Kataložni zapis o publikaciji (CIP) pripravili v Narodni in univerzitetni knjižnici v Ljubljani COBISS.SI-ID 218200067 ISBN 978-961-7217-16-2 (ePUB) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. 20 POETS AN ANTHOLOGY OF SLOVENE POETRY SINCE 1991 FEATURING WORKS BY MEMBERS OF THE SLOVENE WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION Table of Contents 20 POETS - ananthology of slovene poetry since 1991 ANDREJ HOČEVAR: Ripples on the Moon (Foreword) LIDIJA DIMKOVSKA VERONIKA DINTINJANA NINA DRAGIČEVIĆ BORUT GOMBAČ STANKA HRASTELJ JURE JAKOB KRISTINA KOČAN MIKLAVŽ KOMELJ MATEJ KRAJNC META KUŠAR JOSIP OSTI ANA PEPELNIK GREGOR PODLOGAR JANA PUTRLE SRDIĆ TONE ŠKRJANEC MARJAN STROJAN ANA SVETEL ALEŠ ŠTEGER NATAŠA VELIKONJA UROŠ ZUPAN A selection of Slovene awards that honour poetry About the editor Colophon Andrej Hočevar RIPPLES ON THE MOON Most anthologies clearly indicate the contingency they were addressing, the need they expressed, whereas others may seem somewhat random, yet are still proof of existence within a hitherto undefined territory that would exist only as an implied possibility. The poet Esad Babačić states in his foreword to Replace My Head: An Anthology of Slovene Punk Poetry (2023) that his anthology contains “poetry” that was never meant to end up in a book, perhaps because it hadn’t even been considered “poetry” prior to being anthologized and printed there. A quick and necessarily subjective overview of anthologies recently published in Slovenia makes for a fun and fascinating exercise in literary history. Take, for example, the Anthology of Slovene High School Haiku Poetry 2001-2021 (2021); Every Boxer Boxes Their own Fight: An Anthology of Slovene Sports Poetry (2022), which will teach you that some poets are passionate about soccer and that some skiers, i.e., one, also wrote poetry; or take Steelwork Lyric: An Anthology of Poets from Jesenice (2014), which bravely foregrounds poetry from a place, where − as put forth in the foreword by the editor Jernej Kunsterle − “culture has always been, and is, in the shadow of sports and steelworks” ; or My Big Fat Mother (2001), an anthology of naïve poetry in dialect from Poljanska Valley (ever heard it? or, rather, heard its melody?). Or take, for example, The Maribor Reader (1999), which was republished in English in 2012 when the city was a European Capital of Culture − Maribor being the second-largest city in Slovenia, an unlucky reminder of the provincial rivalry between it and the overshadowing capital − and compare it to Beyond the Tongue: An Anthology of Female Poets from Maribor (2024) to see why the latter might have been more necessary than the first, in which only one of the 36 writers was female, a rather alarming hallmark of the way women were underrepresented in many anthologies. As a bold countermeasure, Irena Novak Popov edited the pioneering Anthology of Slovene Female Poets (published in three volumes between 2004 and 2007), referenced in the foreword to Beyond the Tongue. In a similar vein, Brane Mozetič’s trailblazing Shards of Glass in the Mouth from 1989, an anthology of 20th-century poetry with homo­erotic motifs, started mapping a parallel history, or canon, that has recently been complemented by works, such as Hearts at Play, an anthology of works by “young Slovene LGBTQ+ authors.” Unless they represent obscure, lonely landmarks in literary hinterlands, anthologies may also represent voices in an ongoing discourse with various calls and responses. New anthologies spark debates and critiques, giving rise to further anthologies that try to highlight a contrasting point of view. For example, when Janko Kos (born in 1931), one of Slovenia’s foremost literary scholars, published Slovene Lyric Poetry 1950-1980 back in 1983, he was no doubt attempting to define Slovene Poetry and position it within the context of Slovene cultural and political identities. How­ever, that anthology can be read in dialogue with philosopher Tine Hribar’s more focused Contemporary Slovene Poetry (1984), which was perhaps even more important because of the profound influ­­ence and wider cultural repercussions of its idiosyncratic after­word. Besides, to return to the recurrent dichotomy between the centre and the margins, Kos’s anthology was published in Ljubljana, Hribar’s in Maribor. There are more politically charged examples of anthologies that are in dialogue with each other. Morning of the Forgotten (1991), an anthology of “the fallen, killed, forbidden, concealed, forgotten” (primarily writers who, mostly during WW2, opposed the Communist regime and were therefore banned and excluded from official literary histories) can perhaps be read in conjunction with No Cross or Name (2022), an anthology of Slovene authors, who didn’t join the resistance during WW2 (again, partly due to its connection with the Communist Party). The aim of the latter anthology, according to editor Marija Stanonik, was to “de-ideologize Slovene literary consciousness,” since works by other factions had already been anthologized. This implies, of course, that all factions, groups, etc., deserve their own anthology, whether or not such actions further amplify existing polarizations or strive for reconciliation. In his afterword to the anthology Slovene Muse before the Throne: An Anthology of Slovene Poetry, Praising Statesmen (1989), Marjan Dolgan − rather wittily − describes as one of the major events in Slovene literature in the 19th century the beginning of the emancipation of women: “both [Luiza Pesjak and Pavlina Pajk] exhibited a knack for choosing events from the ruler’s dynasty and, above all, sensitivity, for which their male counterparts often lacked a well-developed lyric organ.” One might be forgiven for raising a brow at this anthology’s title. However, the anthology’s way of framing history through its subject matter − as well as the way we ourselves probably tend to frame its own narrative thirty-five years later − becomes more complex if one takes into account that the book was published by Krt, which stands for ­“Library of Revolutionary Theory,” and that the editor Marjan Dolgan sees the included body of texts as “the dark side of the moon’ in the universe of Slovene poetry,” taking into account that social critique has always been “an historical constant” of Slovene writers. After all, two features of these poems seem particularly striking, he notes. And ironic: they were quickly forgotten, yet could land their authors in jail at the slightest turn of the political climate. A groundbreaking anthology was the then subversive 57 Poems from Murn to Hanžek (1970). Edited by Tomaž Brejc and the legendary poet Tomaž Šalamun, 57 Poems featured work by politically disqualified writers, obviously pointing towards a future that would only retroactively confirm its aesthetic as well as political predictions. This relatively slim volume (to which Dolgan, above, was likely alluding) was, again, published in Maribor as part of the Znamenja (Icons) series, where several decades later Urban Vovk and Uroš