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Lyubomir Nikolov was born in the Bulgarian village of Kiryaevo in
1954. He studied journalism at the University of Sofia, then went on to work for various literary periodicals as an editor and translator. Since 1990, he has lived with his wife and two sons in the United States. He now broadcasts for the Voice of America and the BBC Bulgarian service; he also teaches poetry and translation in schools and universities.

   Nikolov has published three major collections of poetry in Bulgarian: Summoned by the High Tide (Sofia, 1981), Traveller (Sofia, 1987) and Raven (Sofia, 1995). An English selection has appeared in the United States: Pagan, translated by Roland Flint and Viara Tcholakova (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1992). He has also been published in anthologies, notably Young Poets of a New Bulgaria (Forest Books, 1990) and Child of Europe: A New Anthology of East European Poetry (Penguin,
1991).

   Lyubomir Nikolov’s poetry springs from an intense attachment to the landscapes of his homeland and the customs and remains that have been found there. The poems convey an acute sense of transience at the same time as a feeling for the past’s enduring presence in daily life. Death haunts his work, not as a negation, but as that which gives completeness to a life. Paradoxically (Nikolov seems to say) in removing us from life, death makes us permanent. It is the business of poetry to make these mysteries present to us.

   Given his obvious rootedness in Bulgarian landscape and culture, it is remarkable that Nikolov has responded so creatively to the experience of exile. A striking group of poems was written in England on a visit to Cambridge in 1990 and he has continued to write well in America, the sensitivity of his language sharpened perhaps by moments of homesickness. He has reflected on expatriation in the following paragraphs:

   Languge connects. Accent divides.

   We know it from the ancient Greeks: ‘The bard has many mothers.’ I would add: ‘Many stepmothers, too.’
  
   Once upon a time, a Bulgarian expatriate told me: ‘A bad mother
is better than a good stepmother.’
  
   But the world we live in is slowly getting stripped of its borders
and the poets probably have to follow suit. In a borderless world
our only option is to become borderless ourselves.

   Exile, like anything else, is not perfect. You can’t be an ideal expatriate if you carry your mother tongue within you. It is not your
passport but your language that defines your nationality.

   Fourteen years ago, with the Bulgarian language in my head and a pile of Bulgarian poems in my suitcase, I was to take America by storm. I mastered English to some extent and as if to apologize for my accent (which, unlike the language, divides people) I would often say jokingly that I was still learning Bulgarian. America is probably not the most suitable place for this purpose. Bulgarian is best studied at farmers’ markets over there in the Balkans.

   Strange as it may seem, I now feel that getting away from Bulgaria
has somehow brought me closer to my mother tongue. It helped me
look at Balkan culture and the cryptic Homo Balcanicus with different eyes. I have also learned a lot about American poetry, which unlike many Americans, I do love.

   Living in two worlds at one and the same time could be perilous,
too. But I have no regrets.

   All his life the poet goes after his poem. If the poem leaves for
America the bard has to pack and follow it.

Lyubomir Nikolov
October 9, 2004
Poolesville, Maryland