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ED HERMAN:
Welcome to Poetry Lectures featuring talks by poets, scholars and educators presented by poetryfoundation.org. In this program, we hear a conversation between Macedonian poet Nikola Madzirov and Ilya Kaminsky. Nikola Madzirov is a poet, essayist and translator and has been hailed as one of the most powerful voices of new European poetry. He was born in 1973, in Macedonia, then part of the former Yugoslavia into a family of Balkan war refugees. His own life was shaped by the civil war that devastated Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. He is the author of several award winning collections of poetry, and his work has been translated into 30 languages. Madzirov lives in Macedonia, where he works as a coordinator for the International Poetry Network LyrikLine, and as a poetry editor for the online journal Blesok. During the conversation, Madzirov reads poems by (UNKNOWN) of Bosnia and Edvard Kocbek of Slovenia, as well as two of his own poems while discussing the poetics of war and its aftermath and the nature of memory and rediscovering.

Ilya Kaminsky, the director of the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute, hosted the conversation, which took place in April 2012. He began by asking about the history of Macedonian poetry. In response, Madzirov compares himself to an archaeologist as he explored the oral traditions in his country's poetry.

NIKOLA MADZIROV:
I found myself as some kind of archaeologist for the echoes from the past. Macedonia Macedonian literature has a powerful oral tradition because for five centuries, 500 years, this region was ruled by Ottoman Empire. So people were mostly they had to whisper among themselves to tell stories in the shape of songs more not like their personal stories in order to protect themselves, their families. So, this oral tradition continued even nowadays. So even we had a special word when it's about translation poetry in our language. So when you translate all other genres in literature, you have the word (UNKNOWN). But when you (UNKNOWN), when you translate, poetry is (SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE) and you know that (SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE) it's like to sing. So it means when you translate, poetry is like to rethink the song over and over again. This word is really special you use, especially for poetry. And I still remember the wife of the oldest brother of my grandfather, who was only one year when they have to move to the north after Balkan wars.

And that's how we got the second name, Madzirov, of what it means migrants, people without home. And she was, really I was waking up with her songs when she was singing an uprising when it was about some ceremony of wedding of birthday. But also she was called by other people to wail on the graves of the people to sing their sad songs. And she was making up the poems at the at the same moment. Sometimes she would do this in the in the wrong grave and people would come and say, "What are you doing here?" And then...

ILYA KAMINSKY:
"Think you got the wrong grave."

NIKOLA MADZIROV:
Yes, it was it's very interesting moments from my childhood because there were two moments that were really struck me at that time, how people hire another person to to cry for for someone from their family and also how the grandmother was too powerful and at this moment to create these poems or poems of grief about the person that she she didn't know at all. So I was thinking that this is this tradition of inventing or putting the personal histories, you know, from your own personal histories to to relocate them and transfer them into some other's life. It still goes on in Balkans. We still whisper our our personal stories and it's so rare someone to write them. But I'm happy that in the last period, especially after the Second World War, when the Macedonian language was codified, more and more books appeared and poetry became something to be written, not only something to be heard.

ILYA KAMINSKY:
How common is the oral tradition nowadays? How common is the oral tradition in Macedonia? Is there any continuation of the oral tradition at all right now?

NIKOLA MADZIROV:
Yeah. Well then became after the Second World War when the yes, the language was codified, then we had poetry, inherited our education, but then communism came together with with with, let's say country Republic of Macedonia also they all became a socialism. So people were forced we as a as a also me as a pupil at that time, we were forced to learn poetry by heart. What's interesting is that in our language we call it by mind, which has more reason when was about ideology, I would say. So we were learning the poetry, the poetry not permit. And you know that the permit is it means mind. While in English you have by heart, which is more close to your own decision and your own love to take these lines inside you and into your blood. In our region, a new new mythology was raising. It was a mythology of of respect and fear. So, poetry became, in a way, mean, you know, to to be loyal to to the society. So this was the second dimension of, of on the other dimension of the other side of the coin of writing in in that time people were happy that now they can write in their own language the things, but they were forced to write such more such realistic poetry.

