The collection is published by the Croatian Community in Macedonia, with co-publisher the Croatian Heritage Foundation of Zagreb and was published with funding provided by the City of Skopje.
Ljerka Toth-Naumova promoted her latest collection of poems on the 28th of April in the frame of the Bridge of Friendship collaboration between Ante Starčević Elementary School of Rešetari and Goce Delčev Elementary School in Ilinden near Skopje.
The collection of Toth-Naumova’s verse is published by the Croatian Community in Macedonia, with co-publisher the Croatian Heritage Foundation of Zagreb and was published with funding provided by the City of Skopje.
The collection has been reviewed by writer and literary critic Đuro Vidmarović and by professor Sanja Vučić PhD. The volume is edited by Vedran Iskra BA, proofread by Marija Barišin Damjanovska, and layout and prepress are by Goran Stojanov and the Print.pres company. The cover art is by academy educated painter Dubravko Naumov from Toronto.
Toth-Naumova’s poetry collection was promoted before the packed auditorium of the Ilinden Culture Centre by long-time HINA news agency correspondent in Macedonia Marija Barišin Damjanovska. On hand for the event were organisers the mayor of the Municipality of Ilinden Žika Stojnovski, Goce Delčev Elementary School principal Dušanka Krstevska, Croatian ambassador to Macedonia Danijela Barišić, Catholic priest Antun Cirimotić and guests from the Croatian town of Rešetari; Ante Starčević Elementary School principal Tihomir Batalo with teachers and pupils.
In her presentation Damjanovska offered some details from Toth-Naumova’s biography. This is her seventeenth collection of poems. Toth-Naumova writes in both Macedonian and Croatian and is a member of both the Croatian Writers’ Society and the Society of Macedonian Writers. Damjanovska spoke of this new collection of eighty poems, divided into three series: Transition to Silence, How Does Love Look?, and But Death Has no End, dedicated to the memory of her dead mother.
The promoter read excerpts from the review penned by Đuro Vidmarović: “What we highlight as particular to the poetry of Ljerka Toth-Naumova is the high level of her literary linguistic expression and her set of literary requisites, which is so highly emphasised that it appears as if the author never left her Croatian homeland. Moreover, Ljerka Toth-Naumova writes verse with robust reflectivity and with surprisingly complex syntagmata and reminiscences by which her poetry could to some extent be put in correlation with the poetry of Nikola Šop, Danijel Dragojević and Gojko Sušac.”
Poems from the book Nevidljiva vrata (Invisible Door) were read by: Croatian language supplementary instruction pupil from Skopje Anja Jovevska and by Iva Kičić and Petra Jurišić, pupils of Ante Starčević Elementary School from Rešetari, dressed in stunning Slavonia region folk costume.
By: Marija Barišin Damjanovska; Photography: Risto Tomovski
