Tribute to the 17th United Nations Chinese Language Day
Portrait of Confucius
On the 17th United Nations Chinese Language Day we celebrate the timeless charm of Chinese characters a carrier of thousands of years of Eastern wisdom poetry and cultural heritage
Five years ago during the 12th UN Chinese Language Day one of the three core thematic lectures selected by the United Nations “The Mysterious Dongba Hieroglyphs” was solemnly held at our Dongba Culture Academy My respected master the 17th-generation Grand Dongba Priest Aheng Dongta appeared on the front page of the official United Nations website As a wise man of the Naxi people and the soul inheritor of Dongba culture he brought the world’s only living pictographic script to the global stage letting the wisdom of Dongba culture and the brilliance of Eastern civilization shine on the international stage
Dongba hieroglyphs are the living fossil of Naxi civilization a cultural code spanning millennia and a spiritual bridge connecting the past and present and linking civilizations As the sole female inheritor and international communicator of the Dongba culture of the UNESCO Memory of the World I will always stay true to my mission as a cultural messenger delving into the translation and research of Dongba ancient books to let this precious human cultural heritage revitalize in the new era Taking language as a bond I will promote dialogue and mutual learning among different civilizations injecting oriental energy into world peace and cultural prosperity
“Scene from “Midsummer Night’s Dream” by The Joffrey Ballet. (Photo: Cheryl Mann)”
Midsummer Night’s Dream
The Joffrey Ballet
Zellerbach Theater
Berkeley, California
Midsummer Madness
“We had this beautiful summer house in the Swedish countryside. My favorite thing was to run in the field in front of the house and pick seven different flowers to put them under my pillow. Tradition says that if you put these flowers under your pillow before you go to bed, you will dream of your future love.”—Anna von Hausswolff
When you go to see a performance titled “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” even when warned ahead of time it will be set in the pale summer night of Sweden, you can be forgiven for expecting a dependably Shakespearian outing, though this time with maybe a Scandinavian Oberon and Titania and a regiment of local gnomes, a confusion of misguided romantics bounding through an Arctic midnight forest, and maybe a donkey-headed Svenska Bottom and his rude mechanicals defying the stagy and the stage-struck and a teasing trickster of a northern Puck declaring while displaying to all the world: “What fools these mortals be!”
And you might even be forgiven if, in the opening moments of the performance, you feel slightly disappointed that, no, this is not quite what you are about to be graced with this chilly spring evening.
But then, if you have always loved a surprise, especially when it is packaged as a bonbon and then explodes into a party, your expectations are turned on their head and go leaping in cartwheels across the stage, as if the whole theater had been turned into a circus expressly for your entertainment, and you find yourself with little alternative but to let yourself be blissfully carried away for the rest of the enchanted evening. There are a lot worse disappointments! And it’s easy enough to imagine Puck roaring with laughter up his gossamer sleeve.
Such, anyway, was this viewer’s experience when Cal Performances brought The Joffrey Ballet to the Zellerbach Theater on the UC Berkeley campus over a weekend this April. I’m still sorting out all the chaos of revelries that made it one of the most memorable evenings of a season that has had, frankly, a lot of competition.
The dance was divided into two parts, the first running a little under, the second a little over an hour, but who’s counting? The proof of any wonder is how fast it seems to fill any pocket of time with riches, and yet how brief it all seems in the end.
The first half opens, with deceptive minimalism, with a buffed up young man (a fine Dylan Gutierrez, who served as our point of contact for the evening; it’s his dream, after all, that we’re sharing) as he tries, unsuccessfully, to go to sleep in the glaring Scandinavian midsummer night. His bed stands in front of the stage curtain on which random sayings are projected, immediately dissolving: “Pick some strawberries!” “Meet me in the meadow,” “Sven is drunk,” “I prefer Christmas,” “Do you still love me?” . . .
A graceful young woman (the excellent Victoria Jaiani, who will be our main point of romance for the evening) bearing a sheaf of hay, dances down the aisle and up to the stage, waking the young man and then whisking him away through a crack in the curtain, which opens up to a wild, choppy confusion of dozens of dancers thrashing and dashing and flailing across a stage blanketed with golden hay like a vast field at the height of harvest season. From here on, we are far from the forest of Arden, but never far from magic.