Yes. Such realism, something that is that can move society forward that there were. Yes. Talking to us. But fortunately, there were some writers like in that time in Macedonia, like Vladimirovich or Bougainville, Gazelle or even Radovan Pavlovsky, who were more open to the Europe and to the world. And even now they create very good modern poetry. And they avoided the trap, you know, of of the institutions and the bureaucracy in that time. So the self-censorship was, I would say, more powerful than than the censorship of the state. People really found a way how to express themselves. Also recalling the oral tradition, the myths, the folklore in that time.

ILYA KAMINSKY:
It seems to me, in your tradition, in your country, in your language, oral tradition is still very very present. Even in your names and name of somebody who doesn't have a common Madzirov, who is translated into many, many languages. And yet history is very present, even though your poems try to resist it in some ways as much as possible. And yet, in one of the interviews you said earlier, "My initiation into the world of the responsible started with the war that did not belong to me, but was coming my way, war that did not belong to me, but was coming my way." Now, you were 18 years old when you first saw war. How did you often write in?How did you, how did other poets, you know, in former Yugoslavia have been influenced by war? By conflict?

NIKOLA MADZIROV:
Yeah. Usually the moment of initiation is about representing yourself to the other people, to the society. What you are able to do. You know that you know that in, let's say, Native Americans they used to change names or to be given other names and to be more responsible in the society. But this was the change. The change was more inner. But our change of my generation came from outside.

ILYA KAMINSKY:
What year did the war began for you?

NIKOLA MADZIROV:
In 1991, when also Republic of Macedonia became independent when communism disappeared from the map of this region. So there were many, many moments that came at the same time. Also, the norms of moral norms, ethics, aesthetics, they they were all ruined at the same moment. Everything disappeared and we found ourselves alone, you know, in this cut forest and non protected by by the wind of the of the new time. Since we were kids as I remember, almost 90% of our games were war games. We were playing partisans against, I don't know, Germans and all the kind of we have strange kinds of weapons made of of stones, made of wood. And now when you realize that there are weapons that can kill someone, then also your childhood is killed. People hardly want to remember those games from the childhood after really, everybody lost some of his closest family or friends. But the thing is that our generation didn't escape from from facing the war or we didn't proclaim ourselves like lost generation. But we were either writing about it or keeping silent, which is also remembering the war.

ILYA KAMINSKY:
Keeping silence, which is also remembered in the word, beautiful.

NIKOLA MADZIROV:
Especially when I say writing about the war. I talk about the writers from Bosnia. Some of the poets from my generation like Asmir Kujovic or Faruk Sehic. They really were part of the war. They they had weapons. They were in the mud all the time and they were the one that at the same time, like some exposed deers in the eyes of the hunter, but also they were hunters themselves. So, in a way they write poetry now, you know, I feel them both from the both sides. But the thing is, the thing is that really hundreds of pages appeared after the war about this when there was a war people simply didn't have papers. When Sarajevo was surrounded, they didn't have papers where to write their poems. They were just remembering the war. Afterwards, there was just writing and describing the war. And what left some period after this post-war period was whether these papers would have been more powerful if they were blank or if they had words on them.

ILYA KAMINSKY:
Are there any poems that you could perhaps read for us that are relevant for you from that time period or from poets of that time period?

NIKOLA MADZIROV:
Yes. There for example, Izet Sarajilit wrote magnificent serial of those war poems, especially while he was hitting under the ground. He was alive, but more than two meters under the ground. And from this position he wrote really magnificent poems.

ILYA KAMINSKY:
So he wrote poems while sitting under the ground?

NIKOLA MADZIROV:
Yes. One of them was 'The Theory of Distance'. And I would read you a few lines in translation by Irinazov. "I'm one of those who believe that Monday should be discussed on Monday. Doing so on Tuesday might be doing too late. It is hard, of course, in a cellar with grenades whistling above your head to write poems. The only thing harder than that would be not to write them."

ILYA KAMINSKY:
Hmm. Very powerful. You know, this is, of course, very different from many Americans’ experience of a history of time and place of their country and the way the lyric poet interacts with it. And yet I'm reminded by lines of a very well known American poet, Lewis Clark, who once said, "What does one expect of a lyric poet? We look at the world once in childhood. The rest is memory. What does one expect of a lyric poet?" So, what is the language of childhood for you? In one of your conversations you have said that many poets of your generation and earlier generations were influenced by the dark mix of old folklore, by songs, by oral tradition, as well as modernism, surrealism, civil speech, civil language, sometimes language of propaganda. So could you give us some examples of such poems, perhaps?

