Elena Prendjova, aka Brit Lilit is a poet, a slam poet, and a poetry translator based in Skopje, Macedonia. She holds an M.A. in Philology Science and a B.A. in English Language and Literature. She has worked as an ESL teacher and has mentored creative writing and poetry slam workshops. She translates from Serbian and English into her mother tongue, Macedonian.
Prendjova is the author of 10+ full-length poetry collections and a book of essays on poetry, all written and published in Macedonian. She has also published several prose and poetry translations from authors from the USA, Malta, and Serbia. She is a multi-winner of national and international poetry awards won in the country and the region.
Prendjova has been an active member of the Writers’ Association of Macedonia since 2012.
Prendjova was the 2016 national representative at the European Slam Championship. She has co-organized the national poetry slam finals in Macedonia since 2013. Together with her fellow poet and collaborator Igor Trpcheski, she established the national slam poetry scene in Macedonia. In 2018, I also attended the European Slam Championship and participated in the slam poetry ensemble performing workshop mentored by Marc Kelly Smith. Next year, she also worked with him at a slam poetry workshop in Celje, Slovenia, at Izrekanja—celjski pesniški festival. The same year, she was a grantee of the i-Portunus and Creative Europe performing arts residency in Tartu, Estonia, and Maribor, Slovenia, where she mentored poetry slam workshops and where she participated in slam performance shows.
Damaged People
I can’t imagine why
the smell of cigarettes on your T-shirt
always reminds me of your friend
I don’t sleep with your friend
no, I don’t sleep with your friend
I just sleep over at your friend’s house
“baby it’s 3 am and you feel lonely”
lonely, cold, betrayed, hopeless, wasted
a year so far; so far, a year
being wasted every other day
being tipsy a day after every other day
“baby it’s 3 am and I feel lonely”
don’t disturb my loneliness
I feel good being lonely
after her – loneliness
after you – loneliness, too
no, I don’t sleep with your friend
no, I won’t sleep with you tonight
I will nibble you
I will nibble you like a mouse
and you will like it
and you will dislike it that you like it
“baby it’s 3 am and he feels lonely”
do you care about me that much since
we’ve let your friend go home alone?
do you care about me that little since
you’ve seen me off to your friend’s house?
“baby it’s 3 am and I feel lonely”
he, you and I
your bro, my friends, your girl friend
“baby it’s 3 am and we feel lonely”
when we are together
we enforce loneliness with joint forces
we try to suppress it
to drown it in the waters of the waterfalls
our plunge is an under-water fall
our plunge is painful
one is rescued by swimming
other by kayaking, the third by drowning
in the end,
we’ll all be left unhurt by each other
in the end, we’ll all be left hurt by ourselves
“baby it’s 3 am and I feel lonely”
would you do something about it?
that’s what friends are for, right?
well yes yes of course
that’s what friends are for
I’ll do something about it
but the outcome is always the same
loneliness
makes us laugh, makes us feel pain
when sober makes us feel drunk
when drunk makes us feel sober
it has misled the three of us
willfully to reach the decision
to keep on alone in life
so it can stay alone with us
so it can fuck us up dead
“damaged people”, we are
и никак да одаме на repair
für uns das ist sehr schwer
baby it’s 3 am and the loneliness fills us
it’s when we are baffled
when we think
we are attracted to each other
but instead, we love each other
although we don’t love ourselves
“baby it’s 3 am and I feel lonely”
love me
love me inebriatedly in the sleepless night
find me attractive
find me stunningly attractive
in the sleepless night – lie to me
lie to me blatantly in the sleepless night
fool yourself, fool yourself completely
in the sleepless night
we are going to fall to pieces
out of shame, out of fear
skies as we are,
we are going to crumble into stardust
and we are going to hit the road
after a few days of naked lust
and having our own truth on our side
each one of us will consider ourselves just
baby it’s 3 am and I must be lonely
let me be lonely it’s when I feel safe
let’s fall asleep at midnight
so we can oversleep 3 am
so we can dream of loneliness
instead of living it
but we are not alone oh no
we’ve been kept company by loneliness
it is why we all sleep alone at home
“damaged people”, we are
don’t let anyone repair us!
Translated from Macedonian into English by the author