The first act unfolds as a kind of bacchantic fertility rite, a revelry of farm workers dancing and playing, not only in, but with the hay, at the foot of a tall, mask-like pagan symbol, integrating a cross, an arrow, and two eye-like wreaths, erected above them.
The dancing workers whisk about, flail and harvest and roll the hay up into tub-like bundles which as used as little stages for couples dancing for love and delight, and they finally cast it all back into a long, luxurious play on the eternal idea of a sweetly innocent roll in the hay, quite literally.
A long table is then rolled out, and the hay is swept gaily off the stage, and the host of workers gather and celebrate the harvest in a traditional banquet. A solitary singer (the magical Anna von Hausswolff, who will appear at especially mysterious and lyrical moments) comes out and sings of the peace and joy of the long festival of summer in these cold and northern climes.
Then the revelry resumes, leading up to a long, strange, mysterious moment, when all the dancers, arranged in an almost intimidating phalanx stretching from end to end of the stage, approach the edge and, wreathed in enigmatic smiles, stare at the audience as if waiting for us to . . . do what?
There was nervous laughter, nervous applause, a little bout of rhythmic clapping, tense silence, and childlike wonder at what it all meant, as the dancers gazed silent as the midsummer sun on the puzzled mortals beneath them, then, just as mysteriously, dissolved back into seemingly random reveling.
The first act ended with one of the evening’s most magical moments, as the dancers moved up and down the long banquet table, bearing candelabras, until they stepped down to and across the darkened stage, off the stage, into the audience and up the aisles, with candelabras still aloft, until they froze, staring at the audience with mad charm.
The first half had many such marvels of enchantment. But it provided nothing to prepare us for what we would see in the second: a fever earthquake, tidal wave of inventions without end, technique without boundaries, a pagan unleashing in a teeming, ecstatic nightmare – for what would a dance about a dream be without the challenge of a nightmare? And everybody rose to meet it, conquered, and conquered again and again for the rest of a dream no one wanted, honestly, to wake from.
Because when was a nightmare ever more turbulent, tumultuous, tumacious, titillating, terrifying fun? Not only did the choreography raise its game to undreamed of heights, and the dancers follow, ever braver and more victorious than the last, but so did the set, the lighting, the props; nor forget the brilliance of music and musicians, never left behind, indeed often leading, including, later, in a soft passage after the seemingly endless rolling frieze of thrills of the opening, the already mentioned singer, who capped many a manic moment with a soft, still climax.
Did I forget the humor? Unforgivable! Because this was a production that, in its deeply romantic and pagan heart, knows how to laugh, out of pure high spirits and unshackled joy. I will mention only the giant Max Ernst fishes landing at unexpected moments or parading enormously across the boards, and the gleeful gigglers prancing in the odd corner at the odd moment, and the tutu-refined would-be swanners undermined in their earnest pliés by the gleeful gigglers and snarky bystanders, and the dueling immaculately haberdashed duo of headless gentlemen (Edson Barbarosa and Aaron Reneteria) bouncing around the stage with arms flailing and trading slaps at each other’s invisible heads, and the half-naked chef (danced with elegant insouciance by Fernando Duarte) parading around en pointe and buff-butted for much of the act in a chef’s hat and apron – and nothing else, my friend. He was, no doubt, a stand-in for the chef of this spectacular banquet of a production, the choreographer (and set designer) Alexander Ekman, as fine a magician of dance and stage as, I believe after this evening, we now have among us.
The music, a heady combination of contemporary and classical, pop, experimental and traditional Swedish folk music, and played live by a sextet of strings, piano and percussion, was by Michael Karlsson. The ingenious lighting design was originally created by Linus Fellbrom and re-created, not least the ribbons of lights hanging above the audience in the image of a circus tent, for the Zellerbach performance by Chris Maravich.
I think the fairies of Arden would have mightily approved.
_____
Christopher Bernard is an award-winning poet, novelist, playwright, and essayist. His most recent book is the poetry collection The Beauty of Matter: A Pagan’s Verses for a Mystic Idler.
First, some announcements. Tao Yucheng invites the winners of the poetry contest he hosted earlier this year to contact him at taoyucheng921129@proton.me. He’ll send out the prize money this month. He also announces that no one person won the Honorable Mention (there was a tie among multiple pieces) so he will automatically enter those pieces in the next competition, which will be at a yet-to-be-determined date this summer.