NIKOLA MADZIROV:
Yeah. Let's read another poem. I think we have the poem from the Macedonian poet Bogomil Gjüzel, who was very connected to the folklore from this region, from the old folklore, from the language of of his ancestors. The sound of of those, I would say, mythical and mystical oral songs from the past. But here in this short poem translated by Peggy Reed and Graham Reed, he speaks about freedom. "Breathing is as easy for us as flying is for the birds. Whereas it ought to be a toilsome task which exhausts us so that one day we don't get to work. Only such breathing not mechanical, but wield, can bring back breath to the dead." He was one of those poets or few writers, I would say, that had really problems with the contemporary new myth after the Second World War when the churches were replaced by secret, by insecret bureaucracy and Yugoslavia in that time. He had to run away from the country his father was killed. And that's why I would think that even nowadays, when when we don't have this kind of pressure about when it's about motives or writing, he still has need to speak about freedom.

He's a poet of of powerful and poet of the silence, of the people who really suffered. And he's not only the one we had Edvard Kocbek or we have from Slovenia. We had another poets like Jovan Koteski from from Macedonia who really died in fear of being watched. I think that even even he was afraid that his funeral was recorded by someone.

ILYA KAMINSKY:
He was afraid that his funeral was recorded by someone.

NIKOLA MADZIROV:
Yes. So when we talk about this generation that was really inspired by the old folklore about these stories about vampires in in in the villages, about witches that were in this region and people really wanted to to to be close to to the primordial in that time because this was the only way to be aware of your roots when other the aggression of other culture like Ottoman Empire was really trying to to erase everything that was before on this region. Even mosques, all the mosques were were built on foundations of of ruined churches as well as I would make a comparison that Kundera said that "the contemporary novel is built on the ruined foundations of of the poetry". And in these layers you find many archaeological sites of not only of buildings, but also stories of…

ILYA KAMINSKY:
Archeological sites of stories. Very nice.

NIKOLA MADZIROV:
Yes. Of stories personal myths. And, of course, I will mention here Vasco Popa.

ILYA KAMINSKY:
A great poet of Yugoslovia.

NIKOLA MADZIROV:
A great poet of Yugoslavia who built so many poems on this Slavic darkness, let's say gothic memory of the Balkans. And they were also very contemporary at the same time, very modern. And and you feel also the influence from surrealism. And also I can mention here the great poet Tomaz Salamun from Slovenia and many others who who really are not known. And I would say once Edvard Kocbek was described like one of the best unknown writers in Europe.

ILYA KAMINSKY:
Yeah, I think (UNKNOWN) could say that isn't it?

NIKOLA MADZIROV:
Which is yeah, sounds very paradoxical, but it is true.

ILYA KAMINSKY:
Let me follow up on something you say and then perhaps we'll come back to Kocbek and continue to rediscover the great poet. But you say that a lot of the oral tradition and poetics were in response to the Ottoman invasion of the culture. How are the poets of your generation responding to the Western, perhaps even American invasion of the culture?

NIKOLA MADZIROV:
Yeah, that's a very, very interesting question. You have this in a way people were were quoted in back in time of socialism very much Erich Fromm with his theory about the Homo consumers, you know, a person that only consumes so and not aware you know, about his real needs. But he trusts just the needs who were imposed. So, I think that the the poets really in this race of being translated into English, some of them really wanted wanted to be closer to the English speaking poetry traditions in order to be easily accepted. So they they tried to adjust their poetics and their thinking and leaving the roots of of the myths of the folk and the oral oral tradition. But some of them were not aware of this, so they wrote the best poems when they were not thinking about the moments of translation, of the moments of transferring into one culture, into another culture, or one or one system of words, I would say, and silences into another system of words in silences.

ILYA KAMINSKY:
A system of words and silences. Very lovely.

