Publication Date: March 15, 2011 | Series: Lannan Translations Selection Series
"These poems move mysteriously by means of a profound inner concentration, giving expression to the deepest laws of the mind. Their linguistic 'making' is informed by vivid evidence of a serious self-making, soul-making, and heart-making. We are lucky to have these English incarnations of Nikola Madzirov."—Li-Young Lee
Born 1973 in a family of Balkan Wars refugees, Nikola Madzirov's poetry has already been translated into thirty languages and published in collections and anthologies in the United States, Europe, and Asia. A regular participant in international literary festivals, he has received several international awards including an International Writing Program fellowship at the University of Iowa. Remnants of Another Age is his first full-length American collection and carries a foreword by Carolyn Forché who writes, "Nikola Madzirov's Remnants of Another Age is aptly titled, as these poems seem to spring from elsewhere in time, reflective of a preternaturally wise and attentive sensibility. As we read these poems, they begin to inhabit us, and we are the better for having opened ourselves to them. Madzirov is a rare soul and a true poet."
"I SAW DREAMS"
I saw dreams that no one remembers and people wailing at the wrong graves. I saw embraces in a falling airplane and streets with open arteries. I saw volcanoes asleep longer than the roots of the family tree and a child who's not afraid of the rain. Only it was me no one saw, only it was me no one saw.
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"Nikola Madzirov's poems move mysteriously by means of a profound inner concentration, giving expression to the deepest laws of the mind. Their linguistic 'making' is informed by a vivid evidence of a serious self-making, soul-making, and heart-making. We are lucky to have these English incarnations of Nikola Madzirov." — Li-Young Lee
"Madzirov's poems are like Expressionist paintings: filled with thick, energetic streaks they seem to emerge from the imagination and to return to it right away, like night animals caught in the headlights of a car. Nikola Madzirov succeeds in convincing us, 'We are the remnants of another age.' We better watch this talented poet!" — Adam Zagajewski
“The characters who people his poems are half the time in transit, in flight, and half the time already gone. There is a sense of autumnal winsomeness yet also a feeling of natural suspense in his work…His poems, though short, are deep, sturdy, robust creations. After reading four or five, one may feel as if in the midst of something grand—something of a heavy tome rather than this book of only 104 pages.” —Tottenville Review
About the Author
Nikola Madzirov: Nikola Madzirov (poet, essayist, translator) is one of the most powerful voices of the new European poetry. He was born in a family of Balkan Wars refugees in 1973 in Strumica, R. Macedonia. His poetry has been translated into thirty languages and published in collections and anthologies in US, Europe and Asia. In 2012, he was selected to represent Macedonia at Poetry Parnassus, an international celebration of poetry as part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad in London. For his poetry book Relocated Stone (2007) he received the Hubert Burda European poetry award for authors born in East Europe (the jury was chaired by Peter Handke and Michael Krüger), and the most prestigious Macedonian poetry prize Miladinov Brothers at Struga Poetry Evenings. For the book Locked in the City (1999) he was given the Studentski Zbor award for the best debut, while for the collection of poems Somewhere Nowhere (1999) the Aco Karamanov prize. According to his poetry two short films were shot in Bulgaria and Croatia. The contemporary jazz composer and collaborator of Björk and Lou Reed, Oliver Lake, has composed music based on Madzirov's poems which was performed at the Jazz-Poetry Concert in Pittsburgh in 2008.
Nikola Madzirov has participated at many international literary festivals and events in US, Latin America and Europe and has received several international awards and fellowships such as International Writing Program (IWP) at the University of Iowa in US; Literarisches Tandem in Berlin; KultuKontakt fellowship in Vienna; Internationales Haus der Autoren in Graz; Literatur Haus NÖ in Krems and Villa Waldberta in Munich. He is one of the coordinators of the world poetry network Lyrikline. In June 2012, Madzirov was chosen out of more than 6,000 recommended poets to participate in the Olympic Poetry Parnassus in Southbank Centre, London, called the biggest gathering of poets in world history.
Carolyn Forché: Carolyn Forché was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1950. She studied at Michigan State University and earned an MFA from Bowling Green State University. Forché is the author of four books of poetry: Blue Hour (HarperCollins, 2004); The Angel of History (1994), which received the Los Angeles Times Book Award; The Country Between Us (1982), which received the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, and was the Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets; and Gathering the Tribes (1976), which was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets by Stanley Kunitz. She is also the editor of Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness (1993). Among her translations are Mahmoud Darwish's Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems with Munir Akash (2003), Claribel Alegria's Flowers from the Volcano (1983), and Robert Desnos's Selected Poetry (with William Kulik, 1991). Her honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1992, she received the Charity Randall Citation from the International Poetry Forum. Carolyn Forché teaches in the MFA Program at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
Product Details
Paperback: 104 pages
Publisher: BOA Editions Ltd.; Tra edition (March 15, 2011)
Nikola Madzirov: Nikola Madzirov (poet, essayist, translator) is one of the most powerful voices of the new European poetry. He was born in a family of Balkan Wars refugees in 1973 in Strumica, R. Macedonia. His poetry has been translated into thirty languages and published in collections and anthologies in US, Europe and Asia. For his poetry book Relocated Stone (2007) he received the Hubert Burda European poetry award for authors born in East Europe (the jury was chaired by Peter Handke and Michael Krüger), and the most prestigious Macedonian poetry prize Miladinov Brothers at Struga Poetry Evenings. For the book Locked in the City (1999) he was given the Studentski Zbor award for the best debut, while for the collection of poems Somewhere Nowhere (1999) the Aco Karamanov prize. According to his poetry two short films were shot in Bulgaria and Croatia. The contemporary jazz composer and collaborator of Björk and Lou Reed, Oliver Lake, has composed music based on Madzirov's poems which was performed at the Jazz-Poetry Concert in Pittsburgh in 2008.
