Photo: Maja Argakieva
Damjanovski’s poetry is an attempt to create philosophical and socially engaged verse through a sonic experience of merging music and word and an exploration of language through simplicity.
Biography
Iva Damjanovski, born on 09.01.1996 in Skopje, Macedonia. She is currently a student at the University of Trento, Italy in a Master’s of Musicology Program (inter-university course with Free University of Bolzano) as well as the “Ss. Cyril and Methodius” University in Skopje, Macedonia in a Master’s of Piano Performance and Composition Program, class of prof. Marija Gjosevska.
She is the author of a few published research papers in the field of musicology, writes music for film and theatre, teaches and regularly performs internationally as a pianist and thereminist and as part of the experimental pop duo “Alembic”.
Her first poetry book “They” was published by “Blesok Publishing“ and the book was the winner of the “Igor Isakovski” award for best debut poetry book by a young author (2017). In 2019 the second and broadened edition was published by PNV Publications. In 2020 her second poetry book “Hesitation” was published by the same publisher and was awarded the prestigious national award “Miladinov Brothers” for best poetry book of the year at the Struga Poetry Evenings. In 2022 she was laureate in the “Antevo Slovo” and has won the special prize in the “Castello di Duino” international poetry competitions for best unpublished poem. She is part of the “Versopolis” platform since 2021 and her poems have been translated in Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, English, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Romanian, Irish, Dutch, Portuguese and Bengali. In 2022 she published her third multilingual poetry book “Triage”. Her poetry has been presented at the International Cork Poetry Festival, the “Mostra de Artes da Palavra” Festival in Oeiras, Portugal and “Poetry International” in Rotterdam, Netherlands and has been published in many international poetry anthologies and literary magazines. She is also part of the Creative Europe international project Urban Travel Machines which was presented at the Literary Festival in Vienna, September 2023.
Outstanding title:
HESITATION (2020)
If when it comes to Macedonian poetry there is something in 2020 that deserves the so often used phrase “a literary event”, then according to the comity of the “Miladinov Brothers” award believe it is the book of the young Iva Damjanovski.
As a habitus of a new generation, but at the same time the sensibility which is timeless, as musicality and intermediality which vibrates on the edges of the poetic expression colliding with other forms of art, this book is proof that the Macedonian language is a vibrant, potent, living material from which one could build verse stimulating both ear, heart and mind.
No. of pp: 58
Awards and honors:
- Miladinov Brothers poetry award at the International Struga Poetry Evenings festival (2020)
Translation:
English
Latest title:
TRIAGE (2022)
“Triage” is comprised of two parts: a continuance of the poetics in “Hesitation” and a multilingual poetry project.
Her idea on multilingual poetry is one that Iva has been developing over the course of the past year and it would be an experiment that consists of simultaneous writing in at least two different languages, plating with the opportunities translation in meaning and phonetics gives, creating new ways of semantic dialogue.
This would mean a poem could be read in either language and hidden wordplay as well as meanings would be discovered when the poem could be read in both languages.
No. of pp: 65
Rights:
Iva Damjanovski
ivadamjanovski@gmail.com