Bozhana Slavkova – Drvo sa čituljama (Mili Dueli 2023 – Grand Final)

ДЪРВОТО С НЕКРОЛОЗИТЕ

Не мога да намеря двойника си
в некролозите, сраснали се с дървото.
Сякаш, като заковеш некролога няколко пъти, умножаваш безсмъртието,
а не смъртта.
Покрива се мъртво с мъртво
върху живото дървесно тяло.
Компост от спомени.
Тук никой не ме помни,
не е имал моята кръв.
Аз така и не знам коя е моята група.
Мога да съм всяка.
Баща ми е B, a майка ми – А.
Баща ми има съсирек в мозъка си.
Съсири се в мозъка ми.
Защо не му казах нищо?

Може би трябва да съобщаваме смъртта,
но защо трябва да я обновяваме –
40 дни, 6 месеца, година.
Може би показваме, че сме живи –
времето тече за нас?

Не, спря,
съсири се времето
и на никъде не отивам.
Превърнах се в това дърво с некролозите,
хапещи се за това кой да бъде запомнен.

Дървото не го ли боли?
Не се ли задушава под всичката тази тежест от истории и очаквания,
роли – „Любящата майка, дъщеря и колега“, „Добър баща, отдаден служител, мил син“,
предвидености, разкрасявания, блудкавости и кич.
Смъртта е кичозна.
Не можем ли просто да станем пръст или прах?
Оставете ме на мира!
Искам да ме разпръснете след моята смърт,
да мога да танцувам по вятъра
и да не съм съсирек или дърво на никого.
————————————

THE NECROLOGY TREE

I can’t find my double
in the necrologies merged with the tree.
It’s as if by nailing the necrology a few times, you multiply immortality,
not death.
Dead is covered with dead
on the living tree body.
Compost of memories.
Nobody remembers me here
they don’t have my blood.
I don’t even know which type I am.
I can be anyone.
My father is B and my mother is A.
My father has a clot in the brain.
He clotted in my brain.
Why didn’t I tell him anything?

Maybe we should announce the death
but why should we renew it –
40 days, 6 months, a year.
Maybe we’re showing that we’re alive –
time is running for us?

No, it stopped,
the time clotted
and I’m not going anywhere.
I turned into the tree with the necrologies,
biting each other over who will be remembered.

Doesn’t the tree feel pain?
Doesn’t it suffocate under all this weight of stories and expectations,
roles – “Loving mother, daughter and colleague”, “Good father, dedicated employee, kind son”,
predictions, embellishments, insipidities and kitsch.
Death is kitsch.
Can’t we just become dust or soil?
Leave me alone!
I want you to scatter me after my death,
so I can dance in the wind
and be nobody’s clot or tree.

——————————-

DRVO SA ČITULJAMA

Ne mogu naći svog dvojnika
u čituljama spojenim sa drvetom.
Kao da zakivajući čitulju nekoliko puta umnožavaš besmrtnost,
a ne smrt.
Mrtvi su prekriveni mrtvima
na živom drvetu tijela.
Kompost uspomena.
Ovdje me niko ne pamti,
nemaju moje krvi.
Čak ni ne znam koja sam grupa.
Mogu biti bilo koja.
Moj otac je B, a majka mi je A.
Moj otac ima ugrušak u mozgu.
On se zgrušao u mom mozgu.
Zašto mu nisam ništa rekla?

Možda bismo trebali objaviti smrt
ali zašto je obnavljati –
40 dana, 6 mjeseci, godinu.
Možda pokazujemo da smo živi –
da vrijeme ide za nas?

Ne, zaustavilo se,
vrijeme se zgrušalo
i ne idem nigdje.
Pretvorila sam se u drvo sa čituljama,
grizemo jedni druge oko toga ko će biti pamćen.

Zar drvo ne osjeća bol?
Zar se ne guši pod svim tim teretom priča i očekivanja,
uloga – “Voljena majka, kći i koleginica”, “Dobar otac, predan zaposlenik, ljubazan sin”,
predviđanja, ukrasa, bezukusnosti i kiča?
Smrt je kič.
Zar ne možemo postati samo prašina ili zemlja?
Ostavite me na miru!
Želim da me raspršite nakon moje smrti,
da mogu plesati na vjetru
i ne biti ničiji ugrušak ili drvo.

