Absinthe 17 Preview: Nikolay Boykov

This is the 16th in a series of posts previewing the new issue of Absinthe, our 17th, focused on Bulgaria. In this post we present a poem by Nikolay Boykov.

Dream of the Wall and Key

                                 for Alex Miller


I slept huddled next to a wall of doors
endless like a wall without end
I woke up
in my mouth was a key
I unlocked the first closest door
There in a windowless room
huddled next to the wall opposite the door
a man sat and slept
in his mouth a key
I woke him up
and we went to wake up
the others asleep
behind other doors of white rooms
Until I woke up


Translated by Jonathan Dunne

READ MORE by ordering Absinthe 17.

(c) Neva Micheva

Learn more about Nikolay Boykov and Bulgarian literature at the Contemporary Bulgarian Writers site.

Interview with Manuel Rivas

Thanks to the Literary Saloon we learned about the interview with Galician writer Manuel Rivas over at the Financial Times:

When did you know you were going to be a writer?

One day I noticed that I talked to myself. On the way to school, in winter, I saw the letters of my breath rise out of my mouth. When I arrived at my class, I tried to recreate that writing in the air. Those were the first poems I had published in a magazine.

Read more about Rivas and pick up From Unknown to Unknown, translated by Jonathan Dunne, at Small Stations and also read his work in Absinthe #8.

Manuel Rivas

Anyone who enjoyed the Galician writer Manuel Rivas’ poetry in Absinthe 8, or has read one of his novels, The Carpenter’s Pencil and In the Wilderness, or the recent edition of his short stories Vermeer’s Milkmaid & Other Stories, published in the States by Overlook Press, might like to know that the Sofia-based Small Stations Press has just brought out an anthology of eighty poems, From Unknown to Unknown, selected and translated into English by Jonathan Dunne.

The anthology has a condensed and extremely poetic introduction by the Scottish writer John Burnside, author of The Asylum Dance and Glister, which is available to read on the publisher’s website.

Since I am that translator, I should like to include here my favourite poem from the anthology, which always makes me smile…

The Last Judgement

Riseth ye up that ben ded, and cometh to the jugement
Chaucer

And so God will send the angels
to separate the good from the bad.
And they will put some to one side with Saint Abel,
the martyrs
and the beggar Lazarus.
The others with Cain,
the blustering tyrant
and the rich glutton.
On the right Peter and on the left Judas
the infamous.
Till when? the damned will ask.
And the Lord will clear his throat with a glass of water:
For ever and to the end.
And when everything’s over,
we’ll arrive,
the latecomers,
a Soneira cart moaning
in the now deserted valley of Jehoshaphat.