“The Sky Above Us All is Equally Endless”: Kerana Angelova on the Beauty of Poetry, Religion, and Humanity

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As part of our “Meet a Bulgarian Poet” series, Katerina Stoykova-Klemer interviewed poet, teacher, and journalist Kerana Angelova, one of the brilliant voices featured in The Season of Delicate Hunger: Anthology of Contemporary Bulgarian Poetry. Here is a translation of that interview.

What would you like for the American readers to know about Bulgarian poetry?

For sure they will receive confirmation that Bulgarian and American poets—poets in general speak the same language. When people became too proud, believing that they were easily capable of raising the Tower of Babel in order to make their Etemenanki (home between heaven and earth) closer to the Father, He became angry. He jumbled up their language and scattered them around the earth, and the nations became alienated from one another. It is possible, however, that God’s providence was present in the subsequent division of languages—that the Father was overjoyed by his creation’s striving to rise up and gifted them with greater individuality—with more curiosity towards one another. I daresay that, after all, the Creator left humanity with one common superlanguage in reserve. Poetry. In-spiration. It’s true that in order to communicate in this language, the nations divided by the Tower of Babel need the intervention of translators, but when translators are inspired as well, the language of poetry becomes active and effective and is the best way to help people around the world understand each other.

In that sense Bulgarian poetry with inspiration articulates the eternal themes of love, loneliness, life, happiness, pain, suffering … in the same tongue with which the poets in America tell about the same things. And this is, above all, the language of the heart.

What would you like for the American readers to know about you personally?

There are likely people from my “blood type,” my vibrational field, that live in America, as well as anywhere else in the world. My books might be of interest to them, my words—I don’t know anything more personal than my words. And the anthology with Bulgarian poetry gives them this opportunity—to peek through a narrow, illuminated slit into my personal world, as well.

Nonetheless: the American readers can imagine me sitting on the banks of Veleka—the river by which I was born. I love returning there during the summer. I sit under the weeping willows and as if mesmerized, I watch the concentric circles made by the droplets. On my hands, on my shoulders, in my hair for brief moments, shiny-blue dragonflies—the miniature river angels—land. At these moments, I believe I’ve had the happiness to be born in the most wonderful place. Bulgaria is a small country, but so what—the sky above all of us is equally endless. One’s birthplace has certainly been pointed out nonrandomly by fate. That’s why I think that settled nations have been happier—those who have let their roots grow deep into the earthly biopoint shown to them from above. The rest, with souls of nomads—the way contemporary people are, by the way—are always discontent due to reasons they don’t understand. That’s why they don’t stop migrating. And it’s so simple: if someone rips the umbilical cord of the newborn with one blow, the wound of this cutting up, of this wringing out, of this violence, will bloom in the middle of his abdomen. That’s why midwives are careful not to cause pain, and treat the wound with ointments, sprinkle it with talcum powder, cover it with gauze. In the end, the wound heals; only that small hollow is left at the center of the human body like a funnel-shaped hollow conch, from which the silvery strand of the eternal imprint of the umbilical cord never stops stretching. Well, I am one Bulgarian woman who lives in the city, but who, through the path of her umbilical cord, never stops returning to her Place. It is my fateful inspiration.

from Visions

1.
when I longed to become
a gypsy
to smoke from a glass pipe and
gather in my bosom
wild mint and moist bee balm
and metal snakes
with droplets of solidified poison
on the tip of their tongues
to writhe around my supple ankles
then
I began to sleep with my eyes open
and to dream
prophetic dreams

2.
I could see my future
unfolding simultaneously
with my past
occasionally
times would race
to an uneven beat
I was breathing in my life to the same beat
trying to solve the divine case
of whether I get born and die
or die and get born
sometimes I would happen
to see through a slit of sunshine
and to divine matters
in a blink

3.
then I was given the answers
having asked no questions

4.
[…]

-Kerana Angelova
translated from the Bulgarian
by Zoya Marincheva

Is there an American poet who has influenced you or has made a an impression on you? How do you interact with American poetry?

Not only poets—I have infinitely many favorite writers. I don’t know whom to start with. Why not with Mark Twain? Or Jack London? I have to fly through the sky of so many shining names, which pulse in my mind like a galaxy of stars: Emily Dickinson, Whitman, Vonnegut, Ken Kesey, Jack Kerouac, Toni Morrison, Ray Bradbury, Salinger, Updike, Dylan…. I will end the list here. I’m sure that I’ve missed names that I’ll regret not mentioning.

Kerana Angelova

What forms of cultural exchange between Bulgaria and the U.S. would you find interesting, practical and helpful?

Any form of cultural exchange would be interesting and helpful. Bulgaria is the most ancient country in Europe and owns priceless Thracian treasures and artifacts. The genius of Bulgarian folklore, of the golden operatic voices are hardly as well-known as they deserve. We have film masterpieces with wonderful actors. Recently director Rangel Vulchanov passed away—an exceptionally interesting, world-class artist who left remarkable films to Bulgarian culture. And, I daresay, we have world-class poets. The forms of cultural exchange, naturally, I cannot be the one to offer, or to comment on their feasibility.

What do you wish for the anthology and its readers?

For the anthology, I wish to find its most sincere readers. For the readers—to appreciate the merit of the poetry in it, as well as the selfless labor of the editor and the translators.

More from Accents Publishing’s “Meet a Bulgarian Poet” series:

Kerana Angelova was born in Brodilovo. She holds a degree in education and has worked as a teacher and journalist, among other roles. Kerana is the author of 11 books of poetry and prose. Her novel Elada Pinyo and the Time received multiple prestigious Bulgarian national literary awards. Her latest book of prose, One After Midnight, was published in 2013. She currently lives and writes in the Black Sea coastal town of Bourgas.