The poetess Dimana Ivanova has published her second poetry collection

In October 2016, the Scalino edition house from Sofia published the second poetry collection by Dimana Ivanova, one of the participants at the 2013 Ars Poetica festival. Titled Abeceda túžob (transl. as The Alphabet of Desires), it contains illustrations by the French painter Yve Jacquier. Per every illustrated letter of the alphabet there is a poem. The collection of poems also constitutes a unique attempt at saving the Cyrillic alphabet.

Just like Amelia Ličeva, a professor of the theory of literature at the University of Sofia, writes: “It is enough to just venture on the roads that Dimana Ivanova offers in her book – a pilgrimage into the past on roads of poetry, through European cities and on roads between passion and being in love – so that new stories can spring up; so that we could peek into the unknown corners of the known cities; so that we discover words behind the silence and conversations behind the moving bodies; so that we open the book pages that have long been closed. The collection is written in a conceptual and erudite manner. That’s what this author’s poetry is like. She forces us to discern our own dreams, to ask ourselves what it means to be a man or a woman in these confusing times, and sometimes even to speak languages we don’t speak so well despite having studied them in the past.”

The collection of poetry The Alphabeth of Desires and the author Dimana Ivanova
Photography by © Tonya Atanakova

A presentation of this poetry collection will take place in the Art Foundation Gallery in Sofia on October 16^th with the author herself, professor Ličevova and the editor Emilia Mirazčijzska, along with other poets, journalists and translators.

The Bratislava presentation of this publication will take place on November 9^th at 5:30pm at the Bulgarian Institute of Culture in Bratislava. Another presentation in the Bulgarian Institute in London is planned for the following year of 2017.