the years you learn:
there’s no such thing as angels.
We are not innocent.
There’s just a little something missing,
so we can be a sky, not a gorge.
And we’re all mud and stardust,
and bones, and wings,
and mucus, milk, and the blue –
we’re almost godly then,
and the black — like hungry vultures.
But I insist—my angels still exist,
my angels
are several children:
5, 7, 15 years old
with names that this half-dead world barely knows,
with names of something alive and immortal, of flowers and waterfalls.
My angels are refugees. Or orphans.
Angels from Iraq and Syria, from the wound
that never stops eating its own flesh and blood,
or from that house, at the end of the river,
where someone forgot
that they have given life
and let it grow as best it can.
But instead of
being angry, barefoot, and homeless
and cursing the sun for shining more on others,
they saved a bird, gave water to the thirsty,
and healed a heart as dry as the desert.
They asked to feed a beggar. Though they were hungry themselves.
But the beggar yelled at them because they were from somewhere else.
They asked the loneliest child to play ball with them.
But it wasn’t allowed to play with nobody’s children
When did we forget that all children are ours,
that hearts are better at telling fortunes than palms or maps,
when did we put grenades under our skin, and smell of lead instead of lilacs,
when will we learn
that even the smallest war
is an attack on the human
who tried to walk upright,
with oranges and poems in their pocket,
not with weapons and vengeance.
And nothing is in the name of anything.
When you shoot, we’re all nameless
Translated by Gergana Galabova
*** We’re made of water and words
We’re made of water and words.
See how you smile
when I talk to you about Vincent’s sunflowers,
and your face darkens
as soon as we mention his ear:
you can almost feel the despair of a man you know just from paintings
and who you shouldn’t be close with, but you can
cry with him
because of the madness in us and beyond us.
You look like an angel reclining
on cotton clouds
when we listen to stories about that East
with the smell of sand, saffron, and nutmeg,
where they name their daughters Leila
so they can be as beautiful as an Arabian night,
but you don’t understand this world when
all the news scream about bombs,
about raped women, about children
left without fathers,
about wars here and there, about weapons
that promise freedom,
but it’s always soaked with the blood of yet another slavery,
yet another refusal to be equal,
yet another invisible border
that does not divide territories but trajectories
and you cannot extend
one hand to the West and the other
to the East, choose,
how did you think you would save everyone.
Your body resembles a wounded animal
when you are the target.
And they are not even arrows,
just sounds, arranged and hissing.
And a caterpillar leaving its cocoon.
Or silk, so much silk,
if someone whispers and says: honey, sea, mercy, mother.
We are made of water and words.
The end of history never begins with a stone,
but with a speech
that will justify
the next crime.
Translated by Gergana Galabova
*** The chest is a clock that
The chest is a clock that slowly measures time.
Enter like a rebellious shadow, lose yourself in the city that sleeps beneath the ribs,
drown in the folds of golden skin—
where everything melts like honey,
and the lips are half-open doors:
snakes and milk slip through them.
Hands are riders of the storm.
They untie all the knots of the night,
the moon is a fish whose scales shine
and make you search for treasures.
Breathing creeps down your back like
a little beast that will stop at nothing:
it tears apart and creates anew —
now, for the first time, you notice: blood
can be soft as silk, and fingers
can create thunderstorms.
Every spark is a timid reminder
of the morning’s abyss.
But now we are captives and saviors
in this chaos of skin and light.
Translated by Gergana Galabova
What is poetry?
A perception of light. To capture the lights and shadows and tell them in such a way that someone will see themselves reflected in them, but also be inspired. And the difference between poetry as an art and the poetry of everyday life lies in how carefully and responsibly you treat words.
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Bakalova