June is the month when wounds heal faster
Ina Ivanova loves the wind and believes in the language of art. Her new poetry collection is called Криле от папиемаше/Wings of papier-mâché. We talk to her about writing poetry a few days before the collection appears in all good bookshops.
Wings of papier-mâché … papier-mâché is a technique for making various things by gluing together bits of paper. What are your poetical wings made of?
They are made up of the belief that we should accept our human frailty and be more considerate towards each other. Confrontation over every possible issue in our society has worsened lately … but I am still hoping that art is the one territory where we can reclaim our empathy. In order to survive.
As a technique, papier-mâché belongs to the plastic arts: it’s an affordable, but somewhat forgotten practice that demands patience, paper and imagination. Symbolic, isn’t it?
You first started writing prose. With other authors, it’s the opposite - they start with poetry and then move over to short stories and novels … You have said many times that your way of making literature is exclusively prose-oriented. How then did this lyrical collection sneak through and what will we find in it?
This collection came into being thanks to my publisher - Bojana Apostolova and Geri Georgieva at Janet 45. And because they believed in me at just the moment, I didn’t believe in myself - again! So, I am grateful they mounted these wings on my back.
Poetry is a special language. It requires the long (sometimes several years long) accumulation of meanings and concentration. It requires honesty and a relentless search for the right word. It requires reinventing the world - so that it can begin to shine.
What I usually do is try to tell a story with the language of poetry.
To quote one of your poems:
“Iced tea:
a cup of June rain,
a pinch of fresh lime-blossom
and ice, as much as the heart can take.”
How much ice can the heart take? What is there in your heart when you write poetry?
Usually, the heart is forced to take more ice than it is able to take. All the time.
You surely know the fable about the two wolves that live inside us - a good one and a bad one. And the winner is the one that we feed. At those moments when we need to count to ten, I wish we always asked ourselves: which wolf will be fed by my actions?
And when I write poetry (and I’m embarrassed to talk about this) … but when I write poetry, I just put it down on paper. I am a mediator … I don’t belong to myself because the text is larger than its author.
On the other hand, I can keep on editing a text for months, even years, in search of the meaning. That’s my job.
We often come across the month of June in this book. Which is your favourite season and why? And is there a time of the year when writing gets easier for you?
June is the serene beginning of summer. Just imagine the bright blue sky of June. The first warm evenings, the cherries, the air imbued with the sweetness of lime trees, the glow-worms that we have all seen as children. I think my favourite months are June and September, both of them on the boundaries of summer. Summer as a category, rather than a season.
I think I’ll stay there. Where wounds heal more quietly.
What is Ina Ivanova writing now? Is she turning back to prose?
For the moment I’m keeping silent. I’m storing up words and who knows - perhaps?
Ina Ivanova is the author of the following collection of short stories: Right of Choice and Other Calamities (Ars, 2009), The Name of Sunday (Janet 45, 2012) and A Flying Accordion (Janet 45, 2014); of the novel Kar Tanesi (e-book); and the poetry collections small letters (Janet 45, 2016) and Wings of papier-mâché (Janet 45, 2019). She publishes work in the Bulgarian literary magazines and journals Suvremennik, Literaturen Vestnik, Stranitsa, Glossi, NO Poeziya, DIVA!, as well as in the anthologies Other Water, 64 and Fathers Never Go Away. She has received national literary awards and her texts have been translated into English, Russian, Polish, Farsi, Arabic, Croatian and Serbian.
The Bulgarian text first appeared in podtepeto.com
