Natasha Sardzoska (Skopje, 1979), poet, writer, essayist, literary translator, interpreter (FR, IT, ES, EN, PT, CA), anthropologist, has lived in many European cities, among which Milan, Lisbon, Paris, Brussels, Stuttgart. She holds a PhD in anthropology from the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris and University of Bergamo. She is Affiliated researcher at the Center for Advanced Studies South East Europe in Rijeka in Croatia and Assistant professor at the Institute for Anthropology and Ethnology in Skopje.
She has published the poetry books Blue Room, Skin, He pulled me with invisible string, Living Water, Coccyx, essays, short novels and stories. She has published poetry books in the USA, Italy, Kosovo and her poems are translated in more than 15 languages in various international anthologies and literary reviews. She has translated more than 50 authors from Italian, French, Portuguese, Catalan and Spanish languages, among which: Pasolini, Saramago, Carnerio, Montale, Boyunga, Margarit, Sanguineti, and others. She has won the prize from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Italy for best translation of the book Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. She attended the literary and translation residency in the Institute Ramon Llull in Barcelona.
Her poetry readings are with performative and interactive character, combining vocal experiments, music and dance. She has performed at many international poetry festivals and literary venues: Ars Poetica Festival in the National Gallery of Bratislava: International Poetry Festival in Genova in the Palazzo Ducale; in the Museum Revoltella in Trieste; at the Macedonian Cultural Center in Sofia; at the Academy of Arts in Berlin within the Poetry Festival of Berlin; at the Sha’ar International Poetry Festival in Tel Aviv performing with sax, contrabass and contemporary dance in Yaffa Arab-Hebrew theatre; as well as many literary readings across many cities in the Balkans (Belgrade, Plav, Tirana, Rijeka, Struga etc.)
In Skopje with the French Institute she organized the poetic soirée Les rivages de l’exil for the francophone poetry on exile; with the Italian Embassy in Skopje the Italian poetic-musical evening Il vino è la poesia della terra where she has performed poems in Italian language; and the poetry reading For a World Without Walls in collaboration with the International Poetry Festival of Medellin. Her poem Doll on Strings has been published in English and Spanish in the International Poetry Anthology against child abuse. She is part of the European poetry platform Versopolis.
Her poetry intertwines sensuality, reminiscence of the flesh, exposes inner pain, exile, homelessness and reveals spiritual freshness. Her poetic memory has performative character capturing the dramaturgy of the chamber space of the human existence.
Useful links:
https://www.versopolis-poetry.com/poet/145/natasha-sardzoska
https://natashasardzoska.wordpress.com/author/natashasardzoska/
TREE OF WINTER
Cold fire in the forest
Rough rinds on the edge of this window
I see, I burst shivering without thinking
in a burning interzone
That restores me and glows and wriggles my bones my womb
And yelps without my name without your recognition
A fish from a northern sea
You give me
Grasp of wheat and you spit a bit of wine in my mouth
You are my race, my unease
turgid seeds
uprooted dry layers
LACE AROUND YOUR EYES
Four men in you I saw
And when you came in I felt you were searching for me
And everybody shut up and the world around fall apart
And all movement turned slow and blind
The clock was beating with the sound of a home
Green leafs and red female tongues were burning
Hungry for your thirst you pulled up my head
With a silk string you pulled me proud to you
All those women that made you lonely reached me
Grasping my feet
But my hamstrings and cartilage were bursting into pieces
And my ankles were calling you voiceless
I do not understand why this night washes me away as wine
From where you are yowling elegantly and softly
You eject a wolf cry weaved with opal
You hit me with your tongue through your open leg
I am not afraid that I will not have you
Nor do I go away from your exit gate
I have thrown on your eyes a veil weaved with my hair
So you can see me better in the middle of a burning forest
A nomad lost in the void of his own sea
I pronounce mutely your name
I call inclement your skin
I caress you slowly in my mouth
Beauty deeper than all sensual thoughts art you
Dark knight bewildering white horses
