Black Holes Within Us

In her metaphysical poetry collection, Black Holes Within Us, Marta Markoska calls the universe into play, as both the context for her love and as providing a means for its expression. Her poems are full of ordinary details from everyday modern living, but are paradoxically pervaded with classical, philosophical and scientific allusions. They contain interesting and perceptive ideas – for example, about the self, the continuous skirmishes between the sexes on topics as various as the day’s meals and sexual fulfilment – expressed in simple words and images, and are, at different levels, accessible to all.

------------------

Markoska’s Black holes within us syphons ironies, distilling them into a cauldron of quite merciless clarity. There is a morass of emotion, here – passive aggression, challenge, defiance, feminism, resignation and regret. 

She deals in contrasts – droplets of ideas that are fermented into frequent antithesis.

A poignant piecing together of simile, irony and hypothetical equation ... thought-provoking.

―Hayley Ann Solomon, Author of Celestial Promise and writer of Prize-winning poems in successive annual competitions for the  International Proverse Poetry Prize.

“The poetry of Marta Markoska is bleak but enlightening. Each poem forces us to think about matters that are unthinkable – aiming to destroy our favourite beliefs and wishes. What is true, what is good, and what is beautiful to us are, in her poems, almost always certainly not what they seem. Yet, in a strange sort of way, the poet concludes her vision in her opening quotation, ‘We should leave truth to the Gods.’ ... the urban rebel stands side by side with an unarticulated form of mysticism – we are all just playing here.”

―Elbert Siu Ping Lee, author of Rain on the Pacific Coast (Proverse Hong Kong, 2013)

“The salty-sweet poetic pieces which Markoska serves us, giving insight into her own poetic image of the salty-sweet universe of love, is more than a successful poetic guide through her own galaxy of poetry. This book of poetry is also a subtle poetic plunge into the “black holes within us”, which every honest reader finds not only in Markoska’s poetry, but also deep within themselves.”

―Ivan Dzeparoski 

“Black Holes Within Us ... is the result of a deeply mature search by an individual who seeks nothing more than the purest essence of its being.”

―Biljana Perchinkova