Get in touch with us at sofiametaphors@abv.bg
INTERNATIONAL POETRY WORKSHOP
“SOFIA METAPHORS
(WOMEN'S MARKET)”
September 25-27, Sofia 2019
GUEST POETS
Germain Droogenbroodt (Belgium, Spain)
Germain Droogenbroodt, was born in Belgium but lives already 31 years in Spain. He is an internationally appreciated poet, translator, publisher and promoter of international poetry. He wrote short stories and literary reviews, but mainly poetry, so far thirteen poetry books, published in 28 countries. He translated – he speaks six languages - more than thirty collections of German, Italian, Spanish, Latin American, English and French poetry and rendered Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Persian and Korean poetry into Dutch.
As founder and editor of the Belgian publishing house POINT Editions (POetry INTernational) he published more than eighty collections of mainly modern, international poetry. In 1996 he set up a new poetic movement, called neo-sensacionismo with the famous Chinese poets Bei Dao and Duo Duo
Germain Droogenbroodt organised and co-organised several international poetry festivals in Spain, is also vice president of the Academy Mihai Eminescu, co-founder and advisor of JUNPA (Japan Universal Poets Association), artistic advisor of the Italian movement Poetry & Discovery, and founding president of the Spanish cultural foundation ITHACA. He also collaborates with the Italian poetry publication Margutte.
His poetic oeuvre is many-sided, but having visited the Far East more than 60 times and being a great admirer of Chinese philosophy, his poetry has become very philosophic, making a start with his poetry cycle “The Road”, (translated into Chinese by Bei Dao as TAO) a poetic bridge between the East and the West, inspiring important painters, such as the Indian Satish Gupta, who illustrated 5 of his books
His poetry, considered Taoist and ZEN has been published in China by The Shanghai Literature & Art Publishing Group published, by the Minsheng Art Museum and also in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan. Germain Droogenbroodt is yearly invited to give recitals and conferences around the globe. He was invited at the Qinghai Lake Poetry Festival, guest of the Shanghai Writers’ Association, guest of honour this year at the Wuxi YiJing conference, Nominated for the Nobel prize of Literature in 2017.
Tom Phillips
(Great Britain, Bulgaria)
Tom Phillips was born in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire in 1964 and now lives in Sofia. A freelance writer, his work spans poetry, drama, fiction, creative non-fiction and journalism. His poetry has appeared in a wide range of magazines, anthologies and pamphlets and in the full-length collections Непознати Преводи/Unknown Translations (Scalino, 2016), Recreation Ground (Two Rivers Press, 2012) and Burning Omaha (Firewater, 2003). It has also been translated into Bulgarian, Serbian, Romanian and Albanian. Tom is the founding editor of the annual publication Balkan Poetry Today (Red Hand Books).
As well as poetry, Tom has written more than 20 plays, with recent full-length productions including: No Time For Hope (Ship & Castle, 2017); Coastal Defences (Theatre West, 2014) and 100 Miles North of Timbuktu (Theatre West, 2013).
As a journalist, Tom has contributed to publications ranging from the Guardian and Tribune newspapers to cultural magazines and online business-to-business journals. His longest association, however, was with Bristol’s arts/entertainment weekly, Venue, to which he contributed regularly for more than 15 years.
Hayri Hamdan (Palestine, Bulgaria)
Hayri Hamdan was born in 1963 at Der Sharaf, Jordan River West Coast.
In 1967 his family moves to Jordan, where he graduates high school.
Hayri Hamdan has been living in Bulgaria since 1982. He graduated university in Sofia, where he obtained master's degree in the field of engineering.
Hayri Hamdan got married in 1989. He has three daughters.