Soft node leather rein translated into rhythm
You are coming from distant cities powerful
You are swelling down the boulevards deaf for any other luxurious inquietude
You are expelling sparkles underneath your leather shoes
While you are boiling steaming in the coffee cups of my silver mornings a
A balcony red wine raw meat and livid sunset you sip in me
birds beak
liquid breath
broken lace
satin hours
whirlwind pine trees
irritated tigers
glowing
in my womb
DOLL ON STRINGS
Walking down the blacktop
While wild rabbits are screaming in boiling water
Slaughtered
Conspiracies
Words
Unrevealed
And at each step I take I inhale blood
fragile leaves in a Japanese garden are caressing my lips
while I am laying down in the gush of blood and thousands of bewildered flowers
flowing in my hair
You and I
Tokyo and Home
Incalculable steps of the flesh
And again those animals are screaming as if they were the forgotten pot of boiling
water
And I wash your feet so you can lie down underneath my skin
To become a city like any other city that we walked
And we did not know
And we did not know each other
And we did not know
When all those energies were fermenting in us as in bewildered rabbits
slaughtered but alive in the vertiginous water
The tongues of the dead kites to tell us to tell you
I am here
I follow you from each airport pathway and I know when I hear your name
It is music with unknown rhythm
And nobody knows that music
But I tremble from your gaze and I lost my voice when you came to me
And my skin was becoming darker after each bewildered step that you were taking
towards my chests
Growing nipples burning lips in winter
I knew we were one same city one same shadow one same rain and same skin
And the night before I met you I was crying like a child because all crazy plans crashed
down
And before you came in the Japanese garden
In me I could hear screaming all the slaughtered animals
And I was growing shamelessly mute
With open legs underneath you
As a layer of fertile wheat in your overwhelming whispering
humble and perverted
you arise above the eradicated overcoats of the purple passion
ONE SAME CITY
Something begin to grow and beat
Unclear and innocent
While we were drinking wine with strange girls
I could hear you smiling in the rhythm of an African candombe
When they serve you with a glass of wine
I weave myself around one moment imprisoned in confused kernels
I spit seeds
I stay awake at every dawn to feel your beats
Heartbeats
How can one fear to grasp the night and then to throw it away?
The violet flowers with morning dew and the mad recalcitrance were not enough?
Leave I cannot
I come to you without knowing if this path has an end
But I know wild berries are flowing in my blood
And I weave a spider’s nest with black spit
A layer of tiny boats
is your promise to me
when you are not here
you are present as never
and your silence is hurting
louder than a cup of black tea breaking through the white wall
you are in my kernels a fish bone valves interstices in between my teeth
black sperm on someone else high heels
night porter that knows all my secrets
strange angel that does not talk but says it all
that on this soil someone else’s blood is boiling
RAW MEAT
I close the venetian blinds
And the closet full with socks so sad miserable and weak
Reflections of this and each and every city
Where we are not but we could
We could, but in this world there should be a balance
Blood and vein that explode
And all those violins should promise peace
Indeed?
And you will take a bow
And your head will bend down
As if you were sucking blood from a finger
As if you were soaking up
As if you were pulling out a nail from alive meat
IN THE RHYTHM OF HIS HEART
I got air stuck in my throat at each alarm signal
because you strangled me.
You came into my dream secretly
You twisted my spatial dimensions
You pulled me as a servant to your decision
You thread me in your leg
You stamp a burn-mark against evil thoughts
You discovered me in the middle of the screaming mouths and evil eyes
You slip me up as a woolen sock in the middle of war times
I was shambling around your neck like a goat on a hill
Very lonely chewing wild grass cracking my teeth
And I am holding on my vision and my breath in one fixed point every time I see you
sweating
You are splashing around vertiginous cognitions
And so I stopped counting down the illusions
And as an act of rebellion I decided to miss all my flights
To wait, to grow my hair pale, to darken my skin
To impel myself as a hyena on your sex
Finally alone
Translated by the author, edited by Sinead McMorrow