Also available in: Macedonian French Serbian
Welcome to Aco Šopov's Lyrical House, a multilingual site offering a panorama in words and images of the life and work of the Macedonian poet.
The idea for the site was born thanks to the poetical complicity between Roland Kayser and Jasmina Šopova, respectively director of Editions PHI, Luxembourg, and the poet's daughter, translator and connoisseur of his poetry, who met in 2012 when the collection of Aco Šopov's poems Soleil noir - Schwarze Sonne (Black Sun) was published.
Aco Šopov [ˈat͡sɔ ˈʃɔpɔf], born in Štip in 1923, was one of the founders of contemporary Macedonian poetry. He is considered one of the most eminent poets of southeastern Europe in the twentieth century. After a long illness, he died in Skopje in 1982.
This website is the virtual house in which his work continues to live.
"Assuming poetic fatalism exists, I am one of its most devoted followers”
Aco Šopov
A glimpse of the author’s life is in the Display Case, whereas more curious visitors can follow “The Road I walk”, to discover more details of the poet’s life and work.
You will find a selection of Šopov’s original and translated books in the Library, and a choice of his poems, interviews and writings in the Reading Room, which also contains articles and quotations about him.
Books available for purchase can be found in the Bookshop.
The Inspirations room features portraits of the poet by mainly Macedonian artists, as well as artworks inspired by his poetry.
The Lyrical House is also a place where you can meet Šopov's friends, as well as the winners of the Aco Šopov Prize, awarded each year since 1999 by the Macedonian Writers' Society.
The Events, classified according to year, will give you a general idea of the cultural activities that have been organized in Aco Šopov's honour in Macedonia and abroad.
The Lyrical House has been conceived and set up by the Aco Šopov Poetry Foundation, which aims to promote the work of the Macedonian poet, but also to support research in the field of contemporary Macedonian poetry, and encourage international cooperation, particularly between young artists.
The Lyrical House exists in several language versions, the contents of which vary according to the elements available. A permanent work in progress, it is enriched over time.
The archival material published in the Lyrical House comes from the personal holdings of Svetlana Šopova and Vladimir Šopov (1948-2000), the poet's widow and son respectively, as well as from the “Aco Šopov Fund” of the Archives of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts, which enabled us to digitize and publish them.
For the purposes of this site, Macedonian Radio Television (MRT) has digitized a large number of programs devoted to the poet, thus considerably enriching the collection of the Video Library of his Lyrical House.
The National and University Library “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Skopje, has provided us with a large number of out-of-print editions that are now available in the its Library, while the University Library of Bitola has digitized some of the articles on Šopov that can now be found in its Reading Room.
In 2016, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Macedonia funded most of the English and Russian translations of this website.
Many thanks to them all.