Zupan published their complementary 75 Poems from Dekleva to Perat in 2013. Zupan even suggested, tongue in cheek, that the numbers in both titles might refer to popular brands of cigarettes (Filter 57 and Filter 75, respectively). In contrast to 57 Poems, 75 Poems was less impactful and more criticized, with polemics openly questioning the very reason for compiling it in the first place (it’s worth noting that neither anthology included an afterword, in contrast to Kos’s and Hribar’s, save for Zupan’s essay, subsequently published in the newspaper Dnevnik). Perhaps this response was more indicative of paradigmatic shifts in literary criticism than it was of the quality of particular poems, thus giving rise to fundamental doubts about what being a “good” poem actually means in the 21st century. If it means anything at all, since the very idea of perfection has probably been outdated for a long time. Even though the anthology itself didn’t question the tradition it perpetuated, it nevertheless seemed to unintentionally lead to a much-anticipated tipping point in critical discourse. The position of 75 Poems within the contemporary canon is perhaps further complicated by the anthologies Noon Sunflower (1993), edited by Peter Kolšek and Drago Bajt, and particularly by We’ll Return in the Evening: An Anthology of Young Slovene Poetry 1990-2003 (2004), edited by Matevž Kos, the son of the aforementioned Janko Kos. To finish this string of anthologies with a crowning achievement, in 2006 Peter Kolšek published Storm of Sweet Flowers, an amazing anthology covering nothing less than a whole century of Slovene poetry. In a sense, its narrative shows how Slovene poetry of the 20th century was a slow but steady liberation from the so-called “Prešernian structure,” named after the most canonical and influential poet, France Prešeren (1800-1849). The structure expresses the idea of the poet as a martyr appointed by Beauty to aid the process of establishing national identity. What these and other anthologies have in common is that they were attempting to curate a specific cultural era, more or less following the idea that “parting the wheat from the chaff” − itself an activity that shouldn’t be taken for granted − will somehow manifest the spirit of the era, as it were. Indeed, Uroš Zupan, included in this volume (as well as in all other major anthologies), has on many occasions spoken or written about revisiting his poems, making slight corrections in a never-ending process that will spawn a poem truly worthy of being included in a future anthology, implying, of course, that anthologies include only the best of the best by whatever unchallenged standard. But maybe anthologies do benefit from a dash of randomness, subverting the classical structures that laid their foundations in the past. There are the indie Conjugation of the Verb to Come: An Anthology of Erotic Short Prose (2024), Snail’s Contemplation: An Anthology of Slovene Short Stories by Young Authors (2023), Millimeter and a Half: An Anthology of Pseudo-poets (2021), and other anthologies that feature unpublished up-and-coming writers. Of these, the most notorious was probably the controversially titled God Is Jerking off on Us (2022), published by the increasingly influential indie publisher Črna Skrinjica. Dejan Koban, the publisher and a poet, mentioned that they’re already working on a new antho­logy. So what does it mean if there’s a need for a new anthology of, in this case, young poets every couple of years? How definitive can they be? Clearly, such anthologies have a different origin and serve a different purpose. They give space for alternative poetics and give voice to writers who need a new platform for their artistic creations. Indeed, in one of three essays − again, compare that to none in the 57 and 75 Poems anthologies − included in God is Jerking off on Us, Lenart Sušnik underscores the need for revolt at the very beginning, stating that one always needs to be against. In that case, it meant differentiating between reactionary, seemingly inane, but “successful” poetry that is interested only in controlling the feedback it receives, and genuine, revolutionary poetry that distances itself from “meta­physical art for art’s sake.” Similarly, Vid Karlovšek, in his essay, declares that the editors were looking for verse that deviates from the intellectualism of “snobbishly haughty” poetry, all rather vague descriptions of hackneyed tropes, to be honest, which is just to say that there’s nothing particularly original − or revolutionary − in using this rhetoric to justify describing something as just “different.” Acknowledging the arbitrariness of artistic quality, the editors instead opted for works that represent a break with tradition (like the editors of 57 Poems but not of 75 Poems). It’s worth noting that this anthology gained a lot of attention precisely because of its title. The Slovene Writers’ Association refused to publish it after receiving an open letter, signed by 180 writers and intellectuals, some authors withdrew their works, and there was a short-lived, but lively public debate surrounding it. In a sense, the anthology was a rare success in triggering a true Badiouian Event, so to speak, even if the anthology invalidates such a notion in the first place. * * * It’s no surprise that various anthologies have recently surged because of Slovenia’s being the guest of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2023 (to a certain extent including the pack of three anthologies to which the present one also belongs). Being the guest of honour means there must be something to show, which is an assumption neither the producers nor the audiences will question. The cultural and economic benefits seem to have temporarily suspended the disbelief in nationalist projects and the ways such projects re-enforce boundaries, or maybe they simply presented lucrative opportunities for publishers, Slovene or otherwise. Examples include Event in the City (2023; first published in Slovenia as No Mercy and then in Austria under the new title); the anthology of Slovene short stories Tiny Anomalies (2022, German, but published in Slovenia); Slovene Classics (2023, published in Germany); Contemporary Slovene Poetry (2023, published in Austria); or the definitive My Neighbor on the Cloud (2023, published in Germany), an anthology of Slovene poetry from the 20th and 21st centuries − perhaps to be complemented by The Wild and Elegant (2023, published in Germany as a special issue of die horen literary magazine), an anthology of “new literature” from Slovenia. Willingly or not, the present anthology thus enters the stream of voices represented by previous anthologies. In contrast to many others, as shown previously, it does not position itself counter to some notion of a preconceived narrative about non-inclusive literary histories, neither does it try to consolidate it. Its starting point was really rather simple: to present contemporary Slovene poetry through the works of members of the Slovene Writers’ Association (a prerequisite of the publisher). This was further confined by budgetary concerns, limiting the selection to existing translations, etc. What we have here, then, is yet another story about missing pieces − not so much about poets no anthology should lack, but about those who simply decided not to become (or remain) members of the Association. Besides, in some previous anthologies, certain authors even refused to be included, but nonetheless retained a mention on the opening page with a disclaimer. Especially younger generations don’t seem to feel the need to belong to this organization, as they can freely choose to belong to other, ­more fluid constellations, or none at all. Besides, as described previously, they are very active in asserting their voices through anthologies of their own − which is not to say they should remain marginalized. Rather, it is an acknowledgement of their devotion and potential to redefine future poetic landscapes on the one hand, as well as an acceptance of all the inherent shortcomings of an endeavour such as this on the other. In the end, this anthology tries to provide a balanced overview of contemporary Slovene poetry, including both highly acclaimed authors as well as some who haven’t been mainstays of every previously published anthology. To impose a further limit, the antho­logy includes work by writers who started publishing in Slovene (or in a Slovene context) more or less after 1991, the year of the country’s independence. This allowed for the inclusion of Lidija Dim­kovska, who, though writing in Macedonian, has been an important voice in the Slovene community, and who is perhaps the first author to be awarded a Slovene literary prize for work not written in Slovene (the 2020 Velenjica − Cup of Immortality). Just one year later, ­a similar, somewhat more publicized, milestone for Slovene literature was when the Novo Mesto Award for best short fiction was awarded to Carlos Pascual, who writes in Spanish, but whose fascinating literary presence is entirely restricted to the Slovene literary landscape (unfortunately, though, he doesn’t write poetry and is not a member of the Slovene Writers’ Association). Similarly, this criterion allowed for the inclusion of the uniquely wonderful work by Josip Osti, who, born in Sarajevo, has been writing in what was then known as Serbo-Croatian for decades before migrating to Slovenia and switching to Slovene. In this sense, his work could be reinvented and re-contextualized as part of a different tradition, in addition, speaking to an audience without any knowledge of his previous work. It’s worth mentioning that Dimkovska, who writes in a minority language, was able to join the Slovene Writers’ Association only after it amended its constitution. Her own efforts to increase the presence of writers working in minority or foreign langua­ges within Slovene literature may have contributed to this change as well. In 2014, she even edited From Language to Language, an anthology of contemporary minority and immigrant literature in Slovenia, published by the Slovene Writers’ Association. So instead of focusing on possible shortcomings, let’s assume that this anthology, too, will complement the various narratives about contemporary Slovene literature not despite but through its own particularities and formal omissions. Yes, it is yet another view of the moon too many have claimed before, but it can still be a pleasure to observe without implicitly colonizing its dark side − or any other side, for that matter. Ultimately, this anthology wishes to be no more than a ripple on a vast surface, freely interacting with others. Lidija Dimkovska SUITCASES In the little chest under my mother’s bed, brought from the village to the town, fish-shaped dishes lay dormant for years, each individually wrapped in newspaper, a wedding gift, the souvenir of a society. Their gills had gone pale, their sea grey, when we opened the little chest they had already eaten each other up. In the small suitcase under my uncle’s bed, which I used to open a hundred times a day, all the wars from all times were mixed up together in the notes taken during history lectures. Folded in two, in two columns, they charged out of the trenches towards what would later become a state, a political suitcase of oblivion. In the suitcase under my bed in the student dorm I kept the Liubinka typewriter on which the Mongolian girls, my roommates, wrote their love letters in Cyrillic, and before sending them across three seas, kept them for nine nights in vodka, in bottles with sheep guts, the umbilical cord to their motherland. The suitcases in Auschwitz, separated by glass from the reach of visitors, confiscated at the very entrance under the arch saying Arbeit Macht Frei, are heavy with the emptiness in which the weight of life, the lightness of death sit hunched over. The Holocaust was a one-way ticket from a world which vanished in the false bottom of existence. Life is a puff of wind among people, leaving their suitcases in its wake. In them knowledge gathers dust, memory - mold, oblivion - stench. Every suitcase is an open story, every story is a closed suitcase. And you don’t need to leave in order to stay, or stay to have already left. Translated from the Macedonian by Ljubica Arsovska and Patricia Marsh FREEDOM In the lift of the world Freedom always presses the wrong button: instead of on the ground floor she gets out in the basement where masked robbers stand in front of the lift who kick and slap her, or grinning maniacs with their trousers down, or security officers who pinch her bottom when she turns back to the door of the lift, which is already squeaking its way back up, and then they all grab her by the breasts, drag her by the legs, and she struggles, beaten black and blue she drags herself up the stairs to the ground floor, where children stand with their satchels waiting for the lift to come down from the top floor. “What does she look like!” they whisper, then run up the stairs to their homes and lock the doors behind them, afraid that Freedom might lean against their door, sprawl at their threshold, ask them for water, bread or a bed. And they don’t know that the freedom they have in their life is measured with the remaining cups from the tea set in the Jewish museums across the world, they don’t know that the seas wash up people too, not just seashells, they don’t know that the executioner becomes a victim when he beheads her and the victims become executioners when they forget her, they don’t know that the metal head of the hammer is always loose and falls off before the hammer is swung, straight onto your fingers, they don’t know that it is that same freedom they learn about in history classes, but is easily run down by the train on the nearby railway, they don’t know that the freedom they have in their life is a white surface over a black pit, the same as the belly of a pregnant woman that they too were born from, but it is only in death that some will also become free. Translated from the Macedonian by Ljubica