»die unzufriedenheit einer fischin« / »In uns brennt die elektrische Lust« Nonkonforme Lyrik aus Bulgarien

In the organizer's words:

December 2, 2025 / 7.30 pm / Literature Café

"the dissatisfaction of a fish" / "The electric desire burns within us"

Nonconformist poetry from Bulgaria

This evening brings together a translator, Henrike Schmidt, and a translator, Andreas Tretner, to talk about two very "unusual" books that they have translated from Bulgarian into German this year - two poetic spirits whose candle of life burns from both sides and whose literary work has something excessively volcanic about it:

Aleksandăr Vutimski, who had lost almost his entire family to TB at the age of ten, contracted the disease himself in 1938 and wrote towards his early death in 1943 at the age of 24, like many of his successors in times of HIV/Aids: a shining solitaire, the early accomplished head of a young Sofia poetry bohemia, drunk with inspiration and cheap wine, permanently below subsistence level, without a fixed abode, shuttling between pub and clinic, street, park and flats.

Maria Virchov, née Stepanova, disappeared from her provincial Bulgarian town in the 1980s while still at grammar school to become a punk singer in Siberia. Her debut "Yellow Poems" was published in 1995 and was followed by three more volumes of poetry before she died in 2011 in her early 40s. The author and performer influenced an entire generation with her fusion of punk and postmodernism, including her now famous fellow poet Georgi Gospodinov.

Two notoriously non-conformists, a queer song of praise and an unruly invocation of witches - dewy poetry from yesterday and the day before yesterday from the "sister country" Bulgaria!

Admission: 10,- / 7,- EUR

Event organized by Literaturhaus Leipzig e.V.