SILVANA DIMITRIEVSKA IN AN INTERVIEW WITH NILAVRONILL SHOOVRO

 NILAVRONILL TALKING WITH

POET OF THE MONTH

SILVANA DIMITRIEVSKA

September 2024

NILAVRONILL: Welcome to Our Poetry Archive, dear poet. And congratulations as the poet of this month. I would like to know your personal views on literature or poetry in general.

SILVANA DIMITRIEVSKA: In a beautiful and very famous thought by Leonard Cohen, it is said, “Poetry is only proof of life. If your life burns well, poetry is just ashes.' Poetry is our personal, but also our collective mirror. Historically speaking, poetry is the first literary form, closely related to singing, to music, to song... because man has always had the need to express his deepest thoughts and feelings. Birth, celebration of important events, weddings, going to war, social upheavals, and even death were always marked with a song, that is, a poem. The poet is a medium between the earthly and the heavenly, he is someone who knows how to see and the invisible, to understand the sound of the grass growing, to speak in the language of birds, to paint with words the world around him, as it is or as it should be.

NILAVRONILL: What are the factors that have influenced you immensely in the growing phase of your literary life. When, most probably you were not certain of your future as a poet or writer. Do you think society as a whole is the key factor in shaping up you as a poet, or your poetry altogether?

 

SILVANA DIMITRIEVSKA: I started writing poetry very early, at the age of ten. However, in high school, and mostly in college, I think that the greatest influence on me was the French and Russian romanticists and symbolists. The appearance of romanticism and symbolism as literary trends is proof that poetry is a direct response to social circumstances and developments. Since 'no one is an island unto himself' and we are all part of the society to which we belong, historical and social influence is inevitable. However, true poetry does not melt, it is a response, a rebellion, it points out the negative aspects of living, and it elevates everything that is virtuous, noble, sublime.

NILAVRONILL: Do you consider your literary life as an extension of your self-existence? If so, how it is related with the time around you?

 

SILVANA DIMITRIEVSKA: Poetry is not a matter of exclusion. A poet is someone who thinks through the prism of the artistic in every moment of his life. That is why my literary life and my existence are intertwined, my poetry is my deepest Self. In the context of temporal and spatial markers, poetry is said to be timeless and cannot be framed within any boundaries. However, each time brings its own way of living and thinking, and poetry is a reflection of all that.

 

NILAVRONILL: As a poet, do socio-economy and politics in general influence your literary visions? If so how, and if not, why?

SILVANA DIMITRIEVSKA: They do not affect my personal political and literary visions, because I see poetry as a universal language that unites people and does not divide them on any basis. Starting from the thought of Dostoevsky who said that 'beauty will save the world', poets often know to say that poetry will actually save the world, because it has the power to purify and heal souls. However, I think that poetry alone cannot do that, but the powerful messages it can contain can influence and change both people and society.

NilavroNill: Is it possible to put into the words everything that as a poet you wish to express literarily? If not, why?

 

SILVANA DIMITRIEVSKA: Not entirely. Plato pointed out that art is only 'the shadow of shadows'. Man is God's creation and, in his essence, he is the Universe in miniature. Words are a way to express all that we carry deep inside, but they only capture and can never fully describe the depth of our spirit and soul.

 

NilavroNill: Do you agree with John Keats (1795-1821) on his ardent believe, “Truth is beauty, beauty is truth”? Even if we take for instance the war of Kurukshetra, the conflicts between Kauravas and Pandavas, or the fall out of second world war in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, how can we manage to reconcile between those truths with beauty as promulgated by Keats?

 

SILVANA DIMITRIEVSKA: The concept of the interconnectedness between truth and beauty is something that has challenged philosophy for centuries, and Keats managed to explain it in one sentence. According to him, beauty and truth are inseparable aspects of ultimate reality. For Keats, the appreciation and study of beauty - in art, in nature, or in human life experiences in general - actually reveals to us the truth about the world and our place in it. We live in a world in which, on the one hand, we see that man is capable of great evil, but on the other hand, man's true nature, in fact, longs for beauty and sublimity.

 

NilavroNill: Too many writers believe imagery is an essential part of poetry. Do you agree this notion? Even if we consider Leonardo da Vinci’s words that poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.

 

SILVANA DIMITRIEVSKA: The essence of poetry is in its power to describe things beyond words, to create and awaken in us images that we will experience with all our senses and tell our own personal story deep inside. Hence, poetry must possess that imagery, otherwise it would not be poetry.

 

NilavroNill: Do you believe, passionately falling in love with a particular language is essential to excel in poetical ventures? And is it possible to write poems in multiple languages preserving same literary quality? We would like to know your own experiences.

