Poet Edvin Sugarev presented his new poetry collection "Music Will Light My Way" in Burgas. The book is out from the publisher Znaci. Each poem in it was written under the influence of a specific piece of music.

"Music is freedom. Just as poetry is freedom. The greatest freedom we could have," he said.

Read more: Edvin Sugarev presents in Burgas poems written to the sound of music

Each poem comes with links to YouTube recordings of the music that inspired it. The music covers many genres: classical, jazz, blues, Armenian duduk, Indian ragas and Mongolian throat singing. Sugarev said readers do not have to listen to the music to take in the poems, and the links leave the choice to them.

He began trying to write under the influence of music around 2016–2017. Sugarev said a piece has to be heard many times until images and stories appear. He does not know for sure whether they come from him or from the music itself, but he tends to believe they come from the music.

He calls himself a music lover and a good listener, and he sees art in listening itself. Everyone hears music in their own way, he said, and the book shows what he felt, saw and took from the pieces. For him, music and poetry are also a language unlike everyday speech: freer, more associative and with deeper roots.

"These are the languages through which we speak with God, and poets and musicians are our translators," Sugarev said.

Among the book's messages, the poet pointed to its many voices and to a view of the world as a connected whole. Different musical traditions and texts share one space and are not separate parts. "Being is not a mechanism but an organism. One whole in which everything is connected and vibrates with energy," he added.

He first wrote more than three times as many poems by this method as appear in the book. Sugarev asked his friend Boris Hristov whether to publish them or keep them in his archive. He called Hristov his teacher in poetry and courage. Hristov helped pick poems from the manuscripts, edited the book, encouraged him to publish it and suggested pieces of music the poet had not known before.

Music is not a new subject for him. In 1998 he published "Jazz", his first book on the theme, in which he tried to recreate jazz rhythms and structures in verse.

His grandfather taught viola at the conservatoire, and his sister and three of his nephews are musicians. Sugarev himself never learned to play, though he took piano lessons as a child. The new book is dedicated to his twin sons.

His daughter Teya Sugareva, who teaches directing at the Burgas branch of the National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts (NATFIZ), spoke about how close music, poetry and theatre are. She read her favourite poem from the book, "The Caterpillar Is Gone", which ends: "Music gives us wings. And we fly out of ourselves."

Prof. Kalina Lukova of Burgas Free University spoke about the link between musical intonation, rhythm and the poetic text, and drew parallels with Paul Verlaine and Dylan Thomas. Pupils from the Prof. Pancho Vladigerov National School of Music and Performing Arts played music at the event.

Publisher Rumyana Emanuilidu spoke about freedom as the main idea of the book. She also recalled Sugarev's three earlier books with Znaci, among them the poetry collection "Theseus in the Labyrinth" and the book of fragments "Core".

His next book of fragments will be called "Hide-and-Seek with the Darkness". It was announced at the launch that it is expected in 2027. Emanuilidu said it was written in the summer of 2026 in Kamen Bryag and sums up much of the author's life.