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Venko Markovski

Born:	March 5, 1915 Skopje, Kingdom of Serbia
Died:	January 7, 1988 Sofia, Bulgaria
Occupation:	writer, poet, politician
Nationality:	Bulgarian
Genres:	poems, history, sonnets

Venko Markovski (Bulgarian and Macedonian cyrillic: Венко Марковски) (March 3, 1915 - January 7, 1988) was a Bulgarian writer, poet, and politician from Macedonia.

Markovski was a key founder of the Macedonian literature. He published what was to be the first book written in the modern Macedonian language, "Narodni bigori", in 1938. He also published a number of poems in Bulgarian whilst living in Sofia, among them the sonnet crown "Dante Alighieri".

In 1941 he was sent to a concentration camp "Enikyoi" by the Bulgarian police. In 1943-1944 he was a partisan in Macedonia, together with his wife and five-year old son, Mile. He wrote some of the most popular partisan marches songs of the Yugoslav partisans.

In 1944-1945 he participated in the Commission for the Creation of the Macedonian Alphabet. After end of World War II, Markovski was among the leaders of the newly-established Republic of Macedonia, as part of Yugoslavia. Venko Markovski is the author of the first Macedonian opera, "Goce".

In 1948, he broke relations with Tito, and as a result was sent several times to prison, including a five-year spell at Goli otok, the notorious Yugoslav concentration camp in the Adriatic sea. Venko Markovski wrote a book called "Goli Otok - the Island of Death" about this time. It was published in 1984 at the New York Columbia University Press.

In 1965, after not being able to find a job in Yugoslavia, Markovski left the country and moved to live and make a career in Bulgaria.

Well accepted by the people of Bulgaria, he soon published a number of books in Bulgarian. Among many poems, dedicated to the idea of communism, he wrote also many sonnets, and published three books of sonnet crowns, dedicated to different historical figures - ranging from Dante Alighieri to Nikolay Dzhambazov. His sonnets and sonnet crowns are known also for using all different forms - Italian, English, Spenserian. Markovski also wrote "Saga of Testaments" - a history of Bulgaria in verses (total of 44,444 verses).

Venko Markovski was a member of the Bulgarian Writers' Union, and a member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (1979), and was awarded highest Bulgarian orders, among them Hero of the Socialist Labour (1975), and Hero of Bulgaria (1985). He was member of several Parliaments from 1971 until his death in 1988.

He was married and had two children.

Venko Markovski has published more than 50 books. Among them:

• Narodni bigori (1938)
• Klime (1945)
• Legenda za Goce (1968) - a play
• Kravta voda ne stava (1971, 2002) - research on the history of Republic of Macedonia
• Predania zavetni (1978, also in Russian)
• Pismo do drugarkata (1979)
• Sudbovni machenici (1981) - sonnet crowns
• Buntovni voshtenici (1983) - sonnet crowns
• Vekovni varvolici (1984) - sonnet crowns

Many of his books can be found at the Library of Congress, or the New York Public Library.