Denis Nouf was born in Razgrad. She graduated Bulgarian Philology at the University of Veliko Turnovo. He started writing stories in his early years when he was published in Razgrad newspapers. His story was also published in the Holy Mountain Almanac, no. 2014 / 2015. During 2017 he was honored in the "Poetry" section of XL "Boyan Penev National Student Literature Competition" - Shumen. The texts of Dennis Nouf are also featured in Prometheransky (2017), a collection of the Emiliane Stanev Literary and Discussion Club.
Corridors (2019, Scribens) is his poetic debut.

 


First, before we talk about the Corridors and your poetic debut, will I ask you how you got to this point, what is the word and state of verbal expression of the world and yourself about you?

 

Everyone is looking for a way to self-identify. The word, in this case, is life, and life is the word. To tell how it got here and this moment, I have to go back to my high school years. I have to tell of some and other unrequited love that catalyzed the first impulses to explain the world through a pen and a leaf. And this was a lifetime ago, so I won't go back that deep. At one point, I began to awaken to this desire and it inevitably became a way of proving my existence before me.

 

Corridors is an interesting title, but the original design was Faraday's Ark. Is it an ideal analogue of the Faraday Cafes and what were you encoding ideologically-philosophically in this metaphor?

 

The "Faraday Ark" occurs when the conscious calm in the Faraday cage (Faraday cell - for protection against external electromagnetic fields), dictated by the understanding of simple physical laws, meets the existential peace before the supposed and understandable human end. Purely ideological - the Faraday Ark is the home of an introvert. In the end, although we changed our name, the "Farad's Ark" was not lost - it remained part of the book.

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And how did you get to "Corridors" as the final title? Why him?

 

For a long time, I was stuck in the first title and failed to shape the physical parts of the book. But when Georgi Gavrilov, the book's editor, suggested the Corridors, many doors were unlocked. And as the devastating bent, the thought flowed violently and furiously. It was easy now. In short, the corridor is the path, and the rooms - the lives we choose to live. The rest are words.

 

"... so the corridors are silent" - this is one verse in your poem. What is the silence and silence for you in the corridor sheets? Are these "pages of the bold"?

 

Thinking about the stiff step in life begins with silence. I need it as long as my voice doesn't scare me. And Thinking is a prelude to the Choice that is stuck between the walls of the corridors. Courage also sings here somewhere. From now on you either stay and write about the corridors or make the choice and continue to the next room.

 

Answer me: "when did they weigh so much / seconds under the eyelids / how scared / do I forget / hours?"

 

When I realized that in one year there were approximately 31 536 000 seconds, the White Rabbit woke up in me and said, "No time, no time!". When I was on 16, I naively believed that I would already make my debut on 18. And one inhalation and I was already on 20, on the second I became on 25. I'm scared for the third time!

Compositively, the book highlights "WINDOW: A TRIPTYTH FOR A QUIET HOME". The poems in this section are three, but they carry another emotionally - ideal charge. What is a "quiet home" in a existential-living way? And what does recognizing the "idle beat of the heart" contain?

 

The window is light. The quiet home always happened outside my window, upstairs, in the dark corner under the noisy eaves. And the empty heartbeat is the empathy of the convoluted nest.

 

The book is framed by two poems - The Key and The Turning of the Key. What does turning the key at the end contain? What led you? Until the search is unlocked and opened, i.e. until it is understood, or until it is locked in the choice of its own solitude?

 

Corridors is my quiet manifesto. With this book, I explain and justify myself. Ie there are no new discoveries after "turning the key". Everything found before that "last door" was already there, it just wanted to be spoken, written. In short, by locking myself in my own loneliness, I found the creative calm needed for great search.

 

The lyrical self is enclosed in the narrow spaces of the contractual. Even the home, within its small physical boundaries, becomes a vast metaphysical space, on which many of the existential pursuits of the Self are played out. Is there freedom of choice in this locked space? And what do you find "on the road" because without it, "home" is impossible?

 

My home is my castle. The paradox is freedom in a locked space, but also an inevitable fact in this case. In the tidy chaos of Home, I can define myself and find myself. And the Way is needed because there I find, see, hear, discover the words I take behind my four walls to make them my own.

 

The poet of the collection is the poet Georgi Gavrilov. Where do your poetics touch and why did your choice fall on him?

 

What we have in common in our poetics is perhaps exhausted in the context of the postmodern. From now on we go down different paths, we come up with different answers because we ask different questions. My choice fell on him; first, because the idea of ​​Corridors came to light thanks to it; second, because his sense of poetry is my understanding of good; and third, his faith in me was greater than mine.

 

The artwork is significant for a book, often creating a perfect bridge between content and image. We know a number of wonderful book illustrators. Tell us more about the corridor design of Antonina Georgieva?

 

I have heard that authors can imagine the covers of their future books before they even started writing them. When I sent the manuscript to Georgi Gavrilov, I said that I had no idea what the cover might be. I relied entirely on Antonina Georgieva's creative flair and she did not convey my confidence. Abstract corridors crossed by color lines - no end, no beginning. Black ends up there somewhere to unfold the white and close the corridors endlessly.

 

The book will be presented in different parts of Bulgaria. Recently, such events have been accompanied by performances and various artistic productions. How did you show and display Corridors to readers?

 

As we know, more and more bars and clubs host performances and premieres of books and exhibitions. I will not run away from this trend. I embrace the idea and thank the first one who said: "In a bar ?! Why not!". The beginning or the first performance was in Veliko Tarnovo, in the art bar "Hipster". The presentation was "classic" - with a little reading, with a few questions / answers and… some (other) musical surprise for those who decided to attend. Naturally, more performances will follow, both in Sofia and in my hometown - Razgrad. Other places and dates are to be specified, established.

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