Arsovska and Patricia Marsh THE CRUMBLING COUNTRY … should be left head over heels, just grab the language, the passport and some photos, stuff birth, childhood, youth, life, into a child’s rucksack and, head bowed, start on the road to exile. Your legs move of their own accord, led by collective memory, escaping is your heritage, statutory succession from the fatherland, your ancestors’ physical fitness. You have to cross the border curled up in a car boot at the moment when the flag is lowered to half mast, and then, barefoot, hungry and with a kick up the arse walk away from it step by step for months from the human in the other towards the human in yourself. When homo politicus kills, the suicide is both the executioner and the victim. You’ll leave the crumbling country never batting an eyelid while your soul blinks and howls like the revolving light and siren of the police patrol car which you hope will catch you and have you sent back, but it vanishes in the distance. Translated from the Macedonian by Ljubica Arsovska and Patricia Marsh PLUS-MINUS Once I could count the dead on the fingers of one hand, now they are too many to count. Once I could count the living to make me fall asleep, now I repeat the few names over and over again. If the thought crosses my mind that a person might die, I’m immediately nicer to them. Amazing how easy it is to be nice to potentially dead people! But as soon as dying is postponed, living gets postponed as well. And then the body loses time, the soul gets it. The body leaves the space, the soul inhabits it, the spirit displaces it. Between the dead and the living the difference is a plus-minus, a degree or two in temperature: the former have gotten colder, the latter have gotten burnt, and all of them (n)either alive (n)or dead. Translated from the Macedonian by Ljubica Arsovska and Patricia Marsh THE CRUMBLING MEMORY … should be swallowed in the rumen of your consciousness and in a sleepless night regurgitated back into your mouth, and then chewed, and re-chewed till the morning with focused jaw movements like the steps of a tightrope walker, to ruminate like the sheep in East Macedonia chewed the cud in the dead silence of the house barn while Granny was dragging you to the outhouse half-asleep in wet pajamas and their teeth smacked through the juices of the pastures, just like your teeth now smack through the water of oblivion picking up here and there a random souvenir of yourself. Soaked with the spittle of the soul, memory should be swallowed atom by atom, decomposing itself into a force to pull your body out of the well of the subconscious until life uses its nutritional value as best it can, for memory is food, without which one thins, falls sick, if underfed one dies, without memory you decay as it decays. Humans are ruminants with a rumen - a soul and a stomach - a spirit, and into them the crumbling memory, as if flowing from one cup into another, should be poured and left to overflow until it becomes itself a body from its own cell. Translated from the Macedonian by Ljubica Arsovska and Patricia Marsh Lidija Dimkovska Bio Lidija Dimkovska (1971, North Macedonia) is a poet, writer and translator from Romanian and Slovene into Macedonian who lives in Ljubljana. She has published seven books of poetry, four novels, one American diary, one short story collection, and edited four anthologies. Her books have won numerous awards, among them the Macedonian awards for best prose book of the year (twice), for best novel of the year, and best poetry book of the year, the European Union Prize for Literature, the German Hubert Burda Prize, the Slovene Velenjica ‒ Cup of Immortality of Immortality and the Petru Krdu prize for European poetry. Her books have been translated into fifteen languages. In English translation she has published the novels A Spare Life (nominated for the Best Translated Book Award) and Grandma Non-Oui, as well as the poetry collections What is it Like?, pH Neutral History (shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award), and Do Not Awaken Them With Hammers. Veronika Dintinjana CONCIERTO DE ARANJUEZ It was summer, wrapped in a wintry coat of rain. It was an autumn of ripe figs and blue draught. White stones guarded the sleeping wells, brambles, sweet and black, hid in the niches of dry leaves covered with a thin layer of dust and salt, bare slopes were overgrown with silver sage, olive trees kept to the westerly side and the rocks, exposed to incessant assaults of gales, to the easterly unliving white moon-like surface, sharp-edged, unsheltered from the sun. In noon heat, time flows only through the veins of shadows sated with the immobility of living creatures and of air, earth and sun. Nothing can change, the senses were telling me, but I was not swayed. Feeling that I remember the present while it lasts, that I am clay, paper, the medium of change, the messenger and the message. My DNA, memory cells in the brain, connections between them. A message that self-destructs when heard to the end. Grass snakes on hot stones are not dangerous. Fear is dangerous, and the imprudent haste of retreat. And too much sun. If I do not return, the olive trees and grasses, bramble, sage and snakes will remain the same, unchanged. If I return, they will also be the same, only I shall not be and between us there will be recollections of tastes and smells unexpressed in words. Every successful recognition will be cause for new happiness. This has not changed, at least this has not changed, at the core it remains the same, for I recognize these leaves, I recognize the strong fragrance of herbs, for the sea is still salty and the stone still white and rough. Not the same, equal. And if not, at least the trace of change is equal, testimony that time was here, too, that it had stood still among us and made a break in its script - I lay down on the earth, it was cold, calm, still, I shut my eyes and waited to take in her wisdom, to stop when it was time, to let go. I shut my eyes, brought down the volume of my thoughts. Only my ears remained grounded. Sounds of a vacant field and my breathing. Then, a sudden sound, like wind shifting leaves in the trees, as if the canopies were full and it was summer again. I looked. Above me, a flock of migrating birds. I heard the movement of their wings in flight. The unexpected sound of departure and changes bared me. I rose slowly, the palms of their wings giving me to see, suddenly, by my side, a passage. Translated by the author and E. Underhill SPARROW, THROUGH A HOSPITAL WINDOW I saw death sit down beside him on the bed and take off her slippers. His blood pressure dropped, his face paled, as she lay down. His eyes were frightened. I flew out. As I did not have a share in his life, it was only right not to have a part in his dying. Half an hour later I returned to pick up the bread crumbs left over from lunch. Translated by the author and E. Underhill ST. FRANCIS grow into the sky until you become a tree full of select rain and light soil what can the wind do when