Nikola Madzirov has participated at many international literary festivals and events in US, Latin America and Europe and has received several international awards and fellowships such as International Writing Program (IWP) at the University of Iowa in US; Literarisches Tandem in Berlin; KultuKontakt fellowship in Vienna; Internationales Haus der Autoren in Graz; Literatur Haus NÖ in Krems and Villa Waldberta in Munich. He is one of the coordinators of the world poetry network Lyrikline.
Carolyn Forché: Carolyn Forché was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1950. She studied at Michigan State University and earned an MFA from Bowling Green State University. Forché is the author of four books of poetry: Blue Hour (HarperCollins, 2004); The Angel of History (1994), which received the Los Angeles Times Book Award; The Country Between Us (1982), which received the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, and was the Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets; and Gathering the Tribes (1976), which was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets by Stanley Kunitz. She is also the editor of Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness (1993). Among her translations are Mahmoud Darwish's Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems with Munir Akash (2003), Claribel Alegria's Flowers from the Volcano (1983), and Robert Desnos's Selected Poetry (with William Kulik, 1991). Her honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1992, she received the Charity Randall Citation from the International Poetry Forum. Carolyn Forché teaches in the MFA Program at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
NIKOLA MADZIROV nasceu em Maio de 1973 em Strumica, República Macedónica, numa família de refugiados da guerra dos Balcăs. Poeta, ensaísta e tradutor, diversas vezes premiado, uma das novas vozes da jovem poesia europeia que vale a pena acompanhar, publicou este ano nos Estados Unidos "Remnants of another age" (Boa Editions, Ltd., Rochester, N.Y., 2011), com traduçăo do macedónio por Peggy e Graham Reid e Magdalena Horvat e Adam Reed, e introduçăo de Carolyn Forché. Quatro versőes do inglęs, com a devida vénia:
MUITAS COISAS ACONTECERAM
Muitas coisas aconteceram enquanto a Terra girava no dedo de Deus.
Os cabos libertaram-se dos postes e ligam agora um amor a outro. Gotas de oceano depositaram-se avidamente na parede das cavernas. Flores separaram-se da terra e partiram perseguindo seu aroma.
Do bolso de trás, pedaços de papel começaram a voar pelo nosso quarto arejado: coisas irrelevantes que nunca faríamos a menos que fossem apontadas à măo.
§
VOANDO
A neblina pende sobre a cidade como a face caída da Virgem Maria num fresco distante.
As antenas parabólicas falam com os anjos tentando determinar o tempo para amanhă: claro, seguro, expressivo como um calendário com datas a vermelho.
Mas assim que a noite junta as sombras à parede, irás esgueirar-te para os ramos como uma ave rara vinda do outro lado de uma nota de banco.
§
CIDADES QUE NĂO NOS PERTENCEM
Em cidades estranhas nossos pensamentos vagueiam calmamente como túmulos de artistas de circo esquecidos, os căes ladram aos caixotes do lixo e aos flocos de neve que sobre eles caem.
Em cidades estranhas passamos despercebidos como um anjo de cristal fechado numa caixa de vidro sem ar, como um segundo terramoto que meramente rearranjasse o que já estivesse arruinado.
§
ERA PRIMAVERA
Era primavera quando o invasor queimou a escritura do terreno onde apanhávamos pássaros, insectos coloridos, borboletas apenas existentes em velhos compęndios de biologia.
Muitas coisas mudaram o mundo desde entăo, o mundo mudou muita coisa em nós.
Nikola Madzirov is a real poet, the sort we have been waiting for, a poet who comes several generations after Z. Herbert and T. Transtroomer and yet is able to extend their lyric voice and do something new with it. Writing from a small country in Eastern Europe, Madzirov is able to attain a universal, magical voice, half-whisper, half-incantation, that will re-sound in contemporary world poetry in the years to come.
Nikola Madzirov's -Remnants of Another Age- is masterful lyric art: poignant, graceful and moving. He is thought to be the best poet writing in the Macedonian language, and he is fortunate to have very gifted translators who have been able to bear his work across the bridge without loss. He joins the company of Adam Zagajewski, Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Tomas Transtromer, for these are the poets he most resembles.