Martin Solotruk (Slovakia)
Martin Solotruk (1970) was born in Bratislava, Slovakia. After studying various subjects ranging from physics, programming, to art history and translation studies in different places including Azusa Pacific University, California, and Warwick University, Great Britain, he graduated in English and American studies and in Slovak literature at Comenius University, Bratislava, where he now teaches. Solotruk’s first book of poetry Silent Wars (1997) won the Slovak Literary Fund Best Debut Award. It was followed by Grinding (2001), Plankton of Gravity (2006), Lovestory: Agens and Patiens (2007) and The Metaphysical Household (2017). His poems appeared in major anthologies in Germany, Ireland, Great Britain, China, Taiwan, Slovenia, Macedonia, and the US, his entire poetry books were also published in Spanish, German, Hindi, and French. Solotruk was invited to read at many leading festivals, including Printemps de Poetes in Paris, Poesie Festival Berlin, and many more, e.g. in Prague, London, Cracow, Dublin, Genoa, Firenze, New Delhi, St. Andrews, Taipei, Beijing, Moscow, Cartagena des Indias, San Salvador, San Jose, and elsewhere. His award winning translation interests include namely Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney, Charles Simic, John Ashbery, Ted Hughes, as well as drama done for major stages in Slovakia, including the National Theatre.
Martina Straková (Slovakia)
Martina Straková studied cultural sciences and later received scholarships at leading German universities and her PhD title in Philosophy. She is dedicated to writing poetry, painting and artistic translation from German and English language. She holds a free creative writing workshop Bring Your Poem offered to the wide public by the International poetry festival Ars Poetica in Bratislava, Slovakia. She debuted with a poetry collection called Pohľadnice z neviditeľných miest (Postcards from Invisible Places, Ars Poetica, 2019). She lives and works in Bratislava.
Márton Simon (Hungary)
Márton Simon was born in 1984 and he lives in Budapest. He is a poet, a freelance editor and translator – and a slam poetry performer. He has studied Aesthetics and Literature, Creative writing and Japanese language and culture. He is the author of a poetry collection titled “Songs of the Mezzanine” (2010). He also organizes an association of young writers (named JAK) and slam workshops. His first attempt at a Poetry Slam was in 2011 and since then he has won a few contests and performed in Serbia, Slovakia, Romania and Poland. At the 1st Hungarian Slam Poetry Championship he won 2nd place.
BULGARIAN POETS
Boyko Lambovski
Boyko Lambovski is a poet and essay - autor. He published 10 books with poems, and few books with novels, essays and fairy tails. He is holder of over 20 awards for poetry and opinion journalism, including Vladimir Bashev, Geo Milev, Zlaten lanetz, etc. His poetry has been translated in different languages - English, German, Russian, Serbian, French, Slovenian, Italian, Portuguese, Arabian, etc. He participated in many international writer competitions - in France, Norway, Cyprus, Russia, Romania, Turkey, Slovenia, Germany, etc.
Now Lambovski is President of Bulgarian PEN Centre.
Не himself is translator from Russian and French, mainly poets. He translated books of Joseph Brodsky, Robert Desnos, Nikolay Goumiliov, Andrey Voznesensky, Gui de Maupassant, Daniil Harms and many poems from over 30 autоrs for different magazines.
Kristin Dimitrova
Kristin Dimitrova is a poet, writer, and translator born in 1963 in Sofia, Bulgaria. Her novel, Sabazius (2007), was awarded the national Hristo G. Danov prize, was shortlisted for the Canetti prize, and has been translated into Spanish, German, Russian, and Romanian. Dimitrova has published two collections of short stories: Love and Death under the Crooked Pear Trees (2004) and The Secret Way of the Ink (2010). Her books of poetry include Jacob’s Thirteenth Child (1992), A Face Under the Ice (1997), Closed Figures (1998), Faces with Twisted Tongues(1998), Talisman Repairs (2001), The People with the Lanterns (2003), The Cardplayer’s Morning (2008, translated into Czech), and The Garden of Expectations and the Opposite Door (2012). Two selections of her poems have been published in English: A Visit to the Clockmaker (2005, Ireland) and My Life in Squares (2010, UK). Dimitrova is a winner of five awards for poetry, three for fiction and two for poetry translation (John Donne and Lewis Carroll). Poems, short stories, and essays by Kristin Dimitrova have been translated into 27 languages in all and published in 35 countries.
