Poet Edvin Sugarev presented his new poetry collection "Music Will Light My Way" in Burgas. The book is published by Znatsi, and each poem in it was written under the influence of a specific piece of music.

"Music is freedom. So is poetry. It is the greatest freedom we could have," he said.

Every text comes with links to YouTube recordings of the music that inspired the poem. The music spans classical, jazz, blues, Armenian duduk, Indian ragas and Mongolian throat singing. Sugarev says readers do not have to listen to the music to take in the poems, and the links leave that choice to them.

He began trying to write under the influence of music around 2016–2017. Sugarev said he has to hear a piece 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, and the book shows what he felt, saw and took from the pieces. For him, music and poetry are also a language unlike the everyday one: freer, more associative and with deeper roots.

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

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

The poems he first wrote this way number more than three times those in the book. Sugarev asked his friend Boris Hristov whether to publish this poetry or leave it in his archive. He called Hristov his teacher in poetry and courage. Hristov helped pick poems from the manuscripts, edited the book, urged him to publish it and suggested pieces of music the poet had not known before.

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

His grandfather taught viola at the conservatory, and his sister and three of his nephews are musicians. Sugarev himself never learned to play, although 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 the closeness of music, poetry and theatre. She read her favourite poem in 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. Students 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 mentioned Sugarev's three earlier books with Znatsi, 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. According to Emanuilidu, it was written in the summer of 2026 in Kamen Bryag and sums up much of the author's life.