Also, contributor Mykyta Ryzhykh has a new book out, Tombboy, from Lost Telegram Press.
“In his book, as in books of poems written in poetic forms and free verse, language moves through a pattern, and the basic organizing unit is the line. In tombboy, the line may be a syllable, a sign, an image, or even a dot… Readers may rightfully assume that many, even all the poems in tombboy are anti-war poems… yet it would be inaccurate to infer these concrete poems are doctrinaire, or purely political. Nor are they autobiographical. But they are personal, intuitive, original, and memorable, each with something to show…” – Peter Mladinic, author of House Sitting, Knives on the Table and many other books
“tombboy is filled with an experimental spirit, combining fearless phrasing with satirical madness. The result is a fascinating examination of the human condition… it seems there are no limits to his masterful creativity. Each page of this book will grab your attention. tombboy deserves a prominent spot on your bookshelf.” – Roberta Beach Jacobson, editor of Five Fleas Itchy Poetry and smols poetry journal
Welcome to Synchronized Chaos’ mid-April issue: A Chorus at the Threshold. This issue presents a chorus of voices singing, speaking, sometimes whispering, at different types of thresholds. People of different ages and backgrounds come together in this issue, each sharing thoughts, observations, and feelings at points of shifting and transformation.
Some of these thresholds are deeply interior. Adalat Gafarov Izzet oglu’s poetry is contemplative and reverent, with a focus on spirituality and the search for meaning. John Edward Culp speaks to self-discovery, love, and finding one’s own rhythm in life. Duane Vorhees’ poetry forms a cohesive meditation on struggle, distance, and the human effort to bridge impossible gaps—whether spiritual, emotional, or existential. Mesfakus Salahin’s piece highlights self-exploration in times of solitude, as Maja Milojkovic laments the increasing unwanted loneliness caused by the setup of much of modern life. Mahbub Alam probes the highs and lows and capacities of human nature, highlighting the need for empathy and compassion. Prasanna Kumar Dalai’s poetry is romantic and melancholic, expressing deep emotions and longing. Poet and physician Anwer Ghani suggests that despite our attempts to conceal our emotions, they can still be sensed and felt.
J.J. Campbell’s writing touches on his inner shadows: feelings of isolation, the desire for a simple, authentic life, and the pain of his loneliness and inner demons. Ana May likewise writes from the doorway between suffering and transformation, insisting that pain must be faced if it is ever to yield meaning. Fhen M.’s eerie poem recollects the legend of G. Bragolin’s Crying Boy painting surviving house fires, meditating on trauma and memory. Thi Lan Anh Tran depicts the complex, multilayered social and psychological effects of both romantic love and war. Amina Kasim Muhammad’s poem illuminates how people rebuild after the loss of a loved one, growing around rather than overcoming grief. In David Sapp’s vignettes and Eva Lianou Petropoulou’s scenes of personal and public tragedy, ordinary life itself becomes a threshold where loss is transfigured through memory and grief into reverence.
Other voices gather at the threshold between childhood and adulthood. Yeon Myeong-ji and Hamdamova Dilzodaxon Halimjon qizi craft scenes of family love, care, and loss. Their work, and Jacques Fleury’s return to his father and their childhood treehouse, all stand in that tender doorway between then and now. Sarvinoz Bakhtiyorova depicts the impact of remembering one’s past and how that can shape one’s identity. Here, affection survives distance and the past remains startlingly alive.
Nature, too, shifts throughout this issue, with pieces about seasons and the liminal spaces between dreams and reality. In Stephen Jarrell Williams’s idyllic vision, the act of learning to fly becomes an awakening into another mode of being. Elaine Murray’s visionary reflections on natural landscapes, Charos Ismoilova’s gratitude for the sunrise, Ananya Guha’s pensive thoughts on seasonal time, Graciela Noemi Villaverde’s vision of a world where humans protect and care for the natural world, Joseph Ogbonna’s song to a nightingale, and Brian Barbeito’s dream journey scenes of birds, constellations, and moonlight all invite us to the threshold between the visible and the unseen. Sayani Mukherjee’s luminous piece on the sacred mystery of existence completes this movement, reminding us that existence itself is a continual process of change.
