Poets tend to return to certain things without realising
that they’re doing it. In my case, it’s currently dogs (we have a lot of dogs
in the street we live on in Sofia), birds (we have a fruit tree just outside
our back window) and aeroplanes (we’re under the flight path into Sofia
International Airport). The Bulgarian poet and translator Alexander Shurbanov has
a similar place in his heart for trees – of which, of course, there are many in
Sofia. Not so long ago, his Bulgarian publisher Scalino published a collection
of these poems in Bulgarian – Дендрариум – and has now followed this
with an English version in a limited edition of 100 copies. As well as being a
beautifully produced book, Dendrarium is a truly rewarding collection of
work translated by the author himself. From the simplest of everyday
observations, Shurbanov creates poems of great beauty, both celebrating the
magnificence of these extraordinary plants and acknowledging the implicit
warning that what we value in life may not actually be what’s important for the
survival of all our species and of the planet itself. The trees in these poems,
in other words, simultaneously act as reminders of the beauty of the natural
world and our threat to it as humans and inadequate carers for our environment.
At the same time, they also help us to understand what is, in fact, truly
valuable and why we should value it. The poems themselves are sparse, often focussing
on details which might otherwise be overlooked, but the images that they create
are reliably beautiful and astounding – they will make you look again at these
extraordinary things which we too often take for granted in a new light. They
will also hopefully make you want to read more of Shurbanov’s poetry which, as
I said in my review of his previous English-language book from Scalino, Foresun,
“continually repays close attention”.
Pic: Scalino
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