 

SILVANA DIMITRIEVSKA: I believe that language is the basic tool that a poet uses to create his poems and that is why he must be a master of his craft and have an excellent command of the language in which he writes. I personally write in Macedonian, English and Serbian. But it is one thing to express thoughts and feelings through lyrics in a particular language, and it is quite another to try to translate a song from one language to another. In poetry, a translation differs from a paraphrase, precisely because it is particularly difficult to translate the verses of a poem without losing its original message and essence.

 

NilavroNill: Do you consider poetry as an emotional outbursts of poet’s personal sentiments? Or is it a long journey to realize and express the universal sentiments beyond all personal limitations? Again, we want to understand your views through your personal experiences of your literary life as a poet.

 

SILVANA DIMITRIEVSKA: Poetry is a combination of personal and universal experience of oneself and one's place in the world. In every poem there is a lot of the mind, spirit and soul of the one who wrote it, but at the same time every poet strives to convey some universal messages in the verses. I have already mentioned before, the poet is like a bridge between the earthly and the divine. He knows that each person is a person on his own, but at the same time each of us is a part of one universal energy that connects us in one ultimate principle - Love. So, even when we write only for ourselves, it always affects other people.

NilavroNill: I would like to quote T. S. Eliot, “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists.  You cannot value him alone; you must set him for contrast and comparison among the dead.” We would like to know your views in details on Eliot’s comments.

 

SILVANA DIMITRIEVSKA: In my opinion, poetry contains the collective memory of humanity. Literature, philosophy, art as essential cultural values ​​are something that are passed from one generation to another. They are our cultural and spiritual wealth. That is why it is impossible to write poetry without transferring the cultural code that we have inherited from the past. Each of us has been influenced by a poet, an artist, a philosopher from whom we have learned just as we ourselves will influence someone else.

 

NilavroNill: Would you consider, it should be the goal of a poet to enlightens the readers towards much greater apprehensions as well as appreciations of life and eternity in general? Or is it better to write poems only to console the poet’s soul?

 

SILVANA DIMITRIEVSKA: The purpose of the poet is to convey a message that will awaken powerful feelings in the readers and encourage them to think more deeply about themselves and the world around them. Poetry has the power to touch the souls of others, and even to have a healing, or according to Aristotle, cathartic influence. Therefore, as I said above, even when the poet writes only for himself, his poetry affects and reaches other people.

 

NILAVRONILL: We are almost at the end of the interview. I remain obliged to you for your participation. Now, personally I would like to know your honest opinion about Our Poetry Archive. Since April 2015 we are publishing and archiving contemporary world poetry each and every month. Thank you for sharing your views and spending much time with us.

 

SILVANA DIMITRIEVSKA: For me, OPA is an incredible poetic and life experience that helped me grow emotionally and spiritually both as a poet and as a person. OPA unites quality poetic names from different parts of the world and in its monthly editions actually shows in the best possible way the power of poetry to overcome all boundaries and spread a universal message of art and beauty. It is an honor to be part of OPA.

 

SILVANA DIMITRIEVSKA: She was born in 1981. in Skopje. She graduated from the Faculty of Philology 'Blaze Koneski' - Skopje at the Department of General and Comparative Literature in the Macedonian language, and later she also completed the One-Year School for Journalists at MIM (Macedonian Media Institute). She was the coordinator of the literary circle 'Mugri' and the editor of the poetry almanac of the same name. She is the organizer of several poetry readings and promotions. Silvana writes poetry, short prose, essays and haiku verses published in the first Macedonian haiku magazine Mravka. She is the author of the anthology Angels with five wings, published as part of Struga evenings of poetry. She appears as a reviewer of several collections of poetry by young, but also by already renowned authors. She is the winner of the second and third 'Blaze Koneski' prize for a scientific essay. For her first collection of poetry, “You, who came out of a song”, she won the prestigious national award 'Atso Karamanov'. For her short story 'Butterfly Skirt' she won the first prize at the national competition 'I tell a photo 2021'. She is the winner of the third prize at the international poetry festival 'Vigil of Kokinski Mugri 2022' and the second prize at the same poetry festival for 2023. In 2023, she won the second prize at the international poetry festival for children's poetry 'Stihuvalki'. In 2023, at the international poetry festival 'Literary Sparks 2023', she was also the winner of the second prize, and at the same poetry festival in 2024, she was again the winner of the second prize. In 2023, she was declared one of the laureates of the prestigious 'Naji Naaman' world prize for poetry and was awarded the title of honorary member of the Academy of Culture of the same name in Lebanon. In 2023, she won the third prize for poetry at the international poetry festival 'Tafil Kelmendi' in Kosovo. In 2024, she was also the winner of the third prize at the international poetry festival 'Antevo slovo'.