EMILIJA TODOROVA

 

 

Artemis

 

She drives out

crazed shadows of deer

from a white horn

when hunting

hungry eye is her bow

thin whip

her lonely tongue

cracks

wondering wandering winds

to unfurl

virginal seed

with a moon sickle

ripen to a song

she eagerly

harvests

incites

with blood

that turns into light

when she writes

unknown words

in blank dictionaries

of some godless time

after

 

Wall

 

You grow

like a dark moon in a lake

you don’t know me

yet you claim you guard me

against evil eye and alien shadows

uncomfortable shoes and comfortable conscience

against the world I knew

or maybe didn’t

when I say

I am scared of what I remember

and even more of what I don't

your echo doubles my fear

l bite

scrape

scratch

slash

scorch you

to blood to bone

I weaken

you surge

fed by my name

my mother's rough hand

etched into your base

 

Absorption

 

I open one eye

a world of beauty is born

I open the other eye

and settle in it porou

 

EMILIJA TODOROVA

 

EMILIJA TODOROVA is a Macedonian Australian writer. Born in Skopje, Macedonia, in 1989 she migrated to Australia where she has held various executive managerial and leadership positions. Emilija started writing and freelancing while still living in her homeland. She was a regular contributor to a couple of newspapers, as well as the Third Programme of Radio Skopje and was one of the founders and Deputy Editor of a youth magazine for popular science. Emilija has won numerous awards in Macedonia, former Yugoslavia and Australia for poetry written in the Macedonian language, as well as awards in Australia and in the US for poetry and other literary forms in English. For her collection of poems Gravity Emilija received the 2022 Stojan Hristov Award for best poetry book by an expat at one of the world’s largest and most reputable international poetry festivals - Struga Poetry Evenings. In the same year she was a runner-up in the prestigious Nova Makedonija short story writing competition. Her poems have been published in literary magazines and periodicals, and her work included in several anthologies, more recently in the poetry almanac Frida – Women Speak (Književne vertikale, Belgrade 2023), Redefining poetry anthology (Litterateur RW, 2023), Woman Scream, International Poetry Anthology of Female Voices (Grito de Mujer, 2023), poetry selection Skopje Ascents (Feniks, Skopje 2023), Nano poems for Africa (Silk Road Literature Anthology, 2023), Senior Stories collection of short stories (selection by the Fellowship of Australian Writers – NSW, 2022), Poems for Skopje (Feniks, Skopje 2021) and Contemporary Short Literary Forms (Feniks, Skopje 2021). Emilija translates from English, Macedonian, Serbian and Bulgarian. For exceptional achievements in her career she has been awarded, among others, the Australian Public Service Medal and a medal for advancing multicultural Australia.