# Aco Šopov

Aco Šopov (Macedonian: Ацо Шопов; 1923 – 1982) was a Macedonian poet. He was considered one of the most important poets of Yugoslavia. He took part in World War II in Yugoslavia (1941–45) and his poems written at the time were published as Pesni (Poems) in Belgrade and Kumanovo in 1944, and in Štip the following year. Pesni was the first poetry collection published in Macedonian in SR Macedonia after the war.
Šopov was member of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts (1967) and corresponding member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (1968).
He graduated from the philosophy department of the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje and the Higher Political School in Belgrade. He was president of the Translators’ Union and the Writers’ Union of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia in the 1950s and 1960s, and of the Writers’ Union of Yugoslavia from 1965 to 1969. From 1970 to 1977 he was a diplomat.

## Biography

His childhood was haunted by the specter of incurable disease, death, sadness, and loneliness - themes that would later permeate his poetry. He referred to his youth as the "Hundred-headed monster." When he was just eleven years old, his mother, whom he had cared for alone, died prematurely of a serious illness . He began writing poetry in a school notebook at the age of fourteen.
In 1943, at the age of 19, Aco Šopov became engaged in the Yugoslav Partisans' resistance to the Nazi occupying forces. He continued writing poetry during this period and found his subject matter in his own experience. He proved to be a highly personal poet even when chronicling events of a social or patriotic nature, as when describing the death of a much-loved woman and fellow partisan, Vera Jocić.
With his poetry book Stihovi na makata i radosta (Verses of Suffering and Joy), Šopov moved away from socialist realism. Because of this departure in the early 1950s, Šopov's poetry was initially criticized but came to be recognized several years later.
Speaking with his own voice, Šopov charted his own course in poetry, without being a dissident. "The greatest challenge and the greatest moral responsibility of the poet," he said in an interview, "is to find the right words to the contents and ideas he wants to express in an authentic and inimitable way. If it fails, the poem is pulled out of its socket, the word becomes a lie."
He was an editor of the literary magazine "Sovremenost".
In 1967, Aco Šopov became one of the founding members of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and was awarded with the AVNOJ in 1970. The AVNOJ Prize is the highest recognition in the area of science and art in the frames of the former Yugoslavia.

## Public career

In 1971, after many years of journalism and publishing, Aco Šopov was nominated as the Yugoslav Ambassador to Senegal. Šopov's time in Senegal inspired the book Poem for the black women, which won the Miladinov Brothers Prize at the Struga Poetry Evenings in 1976. This international festival, held each year in the South of Macedonia, was founded in 1961 by Šopov himself with a group of Macedonian poets.
In 1975, back from Senegal, Aco Šopov was appointed as President of the Commission for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries of the Republic of Macedonia. However, just three years later, the disease foreshadowed in his poems forced him to retire from active life. Following a long illness, he died on 20 April 1982 in Skopje.