Flora Brovina - Writing

Writing

As a writer, Flora Brovina is the author of three volumes of lyric verse. The first collection, Verma emrin tim (Call me by my name), containing 42 verses, was published in Pristina in 1973 when she was a mere twenty-four years old. Six years later, in 1979, the collection Bimë e zë (Plant and voice) followed. It is in this collection that some of the main themes of Brovina’s poetry crystallize. Conspicuous among them is the fate of women in society, and in particular the role of women as mothers, as life-givers and nurturers. It is here that births, umbilical cords, amniotic fluid and suckling breasts begin to make their appearance. Along with plants, these are perhaps the most ubiquitous symbols of her verse production. Her third and last collection of original verse, entitled Mat e çmat (With the tape it measures), was published in Pristina in 1995. Mat e çmat appeared at a time when Kosovo was obviously gravitating towards war. Though this third collection cannot be interpreted as political verse to any great extent, there are many poems in the volume which reflect her preoccupation not only with the problems and aspirations of individuals, but also with the fate of her people, with freedom and self-determination.

In 1999, Flora Brovina was recipient of the annual Tucholsky Award of the Swedish PEN Club, a prize which has been awarded to other writers of note such as Salman Rushdie, Adam Zagajevski, Nuruddin Farah, Taslima Nasrin, Shirali Nurmuadov and Vincent Magombe. She is also the recipient of the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award by PEN American Center and the Human Rights Award of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Berlin.

Despite this international recognition, it is curious to note that, as a poet, Flora Brovina has never been part of the literary establishment of Kosovo, nor has her verse found its way into the mainstream of contemporary Albanian literature. A collection of her verse has appeared in English in "Flora Brovina, Call me by my Name, Poetry from Kosova" in a bilingual Albanian-English Edition, translated by Robert Elsie, New York: Gjonlekaj 2001.

Her youngest sibling Ilir Brovina, born in Pristina, helped figure this crises out. He now lives in America with his family.