NIKOLA MADZIROV:
And I feel this is the poem that the point that when you mentioned childhood before and I agree sometimes in Bosnia when I last time visit Bosnia people divide their personal time even before the war and after the war. And I consider my time like I have childhood. And the next personal time will be is remembering the childhood. And the thing is that what about leaving the childhood? So, in my poetry, I try to leave my childhood not to remember my childhood. And if we were talking about how I was to come back home and to feel the water, the cold water from the tap on your on your palm before drinking it, then the coldness to feel, the coldness of the water and the lips. It was not about being thirsty. It was about touching the water. It's about it was about, you know, remembering the water outside of our body. And, this what I wanted to do is to transfer this atmosphere by using words or the atmosphere of of the childhood, of curiosity, of rediscovering the things that are inside us, like the water and but in the outside world by using the imperfection of the words.

So, I think that's thing makes the things to be universal but yet not global make things to be. Personal, but yet not individual. So, when someone writes by purpose in order to be translated in a certain area, let's say, then, then it's like the, the paradox with the shooting in the center. When you everybody say if you shoot the center, then you miss everything else around it. And that's how it's with poetry.

ILYA KAMINSKY:
Yeah, that's a beautiful way to put it. Let me come back for a moment. The poet, you mentioned Edvard Kocbek. You had earlier today and I wonder if you could read perhaps a few lines from his wonderful poem called 'Longing for Jail.'

NIKOLA MADZIROV:
Yeah, I would make a parallel very interesting because one of the poems in the when it's about when we talk about the history of Macedonian literature is one of the most beautiful poems written in 19th century was from the Konstantin Miladinov and the title is 'Longing for the South' and it's written in Moscow when he was just longing for the sun of the and of the south in near the Ohrid lake in Macedonia. And this poem initiated, in fact the oldest, one of the oldest festivals in the world, struga poetry evenings. And every year they open the festival with 'Longing for the South.'

ILYA KAMINSKY:
Beautiful.

NIKOLA MADZIROV:
But in this in this case, unfortunately, in this poem written during the period of socialism and Edvard Kocbek wrote, it sounds ironically, but in his case, unfortunately it was pure reality. He wrote the poem 'Longing for Jail.' "I was late for the most important spiritual exercises of my life. I'm left without proof of my true value. Each jail is a treasury, a secret drawer, a jealous torture chamber, the most important stage of executioner's asceticism before he is corrupted by a naked woman holding a knife." It's a beautiful picture. It's a in a way, you have the naked woman and in the other holding a knife when put arrows and tornadoes in in one female figure and he knows exactly that the motherhood especially the figure of woman, is very, very strong on Balkans.

ILYA KAMINSKY:
It seems to me from this conversation so far that the poetic tradition is happening in a time of a lot of war, a lot of upheaval, a lot of political struggle. And yet the response to all the surrealism is very metaphysical. Even this launch of a jail poem of which you just read us a few lines use a very metaphysical response in protest of the reality around it. Of course, the other poem you read a few minutes ago has this beautiful lines Freedom, which is a bridge to the dead. And that made me think of a poet of English language, W.H. Auden, who once said that "Breaking bread with the dead is what makes the writing was the paper it was written on." My other question would probably have to do with the terms that you make in your own work, your own metaphysics, your childhood. As you say you're trying to forget the war of it, the silence of it. And yet in your poetry in many ways is not poetry of war, but poetry of praise, poetry of a spiritual seeker. You speak often in your work. You speak to us in images and metaphors, saying something like, "I reveal myself like a feather stuck to an actual." And when you speak of your generation, you say nothing exists outside us.

Sometimes we call each other sun, light, angel. And when you speak of yourself again, you say, "I'm empty as a plastic bag filled with air." Perhaps you can speak a bit more about it in terms of craft, however, specifically in terms of what kind of poetic tools to use to be a poet of praise.

NIKOLA MADZIROV:
Well, I never could see myself like poets as guards of history, especially of the official one. One that is in all books, you know, and has to pass through many controls. Once I said that in all important wars, you know, we talk with numbers or to don't talk if there was rain or there was a I don't know at that moment how many letters arrived at that day, for example, for for the soldiers. Writing poetry in that kind of circumstances. Writing poetry of praise, as you named it, or poetry of silence or metaphysics. It's not I don't consider, again, escapism, because I want to be very active toward these processes.

