Bulgarian poetry in the seventies of the twentieth century reflected in three propaganda and one marginal anthology

Abstract

This article investigates the scope of ideology that infected poetry in the nineteen seventies; the processes of marginalization of uncomfortable poetic voices, and respectively, the mechanisms imposing propaganda and anthologizing the poetically wrapped agitation; the stabilizations and tensions along the centre-periphery axis; the role of anthologies by authors not from the capital in the process of making sense of the country (province) as one free from the political poetic category. In a synchronous plan, some anthological specimens were issued over a short period of time, e.g. Poetic Anthology about the Silent Feat (1974), The High Wave (1974), Sprays (1975) and Poppies (1977).
 The first anthology is dedicated to the law enforcement agencies and to the state security. The second is an oriented and ambitious paragon of socialist realism poetry. The third anthology has been conceived of as a forum for the authors who were selected exclusively from among the members of the Union of Bulgarian writers. The fourth volume is a seemingly unpretentious collection that defines itself as an anthology. The compilation process, however, took pains far greater than expected – it was a three-year long odyssey from the moment the anthology of national/home poetry was included in the publishing plan for 1975 to the admission of an unnamed title in the publishing plan for 1977, as well as the resulting marginalization of the Poppies anthology after its publication.