Vanya Petkova

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Vanya Petkova
Vanya Petkova Portrait.png
Portrait of Vanya Petkova
Born(1944-07-10)July 10, 1944
Sofia, Bulgaria
DiedApril 26, 2009(2009-04-26) (aged 64)
Other namesHatija Sadiq Skander
EducationSofia University, Jose Martini Institute
Known forSalt Winds, Vow of Silence, The Sinner, Pirate Poems
Notable work
Pirate Poems
Spouse(s)Nouri Sadik Oraby
Children1
AwardsGeorgi Džagarov Award, 2005
Memorial(s)Vanya Petkova House and Museum in Purvomay, Bulgaria
Vanya Petkova's signature
The memorial plaque on the house in Purvomay, in which Petkova lived and worked from 1998 to 2009

Vanya Petkova (Bulgarian: Ваня Петкова; 1944 – April 2009) was a Bulgarian poet, novelist, short story writer, and translator.[1]

Also known by her pen name Hatija Sadiq Skander, she is considered to be one of the most consequential Eastern European poets, with 34 poetry books and 6 novels to her name. Her poetry has been translated into 13 languages: English, Spanish, French, Russian, Greek, Armenian, Polish, Czech, Hindi, Arabic and Japanese among others.[2] Petkova was editor-in-chief of Bulgaria's Slaveiche magazine, as well as for newspapers Literaturen front and Suvremenik.[2] She worked as a translator at the Bulgarian Embassy in Khartoum.[1]

Life[]

Born on July 10, 1944, in the midst of the air Bombing of Sofia in World War II, to her father Peter, a son of Russian-Ukrainian immigrants, and to her mother Vassillisa – a half-Greek, half-Bulgarian tailor. Her Russian-Circassian grandfather Ivan Skander was an army general that served under Tsar Nicholas II, and left Russia for Bulgaria at the start of the Russian Civil War of 1917, as part of the white émigré. In the early days of Petkova's career, this fact allegedly served as the main reason for a ban imposed on her poetry by Bulgaria's Communist Party, although the official explanation was "due to erotic content found in her poems". The ban was later lifted because of Petkova's growing popularity in the country.

Petkova majored in Slavic philology in Sofia, Latin American culture in Havana, and Arabic literature in Damascus, over time becoming fluent in seven languages, which made her one of the most prominent interpreters in the country.

After marrying a Sudanese geography professor, Dr. Nouri Sadiq Oraby, a Black man, she frequently used her artistic skills in the fight against injustice towards people of color, becoming an important voice against racism and xenophobia in Eastern Europe among artists. Vanya Petkova conducted over 800 stage performances in both Bulgaria and abroad, including one on board a passenger plane in flight from Sofia to Moscow, for which she earned a Guinness World Record nomination in the 1980s, for being the first poet to ever do it.

A few years later, Petkova was officially featured in the second volume of the American Encyclopedia of Continental Women Writers, along with Bulgaria's Elisaveta Bagryana and Blaga Dimitrova.

During her life-long journey, she got to personally know the likes of William Saroyan, Bulat Okudzhava, Yasser Arafat, Che Guevara's father Ernesto Guevara Lynch, Fidel Castro himself, and Yevgeny Yevtushenko among others.

On April 26, 2009, at the age of 64, Petkova passed away unexpectedly from a heart attack, only a week after releasing her last book titled Pirate Poems, which she dedicated to her favorite actor Johnny Depp. The book was later republished in English by her grandson, actor Joseph Al Ahmad, in the United States.

In the preface taken from "Pirate Poems", which best describes her personality and life in short, she writes:

My poems – why have I called them “Pirate”? Because all of them have been stolen from the meager moments of joy and happiness in my wild and turbulent life. My poetry wasn’t born under the warm bedsheets in front of a computer. It was born in between face slaps and fistfights, gunshots and knife-throws, handcuffs and bloodstains, daring escapes followed by chases, desert adventures in Syria and Sudan, between airplanes and high speeds, steamboats and horse rides, thugs and their prostitutes, between outrageous children and ungrateful darlings, between Heaven and Earth, between Life and Death. Born to Pirates, I lived like a Pirate and Piracy is in my blood.

Selected works[2][]

  • Солени ветрове (Salt winds) (1965)
  • Привличане (Attraction) (1967)
  • Грешница (Sinner) (1968)
  • Черната гълъбица (Black dove) (1972)
  • Обратна река (Counter-river) (1976)
  • Обет за мълчание (Vow of silence) (1979)
  • Триптих (Triptych) (1980).
  • Пиратски Стихове (Pirate Poems) (2009) - Dedicated to Johnny Depp.

Awards and honors[]

  • In early 1980, she was nominated for the Guinness World Records for being the first known poet to perform onboard a flying passenger plane from Sofia to Moscow.
  • In the 1990s, she was given the Honorary Citizen of Yerevan title, for the strengthening of Bulgarian-Armenian cultural relations.
  • In 2005, she was given the Georgi Dzagarov Award for excellence in Bulgarian literature.

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b "Почина поетесата Ваня Петкова". Darik (in Bulgarian). April 26, 2009.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b c Wilson, Katharina M. (1991). An Encyclopedia of Continental Women Writers. 1. p. 983. ISBN 0824085477.

External links[]


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