Gjekë Marinaj has been crossing borders all his life. By speaking freely, he stepped
past the limits imposed by a repressive communist regime in his native Albania. As a
dissident poet, he traversed geographic boundaries between nations, moving from
Albania to Yugoslavia, then on to America. While living in exile among Serbians in
Yugoslavia, he and his hosts transcended centuries-old divisions between the
Albanians and Serbians, even as the bad blood between the two ethnic groups neared
the boiling point in Kosovo. It is only fitting then that Marinaj, as an author and
translator, would slip past linguistic borders as well, establishing himself as a conduit
between the United States and Albania for language, literature, and culture.
Born in the small northern Albanian town of Brrut in 1965 midway through the four-
decade reign of communist dictator Enver Hoxha, Marinaj learned early the nature of
life in an authoritarian regime. Most people struggled to get by while a handful of
amoral party loyalists anointed by the government lived in relative luxury. They had to
obey, no matter how much they suffered. And they could not speak out unless to sing
the praises of Hoxha and the Party of Labor of Albania. The consequences for doing
otherwise were severe. Losing favor with the regime would mean years of manual
labor. A family’s prospects for generations could be ruined by a single misstep of its
patriarch. Or worse could happen: In 1977, Marinaj recalls two poets being hanged in
the street, not for criticizing the government but for not being ardent enough in their
support.
Against this backdrop of repression, Marinaj became a journalist. He wrote for several
media outlets, first for local newspapers in Shkodra, the capitol of his native province,
then for a series of national publications including Zëri i Rinisë (“The Voice of Youth”),
Luftëtari (“The Fighter”), and Vullnetari (“The Volunteer”). But even as the strength of
the communist regime waned following Hoxha’s death in 1985, the government
maintained an iron grip on the press, and Marinaj quickly tired of choosing and
shaping his reporting to meet the ideological standards of the censors.
Still working as a poorly paid correspondent, he turned his energy to poetry. He admits
that his early poems, written as a teenager, are trifles, well-crafted but insignificant
ruminations on his own love or joy or sadness. But as his political awareness grew and
he began to recognize the fundamental injustice at the heart of Albanian state and the
pervasive fear in which people lived, his poetry turned outward.
The more subversive poems he kept mostly to himself, well aware of the danger of
making them public. But in 1990, he showed some of his poems to a sympathetic group
of editors at Drita, the official publication of the Albanian Writer’s Union and the country’
s foremost literary publication. Just 22 lines, “Horses,” was a thinly veiled barb at a
government who cared nothing for the governed and whose only raison d’etre was self-
preservation. Marinaj used the horse as a metaphor for the Albanian people: bridled
and confined, abused until broken, and robbed of free will.
The poem was published in Drita on August 19, 1990. The response was immediate
and overwhelming. Albanians in part were amazed at the sheer audacity of its
publication, slipping such a clearly subversive poem into a national publication. But the
poem revealed something deeper. It tapped into a vein filled with decades of
accumulated resentment and anger, the same that had built up in communist regimes
throughout Eastern Europe. Within hours, Drita was sold out across the country.
People took to scrawling the poem on scraps of paper and passing it to one another in
the subway and on the street. Months later, during anti-government demonstrations,
protestors would chant the poem through megaphones.
The inevitable hammer fell soon afterwards. Marinaj was approached at lunch one day
by an agent of the secret police. He was ordered to show up at their headquarters the
next morning.
Marinaj never learned exactly what his punishment would be. He left that same
evening, gathering a few books and a blanket and hiking all night through the
mountains. There was no time to say goodbye to family and friends. In the morning, he
crossed the former Yugoslav border near Podgorica, Montenegro. He spent several
months in a refugee camp near Belgrade and was later moved to Hotel Avala, a
mountain-top tourist resort that had been converted to a refugee camp by the United
Nations. He secured work installing telephone lines, spending his free time studying
Serbian. He was warmly embraced by his Serbian neighbors and the literary
community, even as relations between Albanians and Serbians in nearby Kosovo
remained in permanent crisis.