you dress up in blossoms singularity is your scepter neither silver nor gold have given their body for a table, a bed and when birds in your crown fall asleep you stir no more silence replaces the alphabet of signs Translated by the author and E. Underhill SASKIA To paint this woman, wife, her soft skin, her smell before she washes after a hard day, how it rises from the folds where parts of the body stick together. The way she puts up her hair, how every now and then a lock of hair escapes her, how she smiles. How her breasts tremble in laughter, in love, and afer it. How, asleep, she does not suspect that you are sketching her imprints in the pillows, her wrinkles, all the moments of a small life compressed into a fleeting kiss of sunbeams on the skin. The marks of children she had borne on her belly, the marks of those miscarried or taken by God before their time, in the corners of her eyes and mouth, in the sharpness, the distant expression of her features shortly before dawn or when the day winds down again and sadness takes on the impenetrable, cold lustre of steel. To paint what is there in front of you, her as well, who has not left you, yet. Till death do you part. Do you understand what it takes? Through this, through bare vulgar description praise your wife, praise the skill of your hands, and the light. Praise also the dark and shadows, for they make the canvas become a painting. For they shape Time into a life. Every hour and brushstroke is borrowed from the Master of light and shadow, things visible and invisible. It is fitting that at every hour of the day, without hesitation, you take the pencil in your hand and with a web of lines growing on the paper testify to the light beyond time, to the images on this, the shadow side. Translated by Mia Dintinjana MUSEI CAPITOLINI On the flight home I have the window seat. Across the aisle, father and son. A young father, perhaps thirty years old, dark-haired, handsome, the son six or seven years of age, the same hair, fuller cheeks; they play, Daddy tickles him, kisses his cheeks, neck, shoulders and arms, the boy laughs, laughingly kissing him back: “Contrattacco, babbo!” The father caresses his tummy - such tenderness only a father and a son can share, a tenderness even women know nothing of. They are beautiful, like those statues in the Capitol museums dug out from the garden of a Roman villa, so resplendent, you want to touch them, gods, nymphs, animals, perfect in their own world. NON TOCCARE! warns the museum guard, the human touch sullies and destroys what must last. Is it possible to feel such tenderness for statues? The hand of a father not in Jupiter’s temple or above the clouds, the time here has come to a standstill (myself, and the book that says poetry never stood a chance of standing outside history). Cracks in the stone, visible only to the attentive eye. Something within me that cannot be at peace with the past, a gracefulness that wounds, as does the air that surrounds it, preventing any touch, a museum of wrecks and remains, a relief of a father kissing a son. Translated by the author and E. Underhill Veronika Dintinjana, Bio Veronika Dintinjana (1977) is a poet, translator and surgeon. She has received the Urška Award, a Knight of Poetry Award, and has won the Ljub­ljana Poetry Slam. In 2008, she won the Best Debut Award, while her second books of poems won the Jenko Award and was nominated for both the Veronika Award and the Critical Sieve. Since 2006, she has been organising regular poetry readings for young poets, which act as a platform for the poetic voices of ascending authors. She translates mainly American and Irish poetry. Her translations of Louise Glück, Denise Levertov, Ciaran O’Driscoll, Pablo Neruda and essays by Ursula K. Le Guin have been published in book form. Nina Dragičević this body always a stone in someone’s shoe. this body a stone? on the shoulders of the accursed nothing but a burden this body why does it push on why ascend stand up all victims of oppression and bad career decisions how they watch then casually the way it rolls all this is of course none of your business this body propelled instead of them perhaps of you yes you this body labour theme park the creative industry they say people have to be encouraged good thing that they inevitably exhaust themselves. how then during the night as now I lurk how did I carry out my perversions in desolate nights releasing oily water from city wells letting blood blood is thicker than water they used to say we used to make fun of them now I have to do a double take yes me the consummate taker how ravenous this body how I was at metelkova that night cruising patiently blooming in social hierarchies being one of a kind it takes two to sodomy I was announcing we were so what pinning each other against the wall how many of us were bruised all black and blue can you picture it picture it how we fooled around you can’t even imagine it all sweaty greasy wagging our little hands landing where they may body as hopscotch informed and impatient you only live once oh the laughter but also deadly serious how passionately we tormented each other we perfumed we progressive minding our own business raising heads falling off chairs throwing petra for a loop and sneža to the wolves picking eva up from the floor damn she was heavy stopping ana from committing murder lawyers cost an arm and a leg listening to young lidija how her dad used to molest her listening to monika how her dad used to molest her to katrin how her mom used to molest her how dad used to molest mom switching from past to present somewhere along the way without actually going anywhere locked up sonja so that she wouldn’t cut us if she has to cut herself she’s still there today have to take care of one’s own our home our family threatened with extinction these bodies the community incapacitated but watch your mouth in public the outside enemy is bigger anyway in the morning you remember nothing hey what are you doing here. Translated by Jernej Županič *** the body compresses excited ljubav says you just keep going going where the body asks it hears of certain sisters in all of us a certain tendency towards family hearing somewhere that it’s a jolly place and safe a fissure down the silent plateau of furious nothingness a sort of secret pocket of revolutionary loves forgetting to wonder who’s the one mending this jacket this body doesn’t know that this is not going to end well. Translated by Jernej Županič so this body skillful and successfull copes somehow quite able able you cannot break me down and then also clever it knows the grand words and much it blathers on about subjectification spreading platitudes about emancipation this cerebrospinal liquid constantly generating the high tide and hurricanes so clear yet it muddies everything this body the thrust this body kinda the fighter this body hero city tumbles rises tumbles down picks itself up tumbles down again can’t sustain its own weight and tumbles down again but necessarily again relying on the possibility