History and heritage form another vital threshold in these pages—the place where inheritance meets the present moment. Dr. Jihane El Feghali’s tribute to Lebanon, radiant with resilience and memory, stands beside Ilya Ganpantsura’s portrait of Pushkin, writing in a nation poised between autocracy and intellectual freedom. Abdulaxilova Sevara’s meditation on Yusuf and Zulayha reveals divine and human love, earthly devotion blended with spiritual transcendence. Eva Lianou Petropoulou shares the tale of miraculous holy fire burning the day before Easter in Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Lan Xin acknowledges the shared humanity and commonalities within the heritage of the world’s people, finding harmony within global religious teachings, and Bhagirath Chowdhary echoes that sentiment in his poem. Mohizoda Xurshiq qizi Roziqova discusses Uzbekistan’s legacy of teacher-apprentice training in the trades as Shokhida Nazirova highlights the Uzbek government’s investment in youth education, athletics, and personal development. The works rooted in Uzbek heritage further remind us that culture survives through crossings: hand to hand, teacher to student, voice to voice.
The chorus also rises at the threshold leading to justice.
Sim Wooki confronts racism and colonial power, while Patricia Doyne and Manik Chakraborty write from the brink where historical violence and oppression not only cast a shadow upon the present, but continues to this day. Alan Catlin and Stephen House stand at the moral threshold of witness, asking what it means to remain human before scenes of suffering, ecological damage, and collective harm. These are works that refuse the comfort of distance. They ask us not merely to observe, but to consider the ethics of paying attention.
Jernail S. Anand looks at compassion, care and the consequences of individual actions. Mykyta Ryzhykh highlights the dissonance between our ideals of gentleness and innocence and abusive human behavior that falls short of these ideals. Asalbonu Otamurodova’s reflections on boundaries offer another kind of threshold: the necessary line where care for others must meet care for the self.
Art itself becomes another form of threshold, creating space for various ideas and sensibilities to meet and overlap. Noah Berlatsky considers how even a weathered, broken artwork can convey meaning, how the breakage can become part of the work. Doug Hawley and Bill Tope’s joint short story humorously compares an ordinary couple with historically famous idealized sculptures of people, finding in favor of the average, imperfect, but real, married couple. To’lquinay Ubukulova points out creative people’s current dependence on technology of various sorts. Jerrice J. Baptiste’s poems and paintings of women highlight their individuality, strength of character, and connection to the natural world. Juraeva Aziza Rakhmatovna interviews Croatian writer and poet Ankica Anchia, illuminating her love for her nation and birthplace as creative inspiration.
Ummusalma Nasir Mukhtar celebrates the power of writers to move society forward through their creativity, as Bill Tope explores his personal literary motivations. Ri Hossain analyzes themes in his own poetry, highlighting his combination of materialism and surrealism and how he renders urban realities through free verse. Gionni Valentin’s fragmented thoughts, images, and reflections explore themes of creativity, self-discovery, and the human condition. Kandy Fontaine describes post-Beat poetics, defined by inclusivity, community, focus on embodied and lived experience with living writers, and rejection of hierarchies and trophies. Patrick Sweeney’s tiny poetic fragments touch on art, identity, nature, history, and relationships. Joshua Martin’s poems combine lexical debris, media fragments, bureaucratic residue, and historical ruin, while Mark Young’s fragmented transmissions emerge from different frequencies of reality.
What binds these many works is not sameness, but shared arrival. Each piece stands at some edge—of understanding, of memory, of identity, of survival—and from that edge it calls out. The result is a true chorus: not a single melody, but many voices meeting in resonance.
Chorus at the Threshold sums up this collection because every page invites crossing. Between sorrow and wonder. Between history and dream. Between the self we have been and the self we are still becoming. Yet, many of these doors remain open, so that the thoughts and impressions in one “room” carry forward along one’s journey or can be remembered.
May you enter these pages with openness, attentiveness, and the quiet recognition that something in you may emerge changed.
You are the seasons that I am grateful to live. Your heart is a field of wildflowers; I explore in the spring. And you hand me the first yellow leaves of the forsythia, then when in bloom you brush my cheek with the white light of the Queen Ann’s lace.
Beloved, when your arms open, they are my shelter from the rain that pummels the shed. In summer, after I sit in the sand, my heated body embraced by your cool ocean turquoise body. I float on my back, flip, and float again on my back. Your heart, a warm spoon to my mouth feeds me figs, mulberries, raspberries stirred in oats at morning when the sun rises. It’s the golden drizzle of honey I savor on my tongue as October winds scatter orange, and plum-colored leaves in the pond. Does your heart remember the silence of winter? I recall the way you turn up my palms to hold generous quiet snowflakes. Thank you beloved for chiming my heart with warmth of your eyes.
