Marta Markoska

- North Macedonia -

Marta Markoska (1981, Skopje) graduated from the Depament of Comparative Literature at the Faculty of Philology “Blaze Koneski“ in Skopje, and earned her masters degree at the Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies in Literature at the Institute of Macedonian Literature in Skopje. 

 

She is the first recipient of the “Todor Chalovski” prize awarded to a young Macedonia writer to recognize exceptional promise and contribution in the fields of poetry, literary criticism, essays and creative writing. The award resulted in publication of the bi-lingual (Macedonian-English) edition of the book “Black Holes Within Us” by GALIKUL - Association for culture, literature and art from Skopje founded in 2007 by Todor Chalovski (1945-2015), one of the most eminent Macedonian writers.

 

To date, Markoska has published fourteen publications. Besides the above-mentioned book, she is also author of Black Holes Within Us (poetry, first edition, House of Culture “Koco Racin”- Skopje, 2014), Culture and Memory (cultural studies, Matica makedonska, Skopje, 2014), Discussion on Zen Buddhism: Religious and Philosophical Transcendence Between Eastern and Western Thought (scientific study, Matica Makedonska, Skopje, 2013), Headfirst Towards The Heights (poetry, second edition, Magor, Skopje, 2013), Headfirst Toward The Heights (poetry, first edition, OU Centre for Culture “Aco Karamanov”, Radovish, 2012), Hyper Hypotheses (essays, Institute of Macedonian Literature, Skopje, 2011), Whirlpool in Bethlehem (stories, Templum, Skopje, 2010) and All Tributaries Flow Into My Basin (poetry, Templum, Skopje, 2009).

 

Markoska is a recipient of the following awards: “Aco Karamanov” (2012), for the poetic manuscript Headfirst Toward The Heights and “Beli Mugri” (2014), for the poetry manuscript Black Holes Within Us. Also, she is awarded in a short story competition Nova Makedonija newspaper (2015) for the story “Heights of Felix” and was a first place winner of the short story competition “Elektrolit” (2007) for the story “What happens when you're reading Frazer”.

 

Her work is included in several domestic and foreign anthologies of contemporary poetry and prose.

She is a member of the Writers’ Association of Macedonia since 2012.

 

She has published following books:


Brief impressions of the book “Black holes within us“ by Biljana Perchinkova 

 

Marta Markoska poured out the book of poems seemingly in one breath (having in consideration that every poem is packed with meaning, vividness and wholeness), but actually it is the result of a deeply mature search of an individual who seeks for nothing more than the purest essence of its being. For in her poems Marta is Ipsissima: The One Who I Her Own.

It is no coincidence that the title refers to the black holes, a term borrowed from astronomy. Marta’s verses are mathematically strict and cut like a knife. She asks us to cross

“nine hills

nine fields

nine seas“

(in the poem “Applied Geography“) so we can reach her shores.

Her poems have no gravity (“No Gravity Poem“) and she circles “life like a free electron (in) constant orbit searching“. But, is the orbit really necessary to our wonderful poetess? For the orbit is round, and she is endless.

She writes to her companion who is filled with stories, bringing him back from iliusion to reality (as in “You Are Filled with Stories, And Here I Am Writing You Poems“). She is searching for the “Essence of Love“ refusing to measure her restlessness in pimples on the chin, her passion in the length of the sideburns, her love with the distance between the eyes, and her youth in pills that keep us healthy. She will not allow her essence to be measured in electricity and heating bills. Because it is “the measure we use to measure we’ll be measured by“ - and we are timeless.

Finally, the universe that Marta Markoska so selflessly shares with us is a counterbalance of reasoning that is indespensably limited (as in “Counterbalance of Reasoning“).

Astrophysics irreversibly confirms that the ratio between the total mass of the host galaxy and the mass of the supermassive black hole at its centre is a constant, regardless to whether the galaxy is active, and vigorously shines with the quasar of its core, or not.

Consequently, the supermassive black hole forever remains the creative force that made the galaxy, and not a destructive swaller of the space-time entity. This is even more true for “Black 109

Holes Within Us“!

Marta Markoska’s poems are fist tight zen koans; they are a hot sweet chestnut in our mouth that we can neither swollow, nor spit until the vivid pulsating reality irrevocably bursts in front of us. Like omniexistence, she urges to know herself. She is a “star that crumpled in its own gravity“ (“Quantum Theory of Love“) and now returns disembodied in the space-time entity. Marta multiples her poetic (in)equations by zero, just like the genius quantum physicist Richard Feynman did before her, resulting in an electron that comes back from the future insted of a positron that travels from the past.

For Marta, it doesn’t matter if we go up or down (“Counterbalance of Reasoning“) and she wishes Newton was born in the same era with Heisenberg. We could only asume how would then the master of absolute space and absolute time (Newton) face the Uncertainty Principle of modern physics. The only mathematical cross-section of this encounter would be (presumably) the absolute silence, like she says in “(Un) Counsciousness“:

“We used to spend hours and hours talking

Now we spend hours and hours – in silence!”

 

This is where I finish my brief gleam because this award-winning book of poetry, “Black Holes Within Us” by the poetess (scholar and philosopher) Marta Markoska does not tolerate long, mechanical and methodological deliberate analyses. It is to be experienced.