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Nikola Madzirov to Visit UNL April 18 & 19

Prairie Schooner and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln English Department are excited to welcome Macedonian poet and translator Nikola Madzirov as the Prairie Schooner Visiting Writer from April 18-19. Madzirov, according to the Tottenville Review, is “a first-rate poet who deserves worldwide attention,” and Der Spiegel says his poems “are similar in quality to the poems of the Nobel Prize winner Tomas Tranströmer. They are genuine and open.” Born in Strumica, Macedonia, to a family of Balkan Wars refugees, his award-winning poems have been translated into thirty languages. BOA Editions published his first selection of poetry in the US, Remnants of Another Age, in 2011. According to Professor Kwame Dawes, Editor-in-Chief of Prairie Schooner, “Few poets I know manage to contain in a few lines such lucid and unsettling images that never let us off the hook for an instance, as well Nikolai Madzirov.”

While visiting Lincoln, Madzirov will lecture on Balkan literature and translation in the Bailey Dudley Library of Andrews Hall at 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday, April 18. This lecture is free and open to the public. On Thursday, April 19, at 10 a.m., Madzirov will be interviewed for Prairie Schooner’s Podcast series, Air Schooner, and he will conduct a one-hour translation workshop with UNL students and faculty in the afternoon. At 7:00 p.m. on Thursday evening, Madzirov will give a free, open-to-the-public feature reading at the Great Plains Art Museum (12th & Q Streets).

In the foreword to Madzirov’s Remnants of Another Age, poet and translator Carolyn Forché writes, “Madzirov calls himself ‘an involuntary descendant of refugees,’ referring to his family's flight from the Balkan Wars a century ago: his surname derives from mazir or majir, meaning ‘people without a home.’ The ideas of shelter and of homelessness, of nomadism, and spiritual transience serves as a palimpsest in these Remnants.” The recipient of many awards and fellowships, including the University of Iowa’s prestigious International Writing Program, Madzirov has been awarded numerous international literary prizes, such as the Hubert Burda European Poetry Award. Professor Dawes added, “He is a splendid poet whose reputation is growing rapidly and deservedly. Beyond that he is one of the gentlest and kindest people I know. Our students, faculty and community will be enjoying a tremendous presence during his visit. I am so pleased that we managed to get him here.”