Memories Pretend to Sleep: The Poetry of Julia Gjika

Softcover

Through her poetry of witness, she awakens us from ourselves, by way of ourselves. — Natasha Lako

Gjika has remained the poet of vulnerability whose range of emotions well up beneath the surface of self-control and break through with concise and deft expression. — Klara Kodra, poet and literary critic

Julia Gjika turns her poems into small pocket mirrors, where time and again each person, particularly women, sees their own expansive world with all its natural cracks, together with the blossomings of love and family. — Petraq Risto, poet

Gjika’s poetical coordinates are frequently addressed, but never specific because she is a poet always in transit. Reading her is a way of setting out on an endless journey through years, various continents, cities and small Albanian towns, different times of day. — Natasha Lako, poet and novelist, from her forward to Muzg: Vëllim Poetik (Dusk: Collected Poems) by Julia Gjika

Julia Gjika is a poet who, like the child who puts her ear to the railroad track to hear her train coming, has felt everything deeply, and given herself permission in the face of it all to “break into song.” — From the introduction by Ani Gjika