Filip Shiroka was born in the city of Shkodër in 1859 and grew up in that cultured environment. As a child, he attended the Franciscan school, where one of his teachers was the Albanian poet Leonardo De Martino, who would nurture his love for the poetic art. Like his friend from the same city Pashko Vasa, he would go to follow higher studies in Italy.

In the years of the Albanian League of Prizren (1878 – 1881), when the Great Powers, after failing to give Montenegro, Plava and Gucia and susequently Hoti and Gruda, decided to compensate it with Ulqin and Tivar. Filip Shiroka writes in Italian the dedication poem “Albanians, to arms, to arms” published in 1878 in Milan, in which he calls for the protection of the two coastal cities.

He would emigrate to Egypt and then to Lebanon, where he spent his entire life and where he worked as an engineer for the construction of railways. While, his prefered literary nickname was Gegë Postriba, in despite the choice made by Luigj Gurakuqi, who signed his poems Lekë Gruda. Filip Shiroka’s poetry was published in the Albanian media in exile, mainly in the well-known magazine “Albania”, which was directed by Faik Konica.

In 1933, when he was in Homeland for the last time, under the care of the publisher and the well-known historian Dom Ndoc Nikaj, Filip Shiroka published a summary of his poems in Tirana’s “Zani zemrës” /The Heart’s Voice/, which was received so well by Albanian readers of the time. A kind of different of most Albanian Renaissance poets, Filip Shiroka appears as a typically lyrical, romantic poet, quite sentimental at times, with strong feelings of the burning longing for the Motherland and his homecity Shkodër, which was always in his mind and heart due to exile. Poems “Go Swallow” and “Come Swallow” are among the most beautiful and popular literary creations of the Albanian National Renaissance.

The themes of the Filip Shiroka poetry was also that of patriotism, pride for the past and the free-spirited spirit of the Albanians. Poems such as “The Man”, “George Kastrioti”, “Shypnia” /Albania/ were a call to stand up against the invading Ottoman rule and the liberation of the Motherland. He passed away in Lebanon in 1935 with the disease of love for the homeland.
Filip Shiroka was a poet with subtle feelings, a born and completely natural lyrical creator, a master of language, of sweet and crystal-clear expressions, who occupies an honorable place in the history of Albanian literature. The remains of Filip Shiroke were brought from Lebanon to the Motherland and reburied in the city of Shkodër around a quarter of a century after the poet’s death, in a ceremony attended by thousands and thousands of citizens, admiring the sweet sounding voice poet of the “Swallow”.

From the poem “Go you swallow”, of Filip Shiroka

Nice jurney as spring has come;
Go you swallow, fly away;
From Egypt to other soils;
Fields and mountains while you seek;
Go to Albania so, fly there;
Go to Shkodër, my city.

/a.p./