Carrying The Cherry Blossoms
Rosa steps on the six o’clock train traveling North alongside the river. Her window seat is perfect for her brown eyes that now belong to the ripples riding on the breeze, the occasional willow, and the mauve clouds crawling behind linked mountains. The train pauses at the Delmara Station picking up more passengers heading home after work. Rosa tucks a strand of curly hazelnut hair behind her ear and closes her eyes. Sounds of birds rush in as the doors close. She keeps her eyes shut when the stirring in her belly starts as if butterflies are taking off in a field of wildflowers. Her hands grip the handle of the small black suitcase in her lap, touching both sides of her thighs. In it, her daughter Clara’s favorite white silk dress, painted with pink blossoms on branches. When Clara was six years old, she walked barefoot under the cherry trees leaving her footprints on their roots. Look Mom, I’m helping them grow, she said, each time she circled them. At the picnic for her twenty-first birthday last year, Rosa recalls her glowing neckline in the sun.
The dress sitting at edge of her shoulders, sleeves at length of her mocha elbows. Rosa’s face and lips tremble with the image of Clara’s feet once again tip-toeing over roots. The train departs for her stop at Willow Kill. She reopens her eyes, the sky has an indigo hue, the half-moon has cast a silver shine on the river’s ripples. The train pulls into the station. Rosa’s heartbeat quickens like legs of horses galloping fast, kicking up dust behind them. Doors slide apart. She’s off the train before any other passengers push past her. Stepping onto the platform in the open moist air, an unexpected drizzle begins. Rosa’s face tingles. She walks down the stairs of the station hurrying to find a taxi. She looks up. Clouds shield the moon. A navy-blue Toyota pulls forward in front of her from the line of cars waiting for passengers. The driver leans across to the open window. Need a taxi? he asks. Rosa nods yes. Can I help you with your suitcase? I can put it in the trunk? Rosa clutches the handle, No thanks, I need it by my side. The silk cherry blossom dress for Clara’s wake flashes in her mind.
Jerrice J Baptiste is an artist, poet, author of nine books. Her most recent book titled, Coral in The Diaspora published by Abode Press (August 2024). She’s been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize by The Poetry Distillery in 2026, Jerry Jazz Musician 2024 & Abode Press 2025, and as Best of The Net in 2022 by Blue Stem. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in Mantis, Neologism Poetry Journal, The Write Launch, The Banyan Review, The Yale Review, The Lake, Artemis Journal and hundreds of others. Her watercolor drawings on paper have been accepted or forthcoming in Synchronized Chaos, Jerry Jazz Musician Magazine, MER, Saugerties Shout Out, Las Laguna Art Gallery exhibit in California, Spirit Fire Review. Jerrice has presented her art work at The Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, in June 2025. She’s been featured twice as a solo artist in 2025 & 2026 in an art exhibit at The Mountaintop Library in Tannersville, NY. She facilitates poetry as a returning teaching artist at The Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY. Her poems & collaborative songwriting are featured on the Grammy nominated album-Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti.
SPECIAL INTERVIEW: A CONVERSATION WITH ANKICA ANCHIA
Croatian writer and poet Ankica Anchia is a master of words. She is not only a writer for adults but also considered a children’s author. The poems she has written reach the hearts of people. Through her poetry, Ankica Anchia can sometimes make readers laugh, sometimes bring them to tears, and at times leave them deep in thought.
Q1: To begin with, tell us a few things about yourself, introduce yourself briefly to those who don’t know you?
A1: I was born in the beautiful Dalmatian city of Split, where the sun and the sea intertwine with stories of times long gone. My childhood was filled with the smiles of my parents, the warmth of home, and a sense of safety. But everything changed when I was twenty.
In that youth, suddenly without my parents, I felt a deep emptiness, as if the world around me had collapsed. I fell often, faced with pain that seemed endless. Betrayals came like storms—my heart shattered, trust wounded. Yet through those painful moments of breaking, I learned how to rise again.
The betrayals left scars, but they shaped me. I realized that those who make promises are often the ones who hurt the fastest. Pain became a teacher, a reminder that true value lies in those who stay, who do not turn their backs when things are hardest.