of again again as a potential and on hearing stop whining it grins at them the dough-like the suppressed in their fungal nails the resolute giants of the generation at their quiet partners willing to make slightest concessions and to withhold histories and their own misery willing to swallow just about everything and when let’s-love-one-another comes to sit on its epidermis this body shivers anticipating sisterly rage and opposition in these spiritual plurals the trembling the frail and the eager what about me because it cannot do without the other and hence myriads of them in bodies caverns seeking totality in the remnants and an affectional bond with battle cries and hence i’m cold all the time and maybe this is why I turn all blue so often with her away just then with only her we’re-all-alone-after-all remaining and when i respond therefore resisting isolation this body it is neither successful nor efficient nor has it brought anything about this body only evasive purely present accidentally and insecurely because luck seems to be the only thing this body hasn’t put on itself alone. and so i know all this of course: the body pain is impossible to speak pain has no object no point of reference no place allowing signifying the body grabs greedily and grabs itself when flailing and wavering in order to maybe persist after all going for corners poles fences anything basically it roars interjections and recaps strings up anecdotes and legends enters vida tomšič’s nightmares and rené magritte’s dreams and all this in turn enters it it seeks words across its pitiful registers which are to remind of pointedness the risky and the sharp and all that stuff a body packed with examples it resorts to lump sums of extremes trapped in the literalness of metaphors and therefore always missing the point speaking without saying anything. still everything is the way you place it articulate it that’s why when this body is weak staggering seeming deformed and reckless this body only with its space therefore everybody and everything thrashing persisting persisting to stand a chance. and so that night like now just now with perfect voyeurs lurking in the gifted dark not finding it enough onto one another yet with no one daring to look back fearing there’s nothing and in particular no one there the terror of being pursued or the eeriness of not being seen all history is the history of this choice tonight therefore this body cannot find peace electrified it electrifies literally flicking stinging while picking itself up yet it seems the more it demolishes the more it constructs seeking cracks perhaps it finds certainty some dusk in the light something to do with vacuumizing forces and twists and turns imagining imagining that’s all it ever does imagining it has said everything no words no appeasement and so increasingly it seems the ceaseless restlessness of this body having allegedly itself inflicted everything upon itself might be a well-grounded hope. to imagine a body therefore a horizon a kaleidoscopic spectrum a potential the spark of parallaxes everything assembling somewhere supergravitational platform bended and sliding yet nothing to do with space universes and similar lump sums of desires of estrangements nothing to do with anything and with anybody and only then to imagine it because of them and against them let the fight commence like an elusive singular multitude ramifying yet ever smaller in fact pursuing degrowth truly invisible yet right before the eyes no longer merciful merely repulsive the body only being the voice only an echo never on its own and in no way for itself with no delays of disappearance and no waiting for prematurity to slide free fall not to fall no courses and then the gleam what a glow to meet this body a revelation to untie it to rip it widely the body so slippery the body a slackline a tool of a sort entirely wrong and tasting foul the gaze imagining a body muddying a gaze this vile apparition the future possible in brief no longer to gaze into the body that is that isn’t to imagine it perhaps perhaps perhaps being. and if they are onto me and if they are coming from all sides woodlands swamps thrusts and impulses I am onto them I am stalking them eyeing this campaign of those heavy bodies crafts bearing everything and bearing themselves stumbling and suffering severely and in those nights with me hardly going anywhere and arriving no further I go behind them who go behind me this body the return to the scene of the crime to the continuum of outrage and acceptability and above all complacency where envisaging someone else or at least something else is only the lifeline for failed subjectification the replenishment of bodies through secretion ensuring authenticity unity through negation a void is hard to identify in a void and when this body says no words it contemplates other meanings uncoordinated meanings a sombre glow is being drawn for it something better meanings at last. and therefore here where realities are constituted by constant amazement where the amazement is riddled with the delay of discovery and vice versa where as a result the expression of suffering is not possible certainly not allowed in this large torture sinkhole of endurance training and orgasming at the distant misery where pleasure becomes synonymous with horror where it is a pleasure to destroy the body and a pleasure and asap and forever here this body vortex mundi the decay of fulcra the collection point of rust and discarded thoughts should it fade away this will do so because you will there is nothing you can do without this body it grabs the screeching soundless voices knits interference patterns it will not go away it will not escape what does not possess a place of expression will find one here here the body slim gorgeous yet outrageously gasping the extender of stages and counter-temporal depths the entire future is the history of this choice. and thus here where representation has abandoned the spent host her the image striking out at full tilt after the word where speech is coercion of presence constantly and in the bounce and in the name of the absentees something about solidarity and empathy and emotional intelligence with nothingness really really really multiplying where suffering is falsified and is therefore somewhere else and alone yet without a place of its own where it is not pronounced but falsified in this fatally standing impetuous world the body seeks the cavities of peace it throws oneself into them sometimes it falls but because everything is wrong it actually rises no words in those pockets the suffering is finally being pronounced therefore in those silences no words at last this body standing. Translated by Andrej Peric Nina Dragičević Bio Nina Dragičević is a poet, writer and composer, the author of a novel, three books of poetry, and three books of essays, including Auditory Poverty and Its Discontents (Errant Bodies Press, 2024). Her essayistic writing examines topics like the importance of music for the lesbian scene and analyses