A1  Petar Tchouhov

A2  Bulgaria

A3  I don’t think that we have a special “short poem” genre in Bulgaria , although at the beginning of the 1990s the renowned Bulgarian poet Ivan Metodiev founded a poetic circle called “Nava”, and soon started a magazine of the same name. This marked the beginning of his search for “Bulgarian haiku”. Trying to give a proper definition to the term “nava,” Metodiev used the word “explosion.” He gradually came to the conclusion that any short poetic form, or even part of a longer form, can be a nava. As for haiku, he considered them to be one of the possible forms of nava. Extravagant and provocative, the nava movement was too eclectic; in the end, its foundations turned out to be philosophical, or even mystical rather than literary.

A6  Yes, haiku is very popular and a lot of people read and write haiku poems here in Bulgaria . We publish books of haiku and organize haiku contests and conferences. Tanka is less known, but there are some people reading and writing tanka poems too. 

A7  I don’t think tanka has influenced our Bulgarian poetry in any way. But recently, haiku has won a lot of supporters amongst the people, who write “mainstream” poetry. They use some “haiku techniques” not only when they write haiku, but also when they write their “mainstream” poems.

A8  More poets tend to write concise poems, paying more attention to every word or collocation. Also there are more poems, where the author’s personality is less intrusive and more which are focused on small everyday objects and events far from the power and the glory.

A9  Having in mind that globalization leads to a flood of information, I think brevity is a real virtue. It is more and more difficult to find enough time and have enough peace of mind for reading /and writing/ long poems. We need our brief moments of poetic meditation. A short poem gives you the opportunity to find a special window, through which you can see an everyday wonder.