Viktorija Angelovska
- North Macedonia -
Viktorija Angelovska (born 2002, Skopje) is studying at the Department of Macedonian Language at the Blazhe Koneski Faculty of Philology at UKIM, Skopje. She is the author of the poetry collections Station 15 (PNV Publications, 2019) and The Night Knows Everything (PNV Publications, 2023). She has participated in the international poetry festival ‘Verse in the Region’ in Zagreb, Croatia; at ‘Astalni Proekcii"; at ‘First and Female’ in YCC; at ‘Springboard’ as part of the Skopje Poetry Festival; at ‘Poetic Episode’ and ‘Klinci’ organized by Kultura Beta; as well as other poetry readings. She is featured in The New Birth of the Word: Anthology of Young Macedonian Poetry, edited by Vesna Mojsova-Chepishevska and Ivan Antonovski (2023, PNV Publications), as well as in FAIRIES: A Panorama of Macedonian Poetry Written by Women, from the 19th Century to the Present Day, edited by Slave Gjorgjo Dimoski and Julijana Velichkovska (2023, Velestovo Poetry Night). Her poems have been translated into Croatian and published in the magazine Poetry and in the Croatian anthology of contemporary Macedonian poetry Pronađena riječ (The Found Word, 2023, HDP).
Towards the poetry collection "The Night Knows Everything" by Viktorija Angelovska
Everything happens at night, and thus it knows everything, asks nothing, hides, enters indigo. And then it whispers. Whole worlds of light flow and merge into verses that speak of our secrets. Mine, yours, his. They keep each other company, but we never talk about it, and it's easier if we do.
This is how I tried to communicate with myself while reading the new collection by poetess Viktorija Angelovska, "The Night Knows Everything." A small book with big verses that is read quickly but, contrary to that, stays with you for a long time and you think together. Reading the book felt like conversing with the author, even though she doesn't directly address anyone, perhaps not even herself, but leaves the verses to call you, to have a conversation with you in private. Of course, if you want to.
Although formally the book is not divided into cycles, it can be perceived as divided into several larger parts that touch on themes of youthful anger, self-discovery, solitude with pain, then hope, courage, and finally self-acceptance with all the weight of the previously mentioned. Among them, Angelovska writes about everything that comes along with love. She questions things that we have become so accustomed to living with us that we forget to ask them questions. Then the shells are created, most often around the heart – as strong as she describes them or soft like a market bag – they are there. We must remove them ourselves, ask ourselves what we have gathered in our eyes, and trust them when they release the internal poisons. This can mean, as the young poetess writes, what constitutes our bitterness and how we got here and whether we are to blame or we always share it with another. The presence of the other is woven in a way that the second within us or the other for us is like a girl I met / in the toilet at a disco, / exchanged compliments, / with a sad look, with smudged mascara or is the words that when they are gone are just a boring melody. It is interesting that as strong as the otherness is, the poems are focused and turned towards the singular self and the desire for freedom. Hence the longing for the Sun as a piece of hope in the darkness of the other. Hence the untamed need to live / ... / is a dance in the storm / even when you think / that the sun will never shine again. Here I allowed myself to skip almost an entire poem and connect the first with the last three verses because the author possesses the skill – the poems, however read, are connected, because each verse has a special, yet common meaning. Most of the poems are like the first and second parts of a two-part sentence, and between them are strung verses that say the important things that we (un)intentionally always miss in everyday communication.
The poetics of everyday life is undoubtedly present throughout the book. Especially when she directly addresses us, reminding us that it is harder to forgive ourselves than for another to forgive us and poses the question of how much scarier it is for the other to do so, although we often forget. The lyrical I with the metaphor of Alice searching for the moment, represented as the white rabbit, and in that search constantly falling into the hole are verses that can be found on the first pages. This suggests that it is poetry born from a long journey and intimate focus with reality like a long ride on a crowded bus. Almost every verse cries out for freedom and a desire for a draft so much that she wishes to become, as Angelovska sings, the wind that defies gravity and that easily disappears. Parallel to this, before us, we have a reading of a utopian search for earthly things that seem farther away in life with hunched shoulders. Such are:
picking blackberries,
a hidden kiss
and a song that
by default you get the lyrics wrong.
And then:
to be a cold beer,
shade under a tree
by a flowing river
where you step in up to your knees.
to be life,
real, to the core...
The feeling of youthful energy intertwined with years of rebellious charm and evident maturity, in the end, is steeled with the awareness that there are things that move us more than love. These may be the nameless person who always / hangs in the same place under the bridge / begging me for a can of Skopsko / at 9:20 in the morning., the grandmother who in the basket with oranges / is actually looking for someone to listen to her or her own vulnerability. Then, as the poetess writes in one of the last poems, we remember the gritting of teeth, the need to be strong, to endure, to overcome, to try... to learn how to trust the Sun again, even though we know that it is the night that knows everything.
Until the next moon of Angelovska, which we hope will happen, and until then listen to the night whispers. They always have something to say to you.
Angela Boskoska, journalist at Radio MOF
Poetry
-
*** / ***
-
*** / ***
-
*** / ***
-
*** / ***
-
*** / ***
-
*** / ***
-
*** / ***
-
*** / ***
-
*** / ***
-
*** / ***
-
*** / ***
