Once There Was Spring by Geo Milev, trans. Tom Phillips
Worple
Published 1st October 2025.
Author bio Geo Milev (1895-1925) was a major figure in Bulgarian literature, both as a writer of poems and prose-poems and as a translator, critic, editor and advocate of radical approaches to literature and political thinking. Initially influenced by the likes of Baudelaire, he became increasingly interested in expressionism, anarcho-communism and internationalism, publishing work which ran against the grain of much of the Bulgarian poetry being published at the time. Severely wounded on the Macedonian front during the First World War, he received treatment in Berlin around the time of the Spartacus Uprising before returning to Bulgaria to pursue his literary career and produce nearly all of his most significant works over the course of the next five years. Openly hostile to Bulgari's right-wing regime, he was arrested and extrajudicially executed following the 1925 communist bombing of St Nedelya Church in Sofia that was intended to kill the then king of Bulgaria. Translator bio Tom Phillips is a UK-born writer, translator and lecturer who currently lives in Bulgaria where he teaches creative writing and translation at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski. In addition to the work of Geo Milev, he has translated many of Bulgari's leading contemporary poets, including Kristin Dimitrova, Petar Tchouhov, Vladimir Levchev and Ekaterina Grigorova, as well as fiction, biography and academic essays. Tom's own poetry has been published in a wide range of journals, anthologies, pamphlets and the full-length collections Unknown Translations (Scalino, 2016), Recreation Ground (Two Rivers Press, 2012) and Burning Omaha (Firewater, 2003), and has been translated and published in more than a dozen languages, including Albanian, Bulgarian, German, Hindi, Italian, Macedonian, Romanian, Serbian and Slovenian. A former journalist and editor for Venue magazine in Bristol, his other work numerous book reviews and literary articles, as well as more than twenty plays and editing the critical volume Peter Robinson: A Portrait of his Work (Shearsman, 2022).
Author bio Geo Milev (1895-1925) was a major figure in Bulgarian literature, both as a writer of poems and prose-poems and as a translator, critic, editor and advocate of radical approaches to literature and political thinking. Initially influenced by the likes of Baudelaire, he became increasingly interested in expressionism, anarcho-communism and internationalism, publishing work which ran against the grain of much of the Bulgarian poetry being published at the time. Severely wounded on the Macedonian front during the First World War, he received treatment in Berlin around the time of the Spartacus Uprising before returning to Bulgaria to pursue his literary career and produce nearly all of his most significant works over the course of the next five years. Openly hostile to Bulgari's right-wing regime, he was arrested and extrajudicially executed following the 1925 communist bombing of St Nedelya Church in Sofia that was intended to kill the then king of Bulgaria. Translator bio Tom Phillips is a UK-born writer, translator and lecturer who currently lives in Bulgaria where he teaches creative writing and translation at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski. In addition to the work of Geo Milev, he has translated many of Bulgari's leading contemporary poets, including Kristin Dimitrova, Petar Tchouhov, Vladimir Levchev and Ekaterina Grigorova, as well as fiction, biography and academic essays. Tom's own poetry has been published in a wide range of journals, anthologies, pamphlets and the full-length collections Unknown Translations (Scalino, 2016), Recreation Ground (Two Rivers Press, 2012) and Burning Omaha (Firewater, 2003), and has been translated and published in more than a dozen languages, including Albanian, Bulgarian, German, Hindi, Italian, Macedonian, Romanian, Serbian and Slovenian. A former journalist and editor for Venue magazine in Bristol, his other work numerous book reviews and literary articles, as well as more than twenty plays and editing the critical volume Peter Robinson: A Portrait of his Work (Shearsman, 2022).
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