Journeys There and Back. Poetry

This book is the result of several journeys from Sofia to Prague in the 1990s. It's based on the notes I kept during my travels. The borders had just opened, people were emigrating en masse, I stayed behind. That was my first time leaving the prison of the People's Republic of Bulgaria, and I traveled by bus. A journey out into the world and into myself. I discovered Prague, though the search for myself continues. Sometimes Prague is here, sometimes it is there, and the same is true for Sofia.

"Where would you like to go? Out into the world. It's not a question of the direction, but of the journey itself, of the need to travel. First the roof comes down, then you need to figure out who you are by figuring out where you're from.

I traveled to Prague in three different seasons. Three times I went there without a purpose and came back. Christmas and Easter, and between them Summer, which loosens the soul and the sandals. I realized that what has happened once can happen a second time, even if you've already written it down. After a while, the details faded. But the pale light remained in the garden of things and occurrences."
Silvia Choleva

Silvia Choleva was born in Sofia in 1959. She is the author of s ix poetry collections - The Child of the Deaf-Mutes, 1993; Entrance, 1996; Carefully, 2001; Postcards, 2007; Letters, 2007; From the Sky to the Earth, 2015, three plays - Come, Lie on Top of Me, The Name, Your Name, and Emergency Exit, two books of prose fragments - Journeys There and Back, 1997; Winters and Summers, 2001, a novel Green and Gold, 2010, and a collection of short stories Goshko, 2013.

A book of her new and selected poetry, titled The Unexpected Answer, was published in English in 2025. Her work has been translated into Greek, Serbian, Czech, Lithuanian, Turkish, French, and Norwegian. She is the recipient of several national awards, including the Ivan Nikolov poetry prize, the Golden Age badge of honor for contributions to Bulgarian culture, and the Hristo G. Danov award for her work as a journalist. She was the editor of two landmark literary magazines, Season and altera. She has been a staff presenter for Bulgarian National Radio for the last twenty years, hosting the Artefir literature and culture program. In 2012, she founded Da Poetry Publishing with Iglika Vassileva and Kaloyan Ignatovski.

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