Once There Was Spring: Poems and Prose Poems by Geo Milev

 Artistically and politically radical, Bulgarian poet, translator and activist Geo Milev (1895–1925) produced an astonishing array of work over the course of his short life and yet very little of it is readily available in English translation. Once there was Spring contains new translations of all his major poems and prose poems, from the early Symbolist cycle ‘The Cruel Ring’ and First World War prose sequence ‘By Doiran Lakee’to his modernist reworking of Bulgarian folksongs ‘The Icons are Sleeping’ and his most famous work, the radical anarcho-communist epic ‘September’.

Table of Contents:
Contents Introduction 1 Translator’s note 8 POEMS 1: The Cruel Ring 13 Parsifal 16 ‘Speak: so at once you disappear’ 17 ‘And at this hour when in long-drawn-out despair’ 18 ‘O rain, o rain abundant and drear’ 19 Sentimentality 20 ‘In this hour of evening deceits’ 21 Diary 23 ‘Until you avert your gaze in lonely disbelief’ 24 Fabulous interlude:Voyage to China 25 Sensation 28 Ballad 29 ‘My head – a bloody lantern with broken glass’ 30 ‘The moon, old snake’ 31 ‘Strike the third watch!’ 32 ‘The wrathful Earth opens’ 33 Lohengrin 34 2: The Icons Are Sleeping 35 3: Requiem for the poet P.K. Yavorov 45 4: Hell and other poems 55 From the book ‘As Dur’ 57 Krastyo Sarafov 59 Nightmare 60 From ‘Andante Amoroso’ 61 Day of Wrath 63 Be ready! 66 March 67 Hell 68 5: September 77 PROSE POEMS By Doiran Lake 99 Black Banners 106 Consider the birds of the air and the lilies in the field 111 Expressionist Calendar for 1921 113 Dream-book 120 The Mirror 122 Apocalypse 123 Ugly Prose 125 May 134 The Fire Serpent 136 CRITICAL WRITINGS Modern poetry 143 Against realism 157 Appeal to a Bulgarian writer 164

About the Author :
Tom Phillips is a UK-born poet, translator and lecturer living in Bulgaria where he teaches creative writing and translation at Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski. He has trans- lated the work of many of Bulgaria’s leading contemporary poets while his own poetry has been widely published in magazines, anthologies, pamph- lets and the full-length collections Unknown Translations (Scalino, 2016), Recreation Ground (Two Rivers Press, 2012) and Burning Omaha (Firewater, 2003). Forthcoming publica- tions include A Moment Short of Perfection: Selected poems of Kristin Dimitrova (White Pine Press) and a volume of Tom’s own poems originally written in Bulgarian, Self-Portrait with Tobacco Moustache (Da). Geo Milev was born near Stara Zagora, Bulgaria, in 1895. After studying in Sofia and Germany, he served with the Bulgarian army in the First World War and sustained a serious head injury that resulted in the loss of his right eye. On returning to Bul- garia, he embarked on a prolific literary career, publishing poetry, translations, theatre criticism and literary articles. Influenced both by expressionism and leftwing ideas, his work became increasingly radical, most notably in ‘September’, his response to the Bulgarian uprising against the 1923 coup d’etat. Milev was one of more than 400 inno- cent suspects executed without trial in the reprisals that followed the communist attack on Sofia’s St Nedelya Church in 1925.

Review :
  “A century after his death, Geo Milev’s poetry and prose has found in Tom Phillips a skilful translator and competent interpreter. In this selection the figure of a major Bulgarian poet looms as an important representative of European expressionism” – Alexander Shurbanov “Anyone interested in symbolism, expressionism and modernism, as well as the fate of European intellectuals in the early twentieth century, will need this book.” – James Peake