Stefan Markovski
- North Macedonia -
Stefan Markovski was born and grew up in the town of Gevgelija, where he completed primary and secondary education. He graduated on both the Department of Comparative Literature, Faculty of Philology and the Institute of Philosophy at Ss. Cyril and Methodius State University of Skopje and obtained MA in Screenwriting at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts (FDU) in Skopje with a feature film script.
Markovski’s writing career which covers books of different genres, topics and areas as well as theoretical studies and academic papers has granted him literary prizes and honors in Macedonia and abroad.
Markovski has been included in numerous anthologies of contemporary Macedonian literature, he has participated at literary festivals, and his works have been published in several European languages.
Markovski is a member of the Association of Writers of Macedonia, the Macedonian center of the International Theatre Institute and other associations.
He works as the chief editor of the oldest Macedonian literary magazine – “Sovremenost” (Современост), based in Skopje and is the editor of the poetry collections “Metric caravan” (Метрички карван).
He speaks fluently and translates from English, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Bulgarian into Macedonian.
About Markovski’s poetry collection titled “Hypergod”, Academician Radovan Pavlovski emphasizes: "The Hypergod as the god above gods understands itself, and is in a relationship of entangling and untangling with the poet Stefan Markovski. Located in that mutual creative inspiration, this "unpassed time" thematically contains 27 poems in the three-story treasury of the Third Millennium on three levels: subconscious, conscious and superconscious. In his starting point, the young poet enriches the contemporary hypermodern poetry with innovations that sound informative in the general hyper globalization. "
In an interview, Markovski has once stressed that the characteristica universalis of almost every author is the endeavor for some kind of change, the change of the surrounding world, which may again genuinely help to (re)define the meaning of one's own existence. The change sparked within Markovski’s verses as a waving of the young Macedonian poetry is an endeavor for the lost and forgotten values, at the same time forming its own, timeless metaphysical mythology which is in collusion with the contradictions of the present time and in this sense, the poet and university professor Ivan Dzeparoski postulates: with a philosophical focus, but embracing a subtle lyrical code, the poetry of Stefan Markovski pulsates with the spirit of our contradictory time revealing the fundamental axiological values for which we have to stick and towards which we should strive, as Markovski has successfully accomplished it in the following verses dedicated to all the dreamer-poets: dreamers we are / in vision dreams consuming dark hours / painting the world in Word again. / We are the dreamer poets / ours is but the sorrow of the day / we are the chilly wind’s dreams / ours is but the pain of the prey.
In his review of Markovski's first poetry collection "On some memories of that past" published at the age of 19, the poet and critic Vladimir Martinovski announced the general poetic-philosophical charge of his poetry, noting: "This poetry assures us that the insights of the poetic and philosophical ‘singing and thinking’ are not only in the distant past; in the poetic discourse of this young poet, narrator and researcher, the concepts and categories of domains of the natural sciences (form, space, relativity, etc.) are penetrated by those from the sphere of philosophy (wisdom, property, reality...). The movement through this poetic-philosophical itinerary is filled with surprises, since philosophical concepts in the poetic context encounter new and unexpected interpretations. "
About Stefan Markovski, critic Eftim Kletnikov comments that "he is one of the foremost names of the latest generation of Macedonian poets", author of "intellectual and curious nature, which requires synthesis between poetry and philosophy.”
And according to the choice of motives and the character of his creations, Stefan Markovski is a poet and philosopher, at the same time, or rather, a poet-philosopher who tries to bring in the intuition and logos in balance, to create the fabric of his verses from their refined and invisible thread, scooping from the deepest interior of the senses and consciousness, descending into the subconscious and climbing into the superconscious.
In that sense, for Stefan Markovski, we can freely claim the relevancy of Heidegger's definition of poetry as a speech of the being. In that sense, can we define him as a kind of poetic pre-Socratic who tries to poetically interpret the being? Probably. He extracts his talent’s hidden contents in a refined lyrical way and gives them a fertile imaginary flow.
In the collection In Nomine, Stefan Markovski does not follow the main poetic structure of his generation, dominated by irony as the basic stylistic figure and worldview of reality. On the contrary, he is disposed to the dominantly lyrical associative type of poetry. It is of highest importance to him, as Carlyle would put it, the metaphysical quality of the poem, to which the Symbolists especially insisted in the European modernity; he truly inclines towards a recognizable symbolic type of expression, but not in a classic, crystallized poetic way.
As a matter of fact, for example, as is the case with a symbolist such as Stefan Malarmé, whose poetics of suggestion (things to be suggested, and not named) to which is close the poetics of Stefan Markovski - his poetic images are dimmed and dissolved in emotional and musical effects. As such, they are esoteric, slippery and barely comprehensible.
The poetry that Stefan Markovski prefers is primarily interested in the ontological, not the existential reality of any kind.
Everything in it is concluded with a metaphysical key that actualizes it in each new verse again and unlocks the so mysterious and hard-to-understand speech of the being.
Markovski’s poetic paintings are deliberately put to be associatively loose, semantically dissolved in a general philosophical stream, which is basically Heraclitian, in which time flows away taking the moments and memories as a river - a symbol of the illusion of human life.
On the other hand, in the review of the poem "Shy shine the universes," the writer and critic Vasil Tocinovski determines the poet as "the current voice of modernity, but also a herald of the future". Going ahead of his own time, according to Tocinovski, Markovski's virtuosity here is impressively circled with the first and last cycle where the predominant theme is the social function of the poet. The I-form as a writing nuance is not only a confirmation of creating his own autobiography, but also a tendency for his own autochthonous work with a personal attitude and values for the world and measure of the word and man, space and time." A pivotal theme is the man/subject as an energy and power in endurance and withstanding all the elevations and falls in the once-given human life.
Translated by: Emilija Koviloska
Poetry
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Going after the white griffin / По трагата на белиот грифон
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Blossomlane / Цветопат
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Metaphysics of Love / Метафизика на Љубовта
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Get up again / Стани повторно
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Our ashes / Нашата пепел
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The joy-breathing Universes / Вселените што дишат радост
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Towers / Кули
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Steam / Пареа
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Slowly / Полека
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Slowly / Полека
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Eros, you / Ерос, ти
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Silence is an empty sheet of paper / Тишината е празен лист
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The people’s poet / Народниот поет