sonic phenomena in econo-political terms, revealing the relation­ship between sound and authority, while descri­bing audi­bility as a point in an intersectional class structure. Dragičević is the recipient of the Werner Düttmann Fellowship (Akademie der Künste, Berlin), the Dr Ana Mayer Kansky Award, the Jenko Award, the Župančič Award, two Knight of Poetry Awards, and has been a Palma Ars Acustica finalist. Borut Gombač IN THE GLOWING FRAME OF THE EYE And then a sudden jolt, a kick off the side of the bed, a collapse of the shadow dam, a spasm in the negative, the run of a headless hen, a trembling flinch of a lengthy day full of blind intersections and dubious realities. I’m still awake. Not yet asleep. This isn’t ground yet above my feet, no words with wings yet, not yet the structure of dreams, specific, fantastic but implacably consistent in all its transitory constellations. For now, there are just these tiny chance connections, a quiet impermanence of symbols, chaotic swarms under burning eyelids, stifled explosions of sunspots. I haven’t reached the other side yet, but I’ve long been gone from this one. Translated by Jernej Županič WEIGHTLESS AND MALLEABLE As I cautiously tread the imaginary line between time and space, holding a never quite symmetrical balance pole, someone who doesn’t yet exist awaits for the beginning to begin. All their future decisions remain correct, and ambiguities, such as there are, enrich rather than detract. Their name is their body. Their language, which describes reality with marvellous precision, palpable resonance, and boundless symbolism, is easily translated to all other tongues, the living and the long dead. They’re keeping pace with their shadow, they’re ethereal, transcendent as well as tangibly corporeal. Although they’re basically a torso, they have a head and a face. Their eyes are clear, penetrating, and most of all, so vibrantly alive. Translated by Jernej Županič THE KNIFE But it’s most likely linked to a lack of focus, a weakened control over the flow of thoughts, a certain very specific situation at a certain very unspecific time, perhaps sometimes to impatience, confusion, panic, reluctance, or even a subconscious fear that the appropriate wording might erase all other possible wordings. At the first annual meeting of the council of experts, at the final exam before graduation, at repeated peace negotiations, during a whispered foreplay, during a eulogy for a co-worker, during sports commentary from the commentator’s seat, or perhaps during a science-based explanation of a planned surgery. All it takes is a fleeting moment of weakened self-control, and the meticulously planned direction becomes an uncertain intersection, the high level of discourse falls, the magnetism of the firm core is weakened, and gravitation loses its purpose. Even I am surprised when something I had said in passing becomes weightless. I didn’t expect the knife cut, of course. The tiny laceration on my little finger is thin and barely visible, so I can’t understand, where all the blood is coming from. Translated by Jernej Županič AT THE CENTRE OF THE CENTRE No, the centre of the centre is not a point, it’s depth. Which is why I drew her nude in a sketchbook instead of on a canvas. Translated by Jernej Županič WITH THE TIP OF THE TIP OF THE TONGUE The drill hasn’t yet touched the tooth. The phone hasn’t rung. Soon, the sun will be precisely six degrees below the horizon. The contact between the civil and astronomical twilight remains comparable to Michelangelo’s Creation. The streetlamps haven’t yet been lit. The index finger of the right hand hasn’t put enough pressure on the Delete key. The snow has yet to slide from the roof. The eyes can’t sense the eyelids, as their gaze is still opening the body. The half-empty city bus hasn’t yet run over the stray cat half-crazed in heat for the third day in a row. The ball has yet to shatter the window. The bullet that’s just been fired hasn’t touched the body yet. Indeed, it’s just about to: the air spreading in front of it in waves over the bared chest is like an invisible fuzz that tickles, like a hot breath from gleaming lips. So close! Indeed, the leaden tip is already brushing against the skin, so lightly and so infinitely gently. Translated by Jernej Županič Borut Gombač Bio Borut Gombač (1962) is a poet, writer and playwright. A librarian by profession and education, he has been recognized by the Municipality of Maribor with a Glazer, and has been won the Veronika Award for the best collection of poetry; his works for children have been nominated several times for the Desetnica Award and the Večernica Award. He has published several poetry collections for adults and for children, and he has set some poetry to music on albums. He is the author of several staged puppet, theatre and radio plays, and has also published fairy tales. Stanka Hrastelj POETRY OF MY COUNTRY I I was kneading the thought at home to carry it with me to other countries to pronounce it in Eastern Europe and in the Balkans but in every climate it bounces at a different angle and sounds somehow unusual as though it were a thought of someone else with darker skin than mine and wider shoulders the thought I needed a rather long time for it was about something poetic highly esteemed, truly wise the images were creeping in all the time I did not know what to do with them: the sight of the pianist arriving in New York not thinking badly about Americans flying above the ocean entirely open, crossing borders, stepping from the plane taking in the American air intravenously caressing black and white keys while sighing and smiling caressing the piano his face having deep wrinkles from smiling the thought, wanting to be highly esteemed and truly wise, became confused, broken, beaten actually I know this man, I know the smell of his skin I carried the thought to the balcony and shook it off myself II I started anew, ab ovo dug out fresh clay and was kneading the thought to carry it with me somewhere to the Balkans and Eastern Europe I needed a rather long time it was about highly esteemed things, about poetry a new image appeared: the photographer taking a seat in a car and with €300 in his pocket rushing towards the West to be free at last waiting by the traffic lights notices a duck and eight little ones wanting to cross the road he jumps out of the car, flapping hands, stopping the traffic, calling 911, society for animal protection, local council, fire brigade no one feels competent he stops the traffic catches yellow fluffs and carries them to the water not until then does he leave nice very noble but actually I know this man he has black eyes black eyes and the look that enchants the thought distracted, got out of tune, got lost I went to the balcony and scraped it off me the thought like an unfinished statue walked through the brain’s serpentine windings I needed a long time for it I wanted to shape it finally to carry it towards the East it is important what you say about the poetry of your country III it is important