Saranda Mehmedi
- North Macedonia -
Saranda Mehmedi (1997) grew up in Šutovo, a village in Kičevo, North Macedonia. She studied General and Comparative Literature in Skopje and now she is pursuing her master's studies in Cultural and Literary Studies.
She is the editor of the “Lyrical House of Aco Šopov”, a multilingual portal which aims to promote the work of the eminent Macedonian poet. She is also the translator of Šopov in Albanian language and her translations have been featured in the Struga Poetry Evenings edition “Šopov, Reader of the Ashes” - Selected Poems in Eight Languages (2023) and the University “Ss. Cyril and Methodius”, Faculty of Philology “Blaze Koneski” edition “Пронајди збор“ (Find a word), a collection of students’ translations of Šopov’s poetry in fifteen languages honoring the 100th anniversary of the poet’s birth (2024). She is also the translator from Macedonian into Albanian of the Anthology “Sytë e mbrëmjes” (Evening’s eyes) of the International Poetry Festival “Ditët e Naimit” (Days of Naim) in Tetovo (2023).
She is interested in raising awareness about various issues through art and literature and as a student she co-wrote the comic book “Black and White Lives” (UNHCR, Skopje, 2017) connecting the story of Anne Frank with a Syrian girl dreaming of becoming a writer in the refugee camps.
She writes in Albanian and translates her writings into Macedonian and English as well. After finishing her studies she published her first book of poetry “Poiesis” - a bilingual edition in Albanian and Macedonian, published by Sigmapres in Skopje in 2021.
“Poiesis” enriched her experience as a young poetess with participations in International Poetry Festivals like “Struga Poetry Evenings” (Struga, North Macedonia, 2022), “100 Thousand Poets for change” (Strumica, North Macedonia, 2022), “Days of Naim” (Tetovo, North Macedonia, 2023), “Skopje Poetry Festival” (Skopje, North Macedonia, 2024) and in different poetry readings in Europe House Skopje (Edition “Klinci”, 2024), Europe House Struga and Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts (In celebration of International Poetry Day, 2024). Her poems have been published in different magazines in North Macedonia. Her poem “Falling” has been translated into Japanese by Yasuhiro Yotsumoto and published in the poetry magazine Beagle in Japan (2022).
ON THE POETIC MANUSCRIPT “POIESIS” OF SARANDA MEHMEDI
The manuscript offered under the title 'Poiesis' by the young debut author Saranda Mehmedi consists of around thirty poems, original works by Saranda, presented in their original Albanian language version as well as translated into Macedonian.
Even with this first author's manuscript, Mehmedi shows a specific poetic maturity, such that the offered poems are characterized by refined aesthetics. It is evident that there are literary influences from the works of great authors of world literature, not only of poets but also of prose authors, that is due to the subtle aesthetics of memory, lyricism, and minimalism, which she owes to writers such as Marcel Proust or Franz Kafka. Saranda Mehmedi has a profound knowledge of world literature, she demonstrates that the style is visionary, which makes it difficult to analyze with mere intellect, resulting in her poems being simultaneously deeply intellectual and simple.
This poetic manuscript possesses an extraordinarily wide emotional register, and at the same time, in a formal level honors the subtile poetic challenge which the traditional poetic form imposes on the poet: the author of these verses manages to preserve the distinct value of her poetry which becomes evident in what may appear to be a “conflict” of the sensibility that this form requires and the characteristics of the Albanian/Macedonian language.
The conflict here is transformed into an advantage, where the bigger the conflict, the bigger the challenge for the original sonority and the richness of the different languages to be embodied in one form resulting from different cultural contexts. Saranda Mehmedi’s poetry manages to evoke phenomenal poetic imagery and phonetic combinations. It also delivers powerful poetic testimonies about the position of a “supposed'' poetic subject, perceiving through the subtle phonetic calembours and its relationship with both nature and the world, as well as with the (for the poet always unfavorable) historical context in which we are all thrown.
Saranda Mehmedi’s poems represent a novelty in Albanian and Macedonian poetry, primarily due to the innovative approach in universalizing local themes. This approach captures both the emergence and the dispute of the individual, thus shaping a poetic testimony which is shiny and silent, still in the process of development.
Maja Bojadzvieska
(Translated from Macedonian by Saranda Mehmedi)
“POIESIS” BY SARANDA MEHMEDI
The young author Saranda Mehmedi in her own poetic work under the title “Poiesis” reveals the freshness of the approach that shows how the most elementary events in nature and in social reality can be experienced and expressed through language. Marked with a philosophical aura, the poems as a crystal clear spiritual play are the result of the vibrations that can be caused by raindrops, snow, wind and clouds. With extremely powerful identifications with natural phenomena, the author discusses the wounds and cuts that shatter the illusion and challenge the individual inclined towards lofty aspirations and dreams.
The confrontation with reality and its capturing at times is expressed through raindrops, at times through snow flurry, and at times through walnuts and hazelnuts of the vast territories of the gardens in which the soul wanders and seeks shelter for itself, sometimes to be solaced, but to seek hope as well in the untouched phenomena of the authentic existence, one that always erases the influence of reality and primordially longs to unite with nature.
Often the expression of this incredibly talented young poetess plays with both ideas and images, using metaphors to build a deep awareness of how one can be identified with something, and then how to escape that identification in search of a new one. Poems like “Falling”, “Autumn Elegy” or “Cosmogony of the Rain” anticipate in themselves both the dimensions of the creation and the concept of vanishing or not-being. With the idea of showing her own sensitivity to the aesthetic, the author discusses beauty, the body, the flourishing of vital energy, as well as the dissapointments which tend to limit the longings and shatter the aspirations. The chain of verses or better say the wholeness in Saranda Mehmedi’s poems survives on the foundations of an exceptionally skilful recognition of all the momentary moods that overflow the consciousness, the mind, and above all the soul which as far as it remembers is drawn to enter the great and inexperienced areas of the future, where it yearns for refuge, to calm down and to start wandering again after new quests and temptations.
I recommend the fresh and incredibly deep poetic vibrations in the philosophy of the poetic expression of this young author for publication with the conviction that they mean a new and original contribution to the Macedonian cultural scene and its multicultural space colored with the shades of the rainbow.
Slavica Srbinovska
Translated from Macedonian by Saranda Mehmedi
Poetry
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ROCKING / PËRKUNDJE
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FALLING / RAMJE
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AN ARACHNE / NJË ARAKNE
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DELIRIUM / KLLAPI
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DESTINATION / DESTINACION
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HISTORY / HISTORI
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COME DANCE WITH ME / FTESË PËR VALLËZIM
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YEARNING / МАLL
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THE RAVEN / KORBI
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ON BEAUTY / PËR BUKURINË
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AUTUMN ELEGY / ELEGJI VJESHTE
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COSMOGONY OF THE RAIN / KOZMOGONIA E SHIUT
