She sits, timidly and girlishly moving around on her chair constantly. But the words that flow out of her are steady and sure. Her long bushy hair covers her shoulders and her deep brown eyes are friendly. Kristin Dimitrova is an accomplished poet and writer, one of the most defining ones of her generation.
"I always thought I would become a painter, not a writer", confesses Kristin. "Meanwhile I was a keen reader. The writers I liked were so good, that I never thought I could match their accomplishments. Up to the point, at age 23, when I became aware that all of them produced some rubbish as well. And then I thought: if they can do it I can do it too. But I also had another stimulus; I wanted to impress a man with my writing. In retrospect I know it wasn't my writing that won him over. One always uses all kinds of strategies to impress someone. In the end you find out it was just the first glance that made the love bug bite. I guess this is true for all beginnings, writing included."
Kristin recently took part in a special programme organised by the Munster Literature Centre for the Cork 2005 European Capital of Culture. This literary project consists of translations from 13 European poets from new and applicant EU countries. The final English texts are being rendered by 13 Cork-born poets, almost all of them working from cribs, glosses produced by an intermediate translator. Kristin's work in this project is called A Visit To The Clockmaker and was translated by Gregory O'Donoghue.
"I received a letter from Gregory saying that he'd read a lot of Bulgarian poetry, but that he'd really liked my poetry and that he wanted to work with me on the project. It was out of this world! I still have the letter", says Kristin. "He came to Bulgaria to discuss the project. When I saw him I said: Gregory, you look like Obi Wan Kanobi. He laughed. Working with him was a great experience. Then January came and I was to go to promote the book in Cork. It took a lot of organisation, but the day came that I was supposed to travel."
"Upon arrival at the airport I was told that I couldn't board the plane, because I needed a visa for Ireland. I didn't know about that. I asked them to let me go anyway and to sort it out once I got there. But I was told that I would be arrested upon arrival. There was nothing left for me to do but take my luggage and go back home. It was so bad, I felt so guilty, it never crossed my mind that I needed a visa for an EU country. I called my publisher and I explained everything. I wrote a long letter to Gregory apologising. He wrote back saying: You should have come. They would have put you in prison, but it would make us all internationally famous!" she says laughingly.
Kristin Dimitrova was born in 1963 in Sofia. She is a poet, translator, journalist and writer. Educated at the University of Sofia, Dimitrova received her masters in English Language and Literature, a subject which she continues to teach. Dimitrova has published the collections Jacob's Thirteenth Child (1992), A Face Under the Ice (1997), Closed Figures (1998), Faces with Twisted Tongues (1998), Talisman Repair (2001), and The People with the Lanterns (2003). In 2002, a selection of Dimitrova's work was published in trilingual volume in Bulgarian, Greek and English. She has received many awards for her work, including the 1996 Poems of the Year Award Zlaten Lanets, the Vek 21 weekly Best Poetry award for 1997, the Golden Metaphor AB Publishers' Annual Award for 1997, and the Ivan Nikolov Award for 1997, the Association of Bulgarian Writers Best Poetry Award for 2003. Her book of short stories Love and Death under the Crooked Pear Trees took her to the fourth position of best-selling Bulgarian authors for 2004 according to the Helicon chain of bookstores statistics. Dimitrova translated a selection of John Donne poems in 1999. Translations of her own work have appeared in literary journals in America, Austria, Canada, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland, and Sweden.