ILYA KAMINSKY:
It seems very much a part of your literary tradition. Metaphysics as an active.

NIKOLA MADZIROV:
Yes, (CROSSTALK) very active form. Yes, I completely agree. Even when Szymborska said that everything is political, you know, he has she has this beautiful poem about the stone with the door open door. And that's how one of my my last this book was called 'Relocated Stone' which was again find with tradition. We have saying in our language that the stone always wants to be there on its own place. We know that history says that when you replace the stone, it can be become a home or a wall, whatever, or you just can even kill someone. So, I even don't consider myself when Heidegger said that of course, that the writers or poets can be guards of this house of being. And he named the language as as the house of being. I don't consider myself the one who writes, even not the one who remembers, because everything for me is just discovery, not even creating or rediscovery. I like even more to to rediscover things. So, let's say that my words, my my lines, my memories are not covers of reality, but let's say rediscovering the doors of of something beyond reality.

Someone called it metaphysics, someone called the sacred. Someone says, this is very profound, but I want everything to be like a home, one personal home, like a stepping the threshold, you know. I was also impressed when I was a kid, seeing an old lady when she was coming out from church once. And usually people come out from church when they turn with their back. So they they have always to have face in front of the church. So it's not good if you turn your your back towards the church. So. So I saw her once when she was crossing yeah, and praying in exactly on the threshold on the church. And it was just a moment that you don't know whether she is going inside or she goes outside from the church. So this picture remained in, in, in myself. And I never use it as a line, of course, because it was too sacred for me. It was to to precious it, but it just remained.

ILYA KAMINSKY:
Be careful. All our listeners are going to take that line now. (LAUGHTER)

NIKOLA MADZIROV:
Yeah. I believe because it was a border, you know, it was a border for me for crossing, let's say, from from childhood into remembering the childhood or maybe because of the contrast of, let's say, the wrinkles of her forehead. And you have the also the cracks on the on the wall of these old churches. And and you look at this and this moment, so naive and so clear and that time, this perspective. And I was always impressed by one line of (UNKNOWN) when he said that "poem's always has to surprise with already known things." And that's how I, I want to I didn't want to identify with the with the things I'm writing or I'm reading. Yes. But I wanted to be surprised by them.

ED HERMAN:
That was Nikola Madzirov speaking with Ilya Kaminsky. To conclude, we'll hear Madzirov read two of his poems, "Shadows Pass Us By" and "Many Things Happened."

NIKOLA MADZIROV:
So I read the poem 'Shadows Pass us By.' "We'll meet one day like a paper boat and a watermelon that's been cooling in the river. The anxiety of the world will be with us. Our palms will eclipse the sun and we will approach each other holding lanterns. One day the wind won't change direction. The birds will send away leaves in their shoes on the doorstep. The wolves will come after our innocence. The butterflies will leave their dust on our cheeks. An old woman will tell stories about us in the waiting room every morning. Even what I am saying has been said already. We are waiting for the wind like two flags on the border. We are waiting for the wind like two flags on the border. One day, every shadow will pass us by." Next one is 'Many Things Happened.' "Many things happened while the earth was spinning on God's finger. Wires release themselves from pylons and now they connect one love to another. Ocean drops deposited themselves eagerly onto cave walls. Flowers separated from minerals and set off following the scent.

From the back pocket pieces of paper started flying all over our airy room. Irrelevant things with which we would never do unless they were written down."

ED HERMAN:
That was Nikola Madzirov reading two of his poems, "Shadows Pass Us By" and "Many Things Happened." The conversation with Ilya Kaminsky was recorded at the Poetry Foundation in Chicago on April 13th, 2012 as part of International Poets In Conversation, sponsored by the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute. Among Nikola Madzirov’s books that are available in English are "Relocated Stone" and "Remnants of Another Age." You can read more about Nikola Madzirov at poetryfoundation.org. Also at the Poetry Foundation website, you'll find articles by and about poets. An online archive of more than 10,000 poems, The Poetry Learning Lab, the Harriet Blog about poetry, the complete back issues of Poetry magazine and other audio programs to download. I'm Ed Herman. Thanks for listening to poetry lectures from poetryfoundation.org.