While at Avala, Marinaj met with Warren Zimmerman, U.S. Ambassador to Yugoslavia,
seeking permanent residency. After showing him a copy of “Horses,” thus proving his
anti-communist bona fides, Zimmerman shook his hand and welcomed Marinaj to
America.
He arrived in San Diego in July of 1991 with little money and no English. Within six
months, he moved from California to Richardson, Texas. After earning an associate’s
degree in science from Brookhaven College, Marinaj graduated magna cum laude from
UTD in 2006 with a bachelor’s in literary studies and received a master’s degree in the
same subject in 2008. He is currently working toward a humanities doctorate with a
focus on literature and translation and a certificate in Holocaust Studies.
In the meantime, Marinaj has established himself as a prolific and accomplished
author, editor, and translator. He has translated several books from English to
Albanian and two from Albanian to English, including a collection of Albanian oral epic
poetry, and has edited more than a dozen books in both languages. In 2001, he
created the Society of Albanian-American Writers and began teaching several courses
at Richland College, where he continues to teach English and Communications. He has
also founded Marinaj Publishing, which publishes original and translated works, and
the Gjenima Prize for Literature Foundation, for which he serves as editor of its official
publication Pena International. He has been the recipient of The Golden Pen from the
Society of Albanian-American Writers and the Pjetër Arbnori Prize for literature from
QNK, part of the Albanian Ministry of Culture, and he was a guest editor of Translation
Review, the nation’s top journal for translation scholarship. Since 1994, he has also
worked as a Component Technician II in the pathology department at Baylor University
Medical Center.
Marinaj continues to write both poetry and prose but has focused much of his time and
study on translation. He views it as a greater service to readers to reveal an existing
but unknown masterpiece than to produce an original but inferior work of his own. He is
in the process of publishing Elie Wiesel’s Night in Albanian and a book of Albanian
poetry into English.
Marinaj lives in Richardson with Dusita, his wife of 18 years.
past the limits imposed by a repressive communist regime in his native Albania. As a
dissident poet, he traversed geographic boundaries between nations, moving from
Albania to Yugoslavia, then on to America. While living in exile among Serbians in
Yugoslavia, he and his hosts transcended centuries-old divisions between the
Albanians and Serbians, even as the bad blood between the two ethnic groups neared
the boiling point in Kosovo. It is only fitting then that Marinaj, as an author and
translator, would slip past linguistic borders as well, establishing himself as a conduit
between the United States and Albania for language, literature, and culture.
Born in the small northern Albanian town of Brrut in 1965 midway through the four-
decade reign of communist dictator Enver Hoxha, Marinaj learned early the nature of
life in an authoritarian regime. Most people struggled to get by while a handful of
amoral party loyalists anointed by the government lived in relative luxury. They had to
obey, no matter how much they suffered. And they could not speak out unless to sing
the praises of Hoxha and the Party of Labor of Albania. The consequences for doing
otherwise were severe. Losing favor with the regime would mean years of manual
labor. A family’s prospects for generations could be ruined by a single misstep of its
patriarch. Or worse could happen: In 1977, Marinaj recalls two poets being hanged in
the street, not for criticizing the government but for not being ardent enough in their
support.
Against this backdrop of repression, Marinaj became a journalist. He wrote for several
media outlets, first for local newspapers in Shkodra, the capitol of his native province,
then for a series of national publications including Zëri i Rinisë (“The Voice of Youth”),
Luftëtari (“The Fighter”), and Vullnetari (“The Volunteer”). But even as the strength of
the communist regime waned following Hoxha’s death in 1985, the government
maintained an iron grip on the press, and Marinaj quickly tired of choosing and
shaping his reporting to meet the ideological standards of the censors.
Still working as a poorly paid correspondent, he turned his energy to poetry. He admits
that his early poems, written as a teenager, are trifles, well-crafted but insignificant
ruminations on his own love or joy or sadness. But as his political awareness grew and
he began to recognize the fundamental injustice at the heart of Albanian state and the
pervasive fear in which people lived, his poetry turned outward.
The more subversive poems he kept mostly to himself, well aware of the danger of
making them public. But in 1990, he showed some of his poems to a sympathetic group
of editors at Drita, the official publication of the Albanian Writer’s Union and the country’
s foremost literary publication. Just 22 lines, “Horses,” was a thinly veiled barb at a
government who cared nothing for the governed and whose only raison d’etre was self-
preservation. Marinaj used the horse as a metaphor for the Albanian people: bridled
and confined, abused until broken, and robbed of free will.
The poem was published in Drita on August 19, 1990. The response was immediate
and overwhelming. Albanians in part were amazed at the sheer audacity of its
publication, slipping such a clearly subversive poem into a national publication. But the
poem revealed something deeper. It tapped into a vein filled with decades of
accumulated resentment and anger, the same that had built up in communist regimes
throughout Eastern Europe. Within hours, Drita was sold out across the country.
People took to scrawling the poem on scraps of paper and passing it to one another in
the subway and on the street. Months later, during anti-government demonstrations,
protestors would chant the poem through megaphones.
The inevitable hammer fell soon afterwards. Marinaj was approached at lunch one day
by an agent of the secret police. He was ordered to show up at their headquarters the
next morning.
Marinaj never learned exactly what his punishment would be. He left that same
evening, gathering a few books and a blanket and hiking all night through the
mountains. There was no time to say goodbye to family and friends. In the morning, he
crossed the former Yugoslav border near Podgorica, Montenegro. He spent several
months in a refugee camp near Belgrade and was later moved to Hotel Avala, a
mountain-top tourist resort that had been converted to a refugee camp by the United
Nations. He secured work installing telephone lines, spending his free time studying
Serbian. He was warmly embraced by his Serbian neighbors and the literary
community, even as relations between Albanians and Serbians in nearby Kosovo
remained in permanent crisis.
While at Avala, Marinaj met with Warren Zimmerman, U.S. Ambassador to Yugoslavia,
seeking permanent residency. After showing him a copy of “Horses,” thus proving his
anti-communist bona fides, Zimmerman shook his hand and welcomed Marinaj to
America.
He arrived in San Diego in July of 1991 with little money and no English. Within six
months, he moved from California to Richardson, Texas. After earning an associate’s
degree in science from Brookhaven College, Marinaj graduated magna cum laude from
UTD in 2006 with a bachelor’s in literary studies and received a master’s degree in the
same subject in 2008. He is currently working toward a humanities doctorate with a
focus on literature and translation and a certificate in Holocaust Studies.
In the meantime, Marinaj has established himself as a prolific and accomplished
author, editor, and translator. He has translated several books from English to
Albanian and two from Albanian to English, including a collection of Albanian oral epic
poetry, and has edited more than a dozen books in both languages. In 2001, he
created the Society of Albanian-American Writers and began teaching several courses
at Richland College, where he continues to teach English and Communications. He has
also founded Marinaj Publishing, which publishes original and translated works, and
the Gjenima Prize for Literature Foundation, for which he serves as editor of its official
publication Pena International. He has been the recipient of The Golden Pen from the
Society of Albanian-American Writers and the Pjetër Arbnori Prize for literature from
QNK, part of the Albanian Ministry of Culture, and he was a guest editor of Translation
Review, the nation’s top journal for translation scholarship. Since 1994, he has also
worked as a Component Technician II in the pathology department at Baylor University
Medical Center.
Marinaj continues to write both poetry and prose but has focused much of his time and
study on translation. He views it as a greater service to readers to reveal an existing
but unknown masterpiece than to produce an original but inferior work of his own. He is
in the process of publishing Elie Wiesel’s Night in Albanian and a book of Albanian
poetry into English.
Marinaj lives in Richardson with Dusita, his wife of 18 years.
| GJEKË MARINAJ: TRANSLATING TWO WORLDS |
“Gjekë Marinaj is one of the most distinguished Albanian poets of our time. He belongs among Europe's best poets. In his poetic universe, there As often
happens with true poets, the poetic spirit moves from his life to his verse and vice versa.”
—Ismail Kadare, a candidate for Nobel Prize in Literature, Tema
happens with true poets, the poetic spirit moves from his life to his verse and vice versa.”
—Ismail Kadare, a candidate for Nobel Prize in Literature, Tema
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