Nikola Madžirov

Nikola Madžirov (1973, North Macedonia) is a Macedonian poet, essayist and translator. He was born in Strumica, in the family of war refugees from the Balkan Wars. When he was 18, the collapse of Yugoslavia prompted a shift in his sense of identity – as a writer reinventing himself in a country which felt new but was still nourished by deeply rooted historical traditions. His poems are translated into more than forty languages. For the book Relocated Stone (2007), he received the international Hubert Burda poetry award and the most prestigious Macedonian poetry award Miladinov Brothers Award. In 2024, a selection of his poetry, titled Šestilo časa, was published as part of the Macedonian Literary Classics edition, which includes poems from all of his collections, along with new poems. He has participated in numerous international poetry festivals around the world (including Days of Poetry and Wine and Vilenica in Slovenia) and has received numerous poetry residency scholarships and international awards. In 2016, he was honored with the title of National Artist of the Republic of Macedonia.

Polish poet and essayist Adam Zagajewski wrote about Madžirov’s poetry, describing his poems as being like the paintings of expressionists: full of dense, energetic strokes, as if they were being born from imagination in the very moment and returning into it, like nocturnal creatures that are briefly illuminated by the headlights of a car. In these sudden flashes, the concepts of home, borders, history, and time perhaps emerge most clearly. However, the poet interrogates these concepts, placing them in the flicker of light and shadow and injecting into them the serum of relativity and elusiveness. In the net of language, he tries to capture the beauty of the vanishing moment, the magnificence of small things, and the power of the ordinary.