Translated to Montenegrin by Anđela Turukalo Dabetić

Bozhana Slavkova is a young (born 26.07.2004, a Leo) artist and activist.
She works in the fields of music (playing flute, guitar, and composing), literature, cinema, photography, visual arts, theater, performance. She began her creative journey with the flute at the age of 7 in the Pleven music school. She graduated the National School of Music and Performing Arts “Prof. Pancho Vladigerov”, Burgas, majoring in flute.
She has been engaged in poetry since she was little, and her entire worldview is marked and shaped by her poetic nature. Her first first prize for a poem was from the competition of Rotary Club Burgas “My city, my Burgas” in 2016. Subsequently, she won many prizes from literary competitions, many of which she won three years in a row, such as “Veselin Hanchev”, “Petya Dubarova “, “Nikola Vaptsarov”, “Stoyan Mihailovski”, “Georgi Davidov”, “Resurrections”, “Sparks”, “Little poetics”, “, “Flying speech”, “Orpheus’ fire”, “Fireflies in the hands of time” , “…and I think you are Her”, “I love you, sea”, “Let’s conquer the whole universe”, “Love is…”, “Milka and Emil Koralovy” and many others. She has had her work published in the literary magazine “Ah, Maria”, in the youth magazine “WEMatter”, in the online magazine “New asocial poetry”, and in various anthologies of contests. She has a clearly expressed social opinion, which she demonstrates by winning contests like “#ThisIs – contest for bold ideas” in which she wrote a new governmental order. Her art, especially her visual art, deals with social and ecological issues.
Bozhana is involved in photography and visual arts. She mainly works in the fields of art installation and collage. When she was only 16 years old, she organized her first eco-social art installation “Hugged Nature”, which dressed urban trees in knittings made from old clothes, raising questions about “fast fashion” and the logging of urban trees, the place of women in art and our society, the passing on of the traditions. Last year, she realized “Hugged Nature” again, this time not in Burgas, but in the American University in Blagoevgrad, and for this purpose, she won funding from the Bulgarian Fund for Women.
In 2022, she made her second eco art installation “You are the changes” in Burgas, financed by WWF. The art installation of mirrors offers passers-by a look at their involvement in both climate change and its solutions.
In 2022, she also created the three-dimensional collage “Me recycled”, which was placed in the Space for Contemporary Art “Luna”, winning a scholarship established to support young artists. There are many more nascent visual projects on the go.
Bozhana has several short films, her first with the Burgas film lab program for teenagers, she also makes films with Nadezhda Koseva’s film class at the International Sofia Film Fest, in which she participated for three consecutive years. She works on several projects of her own, including poetic video art in which she is the director, composer, screenwriter, operator, and actress. She mainly works as a director, assistant director, screenwriter, set designer.
Bozhana is interested in contemporary forms of art such as performance, sensory and verbal theater. She has participated in seven sensory theaters at different festivals. She has been a performer in the performances Drift and (Un)seen in Burgas, Bulgaria, and Super Simbionte in Venice, Italy.
She was an actress and interviewer in the verbatim theater “The End of the Song”, presenting the story of different people who lived during the communist era in Bulgaria. The theater was staged twice in Sofia due to its great success.
She is developing her own verbatim theater “Is there such a thing?” that talks about the history of the queer people in Bulgaria.
With music, she participated in the audio-visual concert “Reflector”, in the concert “Osmosis with a breath of folklore” by the famous countertenor Dimitar Arnaudov and in the puppet show “Born under a lucky star”, she participates in Still Sessions organized by the “Institute for Silence Research”.
With the flute, she has won various awards from the competitions “The Sound of Time”, “The Ship of the Arts”, and “Varban Varbanov”.
Bozhana participates in many trainings, exchanges and volunteer activities. She has attended trainings of Greenpeace, Za Zemiata, BFW, WWF, master classes for flute, dance, poetry, theater, cinema and others. She has been to 5 Erasmus+ exchanges on various social and environmental topics. She has been a volunteer for SIFF, BIFF, Open Buzludzha fest, Wake up, “Water”, Beglika, for Greenpeace, BBF and many others.
Bozhana is an active young person with a strong social position in the spheres of feminism, ecology, equality, human and nature rights, queer rights and others.

The main problem blocking peace, standing as a wall in front of it, in Bulgaria and in the world is the blindness and ignorance of people. Everybody is looking at the others from their own tower, not trying to understand them, to sympathize with them, to see we’re all humans, everybody is seeing the others just as the others. We don’t know about each other and not knowing leads to fear and fear leads to aggression. Men fear women, straight people fear queer people, Bulgarians fear Roma, locals fear immigrants. All of that because we don’t know each other.
Poetry is a very direct way to get to know the inner world of the other, to understand them on the deepest, most human level. Poetry should present the very core of the writer and should go to the very core of the reader. Poetry is also therapeutic, even if it doesn’t end up in the hands of a reader, everyone should write poetry from time to time to let their sorrows and dreams out on the paper and to make something beautiful out of them, saying to them – “you’re me and you’re worthy to exist as art. “