Aco Šopov

Biography

His childhood was haunted by the specter of incurable disease, death, sadness, and loneliness - themes that would later permeate his poetry. He referred to his youth as the "Hundred-headed monster." When he was just eleven years old, his mother, whom he had cared for alone, died prematurely of a serious illness. He began writing poetry in a school notebook at the age of fourteen.

In 1943, at the age of 19, Aco Šopov became engaged in the Yugoslav Partisans' resistance to the Nazi occupying forces. He continued writing poetry during this period and found his subject matter in his own experience. He proved to be a highly personal poet even when chronicling events of a social or patriotic nature, as when describing the death of a much-loved woman and fellow partisan, Vera Jocić. Aco Šopov (standing first from right) alongside Vera Jocić (down row in the middle) and Hristijan Todorovski Karpoš (standing second from right) in December 1943.

With his poetry book Stihovi na makata i radosta (Verses of Suffering and Joy), Šopov moved away from socialist realism. Because of this departure in the early 1950s, Šopov's poetry was initially criticized but came to be recognized several years later.

Speaking with his own voice, Šopov charted his own course in poetry, without being a dissident. "The greatest challenge and the greatest moral responsibility of the poet," he said in an interview, "is to find the right words to the contents and ideas he wants to express in an authentic and inimitable way. If it fails, the poem is pulled out of its socket, the word becomes a lie."

He was an editor of the literary magazine "Sovremenost".

In 1967, Aco Šopov became one of the founding members of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and was awarded with the AVNOJ in 1970. The AVNOJ Prize is the highest recognition in the area of science and art in the frames of the former Yugoslavia.

Public career In 1971, after many years of journalism and publishing, Aco Šopov was nominated as the Yugoslav Ambassador to Senegal. Šopov's time in Senegal inspired the book Poem for the black women, which won the Miladinov Brothers Prize at the Struga Poetry Evenings in 1976. This international festival, held each year in the South of Macedonia, was founded in 1961 by Šopov himself with a group of Macedonian poets.

In 1975, back from Senegal, Aco Šopov was appointed as President of the Commission for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries of the Republic of Macedonia. However, just three years later, the disease foreshadowed in his poems forced him to retire from active life. Following a long illness, he died on 20 April 1982 in Skopje.