Saudade
Saudade, I Spoke Your Language (2026) speaks to the love of men and languages.
By crossing over English and Portuguese, two widely-spoken but unofficial languages in Luxembourg, this poetry collection gives voice to the search of same-sex love in times of growing isolation and worldwide post-2020 uneasiness.
Writing & Outreach
Storytelling holds up a mirror to reality. But the light, which lets us see the reflection, is language. As such, Flame's writing is characterised by this 'search for the light' that determines how we see in front of us. As a long-time learner and linguist, Flame loves to play with and across languages. Reocurring themes in his work are desire, queerness & foreignness, nature, myth, and mysticism.
Flame loves to work with different communities of poetry-passionate people. Academic, lay, or creative; adult or young learner, he has experience with all audiences and many types of activities.
Loose-Leaf Poetry, 2023
Dreams, fireplaces, shallow waters: comfort in a foreign country. Read Flame's first independant publication, which reconciles with migrating into a multilingual society. Includes award-winning poem The Laddie at the Lake.
The Laddie at the Lake, 2022
A poem about an encoutner with an Italian-speaking merman. Touches on multilingualism, homophobia, and sexuality. Won the Prix Laurence in 2022 and marks a step into a more mature creativity.
Flame Darinov
Flame Darinov was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, and has lived in the Minett region of the Grand Duchy since 2017. He acquired Luxembourgish nationality in 2025, proud of both his birth and chosen country.
Flame has studied and worked at the University of Luxembourg, where he co-founded the first ever student poetry club (PULSE). He has taught poetry as an academic subject and as a creative practice. He pursued further higher education in the US and Scotland, which introduced him to his favoured discipline - theoretical syntax.
As a Bulgarian-Luxembourgish writer, Flame's style of writing is characterised by the 'crossing' of languages. Although he mostly writes in English, Flame is fascinated by the changing textures and colours of language once it becomes infused with a linguistic Other.
Spekulatioun
Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Why not tell it to me all
Right now? Let me scry the future
Let me scan the past
So my prophecies may butcher
All that cannot last.
Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Who has let our scripture fall
Lower than the lowly books?
Is reading not just prophecy,
Is it not heresy
Against what is true?
Little lines of black and blue
Shape the fading future,
Yet can tell us of it nothing.
Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Speak to me of naught at all;
You cannot tell the future!
