The writer Ilko Dimitrov told Radio Sofia about his new book, entitled “Once in August”
He is a lawyer by education, but writing also runs parallel through his life path. Winner of the Ivan Nikolov national poetry award, he is the author of many books, the first of which was published at the end of 1989, when together with Ani Ilkov, Kiril Merdzhanov and Rosen Drumev, the then publishing house “Bulgarian Writer” presented them as young voices , following the events of November 10, that year. He shared that if the events of change had not happened at that time, publishing his work would not have been possible. With the support of the poet Ivan Teofilov, who introduced him to the public space.
“He advised me to put together a book, but it stayed for more than a year and had to wait for democracy to happen,” the writer says.
“Then it was a time of serious censorship and an attempt to get out from under a cover. Every time has its covers, then there was one – a totalitarian cover, today it is another – the cover of the market, of course, it is preferable to the totalitarian one,” he noted Ilko Dimitrov.
In his words, however, the market hides other dangers that must be accustomed to in order to have reciprocity.
“It’s not easier for me than before, I say that quite responsibly, although it was hard then,” he claims.
But his literary path in poetry and essay writing still started in that turning point.
“Somehow the need to get something out of yourself is imposed, and I couldn’t sing or draw. It turned out that words appeared, and then it turned out that it was stronger than me, and so it is to this day, “reveals the writer, sharing that he does not fit into general groups and currents of reciprocity and creativity.
“Ilko Dimitrov’s collections of poems are always conceptual, serious, dedicated to the great questions of existence, asking about the meaning and the becoming of things,” writes Amelia Licheva about his book “Once in August”.
In fact, the subject is one – the reaction of man to what surrounds him, the author summarizes.
“This book is very special for me, it is very sharp as a self-disclosure and focused on current issues, unlike my other books, which are more philosophical, it is with an emphasis on the war and all these experiences,” Ilko Dimitrov specifies.
“The title of the book, ‘Once in August,’ is intended to recall August 1914, when the First World War took place, an event that marked the threshold of tolerance and absorption of human aggression, and humanity’s ability to sacrifice countless corpses and moves on as if things never happened,” notes the author
Hear more about the aspects highlighted in his book, which sincerely and frankly seeks the way to the readers. Lili Goleminova talks to Ilko Dimitrov.