Petar Tchouhov
Petar Tchouhov was born on 23.06.1961 in Sofia, Bulgaria. He published 11 collections of poetry, a novel, two collections of short stories and a children’s book. His works has been translated into 20 languages and included in many newspapers, journals and anthologies in Bulgaria and abroad. He plays guitar in rock bands, writes music and lyrics. Petar performed his writing and music at festivals and other events in Japan, USA, Russia, Switzerland, Sweden, Germany, Hungary, Croatia, Lithuania, Turkey, Romania, Slovakia and Macedonia. He is the winner of the top prize at the 61st Basho Festival in Japan and many more others. Recently, he has been performing his poetry with the spoken rock band LaText (latext.eu) and has been playing also with the bands Gologan and Par Avion Band.
Petar is a member of the Bulgarian P.E.N.-Centre’s Management Board, the Association of Bulgarian Writers, the Sofia Haiku Club, the World Haiku Association, and Musicautor.
Dimana Ivanova
Dimana Ivanova (1979) was born in Varna, Republic Bulgaria. She earned her Masters in Slavonic philology at the University of Kliment Ochridski in Sofia with a minor in French philology. She has been awarded twice (2002, 2006) with the Grigor Lenkov Prize at the Czech centre in Sofia and once by the Bulgarian Union of translators in Sofia for the best translation of Bulgarian literature into foreign language for the year of 2017. She also received a number of international poetry awards (from the Czech-Slovak poetry festival “On the Morava banks”, 3. place in the Czech “Mělnický Pegas“, „Amavica“ in South France and other). She is a PhD. in comparative literatures at the Charles University in Prague from the year of 2011 and since than teaches in different high schools in Slovakia and Great Britain. She is the author of three poems' books "Invitation for a Father" (Ergo, Sofia, 2012), “Alphabet of the desires” (Sofia, Scalino, 2016) in Bulgarian and “Som ako morská voda“ (Bratislava, Ars poetica, 2018) in Slovak. Her poems have been translated and published into English, French, Spanish, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Serbian, Romanian, Russian, Ukrainian, Arabic, Turkish and Macedonian languages. She has participated in International poetry festivals as Ars poetica in Bratislava, Poetry Nights in Curtea de Arges, Festival of the Centenial nations in Romania, Days of the poetry in Czech republic, Feministanbul in Turkey and other. She has been the editor of the Colombian poetry anthology Antologia para la mariposa together with the Colombian poet Robert Max-Steenkist and has herself participated into different poetry anthologies in Bulgaria, Czech republic, Slovakia, United Kingdom, Colombia, Honduras, Mongolia, Egypt and other. She is also a member of the Czech alliance of the journalists, Bulgarian alliance of the translators, poetry movements Poetas del mundo in Latin America and the Czech-Slovakian Association of comparative literature.
Nikolaj Bojkov
Nikolaj Bojkov, born 1968 in Vidin, studied Hungarian philology and has worked across the spectrum as a cook, truck loader, interpreter in a sewing factory, librarian, Hungarian teacher, journalist, model at the Art Academy, book and newspaper delivery, copywriter, bookseller, translator, guard, window cleaner, childcare worker, courier, franchise provider, PR and advertising assistant, personal assistant to physically handicapped people, editor, waiter and as a barque worker. In 2000 he came out with his first literary work Metaphsyics, followed by other volumes on poetry Poems with Biography (2003), Declared in Love (2005). In 2006 he published his prose Letters to Petar in 2010 The book of life and in 2019 101 Dedications.
Ivan Hristov
Ivan Hristov (1978, Bulgaria) is a poet and a literary researcher. He is the author of the poetry collections Сбогом, деветнайсти век (Farewell, Nineteenth Century, National Prize for the best poetic debut Southern Spring 2002), Бдин (Bdin, National literary prize Svetlostruy 2006) and Американски поеми (American Poems, 2013), as well as of an academic monograph. Любовен речник (A Dictionary of Love), his fourth poetry book, was published in 2018.
His works have been translated into a dozen of languages. In 2015, Bdin was published in Turkish. The next year Bdin followed by American Poems came out in Romania. In 2019, his third poetry book American Poems was published in Paris, France within the framework of the European project Versopolis.
Since 2010, Ivan Hristov has been a member of the organizing committee of Sofia: Poetics festival. He currently works, as a researcher, at the Institute for Literature of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.