But the falls were not the end of my journey. They were simply the path toward awakening, toward the lessons one cannot learn without struggle. In my verses and stories, memories of those ups and downs came alive—moments of pain, sorrow, and emptiness, but also the strength that grew from every fall.
With each rise, I felt the blessings of my own resilience. The path was not without battles, sleepless nights, and tears. But in every fall and every betrayal, I discovered my own beauty—the kind not measured by success, but by the endurance of the spirit. My words are a testament to everything I have been through, everything I have become:
Life writes the words, but you choose the music!
Croatian Dalmatian city
Q2: When did you start writing, and why? What does writing mean to you?
A2: I began writing poetry and prose as I was growing up, but the true intensity of my poetic expression reached its peak over the last 20 years.
Drunk on the love for Dalmatia, my homeland, and driven by deep respect for tradition, I tried to preserve that richness from fading away. My poems are filled with Dalmatian expression, images of the land, the scent of the sea, and the soul of the people. My love poetry leads us through romantic imaginings wrapped in everyday moments of life. The verses are filled with emotion—from joy to sorrow, from happiness to pain.
Writing never felt like a decision—it was a natural continuation of something I carried within me. Writing has always been my way of expressing what cannot easily be said, a way to touch the emotions and images hidden in silence.
Why do I write? Because each sentence brings me closer to who I truly am. Writing is my bridge to the world and to myself, my way of capturing fleeting moments and turning them into something eternal. In every letter, I find refuge, passion, and boundless freedom.
—
Q3:Did you dream of seeing your work on the shelves of bookstores, libraries, or readers?
A3: Of course I did—not out of vanity, but from the desire that my thoughts, feelings, and words find a home in the hearts of others. I dreamed that the pages I write would become a bridge between me and unfamiliar faces, that my stories and verses would serve as refuge, inspiration, or comfort.
To imagine my work resting on bookstore shelves, in readers’ hands, or in quiet library corners that safeguard stories—that feels like a quiet longing fulfilled, proof that words are not in vain, that they can reach someone and touch them, even for a moment. That is the beauty of it: sharing a piece of your soul with those who seek something similar within themselves.
—
Q4: How did the idea for your first poetry collection come about? Who or what inspired it?
A4: The idea for my first collection, “Beside jedne Dalmatinke” (“The Verses of a Dalmatian Woman”), was born from my love for the land I come from—for its rocky paths, the scent of the sea, and the timeless beauty Dalmatia carries. Every poem, every word, was my way of preserving the stories told by the waves, the whisper of olive trees, and the old stone walls.
Q5:What was it like preparing your first book for print? Describe the moment when you held it in your hands for the first time.
A5:Preparing my first book for print felt like waiting for the birth of something precious. Every decision—from the cover design to the final full stop—carried both excitement and gentle worry. It was a mixture of joy, pride, and responsibility, because I knew those pages would become a bridge between me and my readers.
And when I held my book for the first time, my heart stopped. It felt like meeting a part of myself for the first time outside my own mind. Touching the covers, feeling the weight of the pages that were once only thoughts—that is indescribable. I thought: This is a part of me that will live on—in the hands, minds, and hearts of others.
It was a moment of pure happiness, wrapped in gratitude.
—
Q6: Which of your collections is your favorite, and why?
A6:Each of my collections carries a part of me and holds a special place in my heart. But if I had to choose, my favorite is always the one that most deeply reflects the moment of life in which it was created.
“Beside jedne Dalmatinke” is dear to me because it carries not only my love for Dalmatia, but also nostalgia for childhood, memories of those who shaped me, and the strength of the emotions I lived back then.
Yet I always feel that my favorite collection is the next one—the one still being written.
“Kleknut htjedoh učitelju” holds a special place because it was created out of deep respect for wisdom, knowledge, and spiritual growth. It honors the teachers in our lives—the visible ones and the invisible ones.
On the other hand, “Zvjezdana prašina” (“Stardust”) is dear because it was written with childlike joy and imagination. Writing for children means letting go of all boundaries and returning to simplicity and wonder.
Both collections tell their own story—one speaks to the deep reflections of adults, the other plays with the stars and opens the door to childhood imagination.
Interviewed by:
Juraeva Aziza Rakhmatovna, who is a young poet from Uzbekistan.
