Darinka Jevrić

In the city of Pristina, where the streets hummed with stories, a young girl named Darinka fell in love with words. She wasn’t the loudest in the classroom, but when she wrote, her voice soared. Her poems spoke of the land she loved. She wrote about Kosovo’s golden fields, its whispering rivers, and the people who called it home.

Darinka grew up to become a poet and a journalist, her words reaching readers in newspapers like Jedinstvo. But as years passed, war came to Kosovo, and many of her friends and neighbors left, fearing the violence. People urged Darinka to go too. "It’s too dangerous here," they said.

But she refused. "My place is here," she insisted. "If I leave, who will remember our stories?"

So she stayed. Even when the world around her changed, even when the city she loved no longer felt like home to everyone, Darinka remained. She wrote poems about the land, about sorrow, about hope—words that carried the weight of history but also the promise of peace.

Some called her brave. Others called her stubborn. But Darinka knew the truth: poetry was her armor. With every line she wrote, she proved that love for one’s home is stronger than fear.

Years passed, and though the world kept changing, Darinka never stopped writing. Even when she was the only one left in her neighborhood, she sat at her old wooden desk, pen in hand, filling pages with beauty and truth. "My head is no more precious than a nun’s," she would say. "I stay because this is where my words belong."

When she passed away, the people of Gračanica honored her by naming a library after her. It became a place where her poems and thousands of other stories live on. Because Darinka Jevrić taught them something important: the bravest thing a person can do is stand by their truth—and sometimes, that truth is written in ink.

And so, whenever you see a notebook waiting to be filled, remember Darinka: the poet who stayed, the woman who turned sadness into song, and who proved that even in the hardest times, words can be a kind of magic.

By Ana Vladescu