KATARINA JOVCEVSKA AND THE ORDER OF WANDERING PEACE POETS (OWPP)

The work of the OWPP continues to the present time, from its founding in Struga Poetry Festival in 1999, as a far-flung network of poets, bards, and other wordsmiths, dedicated to the advancement of world peace and social justice and freedom for all mankind. Is the pen really mightier than the sword? Can the work of the Muses really triumph over that of war machines and terrorist machinations? This is the challenge which the OWPP has set itself to explore.

Katarina Jovcevska is currently helping IIPSGP (International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy) to consolidate the work of OWPP in numerous ways, by research and networking and by some editorial work. If you are interested in renewing or confirming your membership of the OWPP particularly, as a sub-project of IIPSGP, please get in touch with us. We hope to publish an anthology of poems for peace from Order members before too long.

Kumanovo, which is the town where Katarina lives, is named after the Kumans, a Turkic tribe who came to the area in the 6th century. The town's metal-processing, tobacco, agriculture, footwear, and textile industries have made it an economic, trading, and cultural center of approximately 135,529 people. The Church of St. George at the Monastery of Staro Nagoricane is the best known cultural and historical monument in Kumanovo. It was built in the 11th century and was reconstructed in the l4th. During its reconstruction, the fresco painters Mihailo and Evtihij painted its walls with frescoes of exceptional skill. The anti-fascist insurrection of Slavic Macedonians and the struggle for national and social liberation began in Kumanovo and Prilep on 11 October 1941.

Katarina Jovcevska was born in Malmo, Sweden on 23 March 1977, but moved to Yugoslavia at a young age. Her primary and secondary school education was undertaken in Kumanovo, where she has lived from three years of age. She has been writing poems from her 12th year of age. The themes in her songs are mostly written for love, nature, nostalgia, patriotism, her dreams and constant struggles, and poems for the victims of the wars and for a better and happier world. Her poems have been published in many magazines for literature in Macedonia. In addition to poetry, she writes prose and every kind of text for music in Macedonian, Serbian, and English language, and some of them until now are already realized. In one period of her life she was a journalist for some magazines from Kumanovo, Skopje, and Struga. She has participated in poetry and music festivals in Macedonia. Katarina is a member of Struga's "Miladinovci Brothers" Association for Science, Culture, and Art and Kumanovo's Writers' Association and Journalists' Union. She has published three books of poetry in Macedonian: "Sighs and Dreams," "In Duel With the Wishes," and "Odyssey of Minds." With other young poets she has published several books.

Meanwhile, here is small sample of Katarina's own poetic work:

YOUR NEARNESS

From the book "Odyssey of Minds"

With steps full of passion

you have come quietly

as a gazelle

but you don't notice me

you leave me restless

you and your coldness

beautiful woman.

Your nearness

is everywhere, it feels

a wave of heat

to every  man's soul..

To dissolve icy hills

simple beauty

your face to persecute me now.

You are smiling or to see me

restless dreams in the nights long.

I kneel down on the square

with blood on my knees

with tiny stones cut up

with a big love for whisper I pray.

Give me your heart on palm

tonight with full moon and swarm stars

to bend me on yours nest

in your silk hug

even you stay dumb to my call.

Upon your steps on the sidewalk

I write "be my love"

and I give to  myself false hope

to appear gentle feelings

in your stone heart.

Touch with hands

my eyes

to find sun

for my blindness

after you.

For details on Struga Poetry Festival visit www.svp.org.mk

For details on IIPSGP and OWPP visit www.educationaid.net