Publication supported by the PEN Translates Programme.
Translated from Bulgarian by Jonathan Dunne
Published 2023. Paperback, 112pp, 8.5 x 5.5ins, £12.95 / $18
ISBN 9781848619005 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]

This book is divided into three parts. In the first, ‘Samples’, the poet examines objects through a microscope at a magnification of forty and describes what she sees. In the second, ‘Waterfalls’, she takes language outside and examines waterfalls in her native Bulgaria and in Greece. And in the third, ‘Directions’, she describes different places in Europe she has visited, from Rome to London to Berlin, passing through the island of Skopelos and the commune of Lodève. Alas the author passed away just 2 weeks after this translation was published.

"These miraculous poems of everyday matter magnified by forty reveal our world in all its pristine glory – reminiscent of Pablo Neruda’s household odes, but stranger. Her sketches of waterfalls are extraordinary, as if we are witnessing the birth of water and every inch hallucinatory. Her magnifying eye probes the roots of matter and spirit, where they intertwine and dance with light. Tsvetanka Elenkova has a mystic’s eye, an inventive vision honed with surgical precision." —Pascale Petit

"In Magnification Forty , Tsvetanka Elenkova turns her piercing poetic intelligence upon the small things of the world. She lifts them up to us in all their revelatory and spiritual power. Elenkova is a visionary, who makes quietness speak and who reminds us that the miracle of embodiment is realised not only in the exceptional but in what’s humble and quotidian. This deeply mindful book is a call for us to pay attention to what we experience. It’s also a masterclass in the lucid and economical poetics that have made Elenkova into a leading European poet. " — Fiona Sampson

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