to say something about the poets of your country something highly esteemed and wise to make known what we are talking about when we are talking about Slovene poetry the thought was struggling like a half-run-over cat a new image confounds it again: the night (I spent the night with a poet with all of the books he has written I had the candles lit the light was mellow and soft like his poems I drank golden muscat and let the verses pierce me through fewer and fewer words, more and more silence minus seven outside after reading I went to the balcony and watched the stars until the morning) I had to put this in brackets and write it down in the past tense because it is about personal matters sometimes I think about his tender hands writing verses the thought, wanting to be about poetry would not let me end it I carry it with me abroad but in every climate it bounces at a different angle and sounds like the thought of someone else that calls me and lures me Translated by Ana Rostohar and J. C. Todd WHY NOT LIKE MOTHER there are arguments for liking her, but she’s exceedingly inconvenient: she goes to the grocer’s, without letting you know, and you start searching and searching the house ”’ just as we’d search where father hanged himself. in particular, we checked all rooms with metal tubing and cylinders, where brother had hanged himself from the radiator and brother-in-law had lasso’d his throat from a water pipe (for several months, we searched for him unsuccessfully) you search for mother, not a corpse - but a warm human with wrinkles and tenderized hands that still caress; but you don’t find her - only a huge, drafty house, empty gaping rooms that want to swallow you up, that you fall into, and go missing, where all the guide-ropes back are nooses, so you’re scared until she returns. Translated by George Elliot Clarke BEDROOM ANATOMY It is Autumn. At three o’clock my bedroom is the warmest place in the flat. Everybody would like to go in, even if the desk is full of sharp objects made of stainless steel. I take them in my hand with great warmth and sweetness: I am very sensitive. In the kitchen garden the watercress expands like sea foam that will overflow any minute now over the borders of sage and rosemary. Mum’s cataract is expanding but it does not overflow the eyelids. For her I take the scalpel and from the left I rip her pupil. She likes it if I do it slowly: she feels safe. Dad lets me open his chest. I carve the vein one centimetre above the right atrium and I put a finger in it. The walls are without deposit of cholesterol, which is a sign of longevity. I ask them to cut some strips of skin from my top to a toe in one fell swoop. Dad traces, mum slices. She’s is very handy, my mother, using only her nails, and needs no metals tools. With the strips we plait a rope, it seems a pink vine. We fix it to the ceiling and screaming we swing from the eastern to the western wall. We call ourselves Tarzan. The day is fresh and fragrant. Translated by Stanka Hrastelj and J. C. Todd Stanka Hrastelj Bio Poet and writer Stanka Hrastelj (1975) has published two collections of poetry and two novels. She has received several awards for her literary work, including the Blue Bird Award for Best Novel (2012), and she won the Knight of Poetry Award (2007), the Best Debut Award (2005) and the Urška Award (2001). In addition to writing poetry, she pens book commentaries, is an editor, columnist, organiser of cultural events, moderator, and creative writing tutor. She also translates poetry from Croatian. Since 2009 she has been a freelance cultural worker. Jure Jakob YOUNG CROW A young crow came. It’s sitting in a black baking tray I left out on the garden bench so as not to forget the elderflower blossoms. The baking tray is full of young crow beak opened screaming searingly. Then it leaps to the ground, makes an awkward totter round the garden and returns. The elderflower bush smells good all the way back to here, but she wants to be somewhere else. She doesn’t yet know how to fly. I take the baking tray into the kitchen and tell the whole story. In the evening we sit at the table. We’ve done eating the fried elderflower, from outside the sound of the wind’s rustling. Again I’m the last one to bed. The minute I close my eyes I see the crow. The world is young. And then it all goes blank. Translated by Ana Jelnikar and Barbara Siegel Carlson GARDEN Given what I see every day it helps to say anything Today it’s raining and the lettuce’s growing, the day resembles no other and what will tomorrow be like? It won’t work, I find myself saying. Maybe it’s just one of those years but the earth goes deeper and the sky always brings some gift. So important it all is and constantly changing and this hurts like hunger like fleshy stinging nettles at the edge of an allotment which I cut down with a scythe. Given the lavish performance, the bounteous holiday of seeds and fruits, I don’t do much work. That means I do what needs to be done so as not to forget what’s vital. When we go from here we’ll take the garden with us. Translated by Ana Jelnikar and Stephen Watts PARTICLES OF WORK I Two small tomato saplings on the windowsill are ushering light into the pots. Their little hairs are wrapped in the air I breathe. Below, on the road that perhaps you sometimes take to work, the traffic flows from the left and right to here. I’m watching it because it flows, because I want to find in this something that will go on speaking. XI Sometimes in the winter, the hill Golovec rises from a dream. I’m breaking the ice and the fingers, which have turned dark red, awake and unsociable, are looking away from the gloves. Below, there’s Barje on one side and on the other Ljubljana, like everything else that I want to say, covered in a white veil. Hardly a bird above it shows, with its rises and descents, that the work there continually persists. Translated by Barbara Jurša VASE The apple tree sprout which I brought home from a walk a week ago, dropped its blossoms. The leaves are drying. The stem in the water is rotting. I will throw it away. Today the world is empty like my vase. Somebody turns it upside down and a cold wind pours out. A starving dog rushes after it. The dog is howling, wailing, he finds me even if I hide far away. Then he goes on to shake the vase and a cloud of withered flowers falls. I quickly shut my eyes. When I look up again, my eyes sting. I can’t take this anymore. It’s better to bow my head, bend my back. This will enrage him, he will strike against me and break the vase. I hope. I believe in a new world. Translated by Barbara Jurša Jure Jakob Bio Jure Jakob (1977) is the author seven poetry collections, a book on the novelist Lojze Kovačič, a book of essays, and four picture books with poetry for children. He has won the following prizes for his work: the Golden Bird, the Critical Sieve, the Rožanc Award, and the Prešeren Fund Award. Kristina Kočan MIGRATIONS from the black trunks of poplars yellow leaves moved away resettling migratory birds we are from lands from people