Monument of Petya Dubarova

Petya Dubarova is considered one of the most talented authors in Bulgarian literature. Ever since she was in the first year of school the Burgas poet started writing poems and essays. Her teachers could not believe her works could have been written by a seven-year-old and accused her mother of writing them for her. She was a teacher and started sending some of Petya’s poems to the children newspaper “Septemvriyche”. Her first works were published there even though the editors often doubted they were written by a child. For this reason they refused to publish many of them. When Petya was 12 she received a letter from the editorial office of “Septemvriyche” saying that they cannot publish her works anymore because they are meant for adults more than for children. They advised her to start sending them to the “Rodna Rech” magazine and “Srednoshkolsko Zname” newspaper. The “Rodna Rech” staff was amazed at the talent in such a young girl. They even had to “age” her by one year because they could only publish works by students in middle school.

Petya Dubarova is the brightest example of the creative talents born in Burgas. The Burgas poet Hristo Fotev is considered the person who discovered Petya’s talent. When she was 10-11 years old she participated in his creative writing class. His poet intuition helped him realise the special way in which the girl looked at the world around her and the way she effortlessly created images with words.

Many consider the beauty of her poems unsurpassed. Unfortunately, Petya chose to stay 18 forever and took her own life. Despite her short life, the poet has left around 200 poems, 50-60 prose works, tens of literary translations of song lyrics. Some of her poems are considered the best works dedicated to Burgas and the sea. Hristo Fotev has said this about her: “It is almost unbearable to speak of Petya Dubarova in the past tense…Sometimes I need to get on tiptoes to be able to look her in the eye”.

The monument of the Burgas poet was sculpted from bronze by the sculptor Radostin Damaskov. It’s near the White water fountain in the Seaside Park of Burgas, symbolically placed near the monument of Hristo Fotev. The sculpture was raised in 2010 to commemorate the poet who will always stay 18. The three-metre bronze monument shows Petya Dubarova at full height, facing the sea.