Axinia Mikhailova for the Max Jacob Award

Most recently, poetess Aksinia Mihailova received the prestigious French Max Jacob Prize with her book The Kiss of Time. This is the second prize from France, following the Guillaume Apolliner Prize in 2014, and the second book written directly in French. The news is a bit of joy in this tense world situation. It is an occasion to feel proud, because it is not only a personal award, at least in my opinion, it is an award for our country and for Bulgarian poetry as a whole. I talk to Axinia from a distance, but her answers are warm and sincere.

Your award-winning poem is called "The Kiss of Time." What is your time?

As a person born in these latitudes, I have a European matrix in which time is linear. The good thing about this idea is that when something in the present makes us feel sad, we can go back. We can design ourselves at another time from our personal experience, in which we were happy, free and protected, in which everything was possible and forthcoming, such as our childhood. Or choose to "sink" into a distant historical age with other values ​​that are closer to us than they are today. For the latter we don't need a time machine, we just have to open a book.

In addition, linear time is constantly creating new prisms, powerful binoculars, through which to explore basic moral and emotional categories such as love, faithfulness, friendship, death, life, mercy ... the future is just three layers that go together, happen at the same time. This click, a flash, becomes instant, in the process of writing, when in the sliding of these simultaneously existent time layers there is a gap and you can see something in the future or see a picture of the past. Just like in dreams. It rarely happens, but when it does, the European notion of time, like a linear event, is already shaken.

There is an opinion that Bulgarian poetry is not at a good enough level to be commensurate with the world. On the other hand, Bulgarian authors get really high honors from foreign competitions, as is the case with you. What is your opinion? Where do we stand globally?

Opinions are usually given to critics and researchers who have a powerful and centuries-old literary tradition behind them. Between the courtly poetic tradition of the troubadour movement, which originated at the end of the XI century in Occitania, and modern French poetry lie ten centuries. What is the basis of Bulgarian poetry, in what century did the founder of Bulgarian Revival literature, Petko R. Slaveikov, begin to adapt Greek and Turkish song-songs in order to lay some foundation in this genre?

This proportion has always been to our detriment. We have always tried to catch up to someone and something, to catch up, to fill in the gaps, hence our low self-esteem. And I think it's high time we put a stop to this. As a matter of course, we respect the foreign literary tradition and its achievements. But let us realize that many of these opinions, which try to push Bulgarian poetry into the periphery, lie on the old laurels. At the end of the last century, many books with translated poetry appeared and are being published now, at the beginning of the XNUMXst century.

Due to the flourishing of technologies and the Internet, we can read what and how our colleagues from all over the world write, what topics excite them, what poetry they create - to compare with them, to compare Bulgarian poetic searches. Then, if we have the senses and the preparation, we will understand that contemporary Bulgarian poetry goes in line with the world. That there is no reason to put ourselves at a lower level. Of course, I'm not talking about "epigone" and imitation of foreign models and fashion poetry. Proof of this are my two poetry books, which have received two of the most prestigious poetry awards in the French-speaking world. Like the confessions of other Bulgarian poets and writers outside Bulgaria.

Can you compare your poetry with that of your French colleagues? What sets you apart from them, and what do you think they value most in your poetry?

I do not like generalizations, but it seems to me that the French are closer to reason than to heart. They have a deep respect for philosophy, the rationale, the idea in its purest form, which is historically conditioned. In addition, in recent decades, all types of art have tended to fragment, experiment, reduce the image and the idea to a mark and abstraction. I see nothing wrong with this when it comes from the nature and the individual creative palette of the author, not an attempt to emulate a certain fashion and follow external rules. If the poet breathes fragmentarily and sees the world this way - wonderful. But if he breathes in color, smell, image and wants to suppress them, simply because it is not 'modern', because others do not write that way, because it will not be quoted here or abroad, much less so for poetry. I could probably be counted on the lyrical poetic tradition in French poetry.

And what I value most is hard to answer. I hope its authenticity, simplicity of expression and ability of the poems to touch not only the mind but also the heart.