April 24, 2026 | Friday | 8:30 p.m.

City Stage

(underground level)   

 

Readings by Contemporary Bulgarian Poets

Poetry as Resistance

 

With the participation of:

Yordan Eftimov, Iana Boukova, Maria Kalinova, Dimitar Kenarov

Host:

Ani Burova

 

By its very nature, poetry is a challenge to established ways of perceiving the world. The poetic word is inevitably resistance against the banalization of language, and therefore also of existence. Throughout its history, poetry has often been a reaction to what is happening in the world, resistance against various forms of injustice and unfreedom. This evening we will hear the poems of Yordan Eftimov, Yana Bukova, Dimitar Kenarov, and Maria Kalinova—authors with different poetics and distinctive presence in contemporary Bulgarian literature, in whose work resistance takes different forms. We will also have the opportunity to discuss whether in our cacophonous present poetry preserves its capacity to act as counterpoint and resistance. What are the directions of its resistance today and what distinguishes its messages from other forms of literature? — Ani Burova

 

More about the poets:

 

Dimitar Kenarov (b. 1981) is a writer, poet, and journalist. He graduated from the American College of Sofia and attended the University of California, Berkeley. His thesis on the poetry of W. H. Auden and Joseph Brodsky was awarded three academic prizes. He has worked for magazines such as Esquire, The Nation, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, and others. His travel essays have been selected three times for the annual anthology The Best American Travel Writing. He is the author of the Bulgarian poetry collections Patuvane kum kuhnyata /Journey to the Kitchen/, Apokrifni jivotni /Apocryphal Animals, Razoranite gradini na lubovta /The Plowed Gardens of Love/. He is the author of two books of reportage and essays, Diktatori, traktori i drugi prikluchenia /Dictators, Tractors, and Other Adventures/ and Bulgarskata sleda. /The Bulgarian Trail/. He has translated Crusoe in England — a collection of poems by the American poet Elizabeth Bishop.

Yordan Eftimov was born in 1971 in Razgrad. He is a poet, literary scholar, and literary critic. He is Chief Assistant Professor of Literary Theory at New Bulgarian University, Sofia. Since 1993, with interruptions, he has been an editor of the independent weekly cultural newspaper Literary Newspaper. He is the author of the poetry collections Metafizika na metafizikite /Metaphysics of Metaphysics/, 11 indianski prikazki /11 Indian Tales/, Afrika/Chisla (Africa/Numbers), Opera nigra, Zhena mi vinagi kazva /My Wife Always Says/, Sartseto ne e sazdatel /The Heart Is Not a Creator/, Dokazani teorii, okonchatelni eksperimenti /Proven Theories, Final Experiments/, Predi da izmiyat kravta /Before They Wash the Blood Away/. He is the author of the popular science books Ancient Literature and Modernism, as well as the monographs The Refuted Virtue: Essays on Tsvetan Marangozov and The Double Bottom of the Classics. He is the editor of Terry Eagleton’s “An Introduction to Literary Theory” and the anthology “Literary Cultures and Social Myths”. Yordan Eftimov is the recipient of the Yuzhna Prolet National Debut Award, the Rashko Sugarev Award for Short Story, the Hristo G. Danov National Award, the Ivan Nikolov National Award, the Hristo Fotev National Award, and others.

Maria Kalinova is a poet and a lecturer at Sofia University. She is the author of the poetry collections Okoto /The Eye/, Podnozhieto na vecheryata /At the Foot of the Dinner Table/, and Slanche-tehnika /Sun-Technique/, as well as the scholarly works Detstvo i intelektualna istoriya u vuzrozhdenskite avtori /Childhood and Intellectual History in the Authors of the National Revival Period/ and Eksotopia: Za vunshniya kontekst na diskursa /Exotopia: On the External Context of Discourse/. Maria Kalinova is the founder and director of the association 'VS Publishing' Ltd., which includes the publishing house 'Versus'. She holds a Ph.D. in the history of Renaissance literature and is an associate professor of literary theory in the Department of Literary Theory and History at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski.” She is an editor and deputy director of Literary Newspaper. She is the author of monographs in the humanities, an organizer and one of the founders of the interdisciplinary seminar Literature and Psychoanalysis at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” and the Bulgarian Psychoanalytic Space Association. She is a fellow at the Center for Academic Research. She is the recipient of the Veselin Hanchev and Vladimir Bashev Awards.

Iana Boukova is a Bulgarian poet, novelist, essayist and translator. Boukova was awarded the 2019 National Poetry Award "Ivan Nikolov" for her poetry book "Notes of the Phantom Woman" and the 2012 Hristo G. Danov National prize for her eminent literary translations of the Pindar's Pythian Odes. She is the author of four poetry books: Diocletian’s Palaces (1995) Boat in the Eye (2000), Notes of the Phantom Woman (2018) published by Ugly Duckling Presse New York in 2024, and Black Haiku (2024), the short stories collections: A As Anything (2006), 4 Tales With no Return (2016) and the Borgesian novel: Traveling in the Direction of the Shadow (2009, rev. 2014) which is forthcoming from New York Review Books in 2026, as well as translations of more than fifteen books of modern Greek and ancient poetry — among them: Sappho, Pindar, the poetry of Catullus, Maximus the Confessor, Miltos Sachturis, Costas Montis etc. Iana Boukova is a member of the editorial board of Athens FRMK biannual journal on poetry, theory, and the visual arts. Her poems and short stories have been translated into numerous languages, including Greek, Spanish, French, German, and Arabic. English translations of her poetry and prose have been published in various anthologies and journals in the US and the UK, including Best European Fiction 2017, Words Without Borders, Two Lines, Absinthe, Drunken Boat, Ariel Art, European Literature Network, Zoland Poetry, Take Five, At the End of the World – Contemporary Poetry from Bulgaria.