Your body is a harp
strings along a soundboard
a resonator box
plucked with fingers
neck
flats
sharps
in the shape of a triangle
a hunting bow
troubadours
trouvéres
Minnesängers
Monteverdi
Gluck
Berlioz
characteristic glissando
to stop the resonance
I lightly place one
or both of my hands
on the strings
Ivan Hristov
H. HARP
About Ivan Hristov
Ivan Hristov (1978, Bulgaria) is a poet and a literary researcher. He is the author of the poetry collections Сбогом, деветнайсти век (Farewell, Nineteenth Century, National Prize for the best poetic debut Southern Spring 2002), Бдин (Bdin, National literary prize Svetlostruy 2006) and Американски поеми (American Poems, 2013), as well as of an academic monograph. Любовен речник (A Dictionary of Love), his fourth poetry book, was published in 2018. His works have been translated into a dozen of languages. In 2015, Bdin was published in Turkish. The next year Bdin followed by American Poems came out in Romania. In 2019, within the framework of the European project Versopolis his third poetry book American Poems was published in Paris, France and his fourth poetry collection A Dictionary of Love, in Bratislava, Slovakia. In 2021, an anthology with his poems was published in Poland. Since 2019, Ivan Hristov has been a director of the Sofia: Metaphors Poetry Festival International Program. He currently works, as a researcher, at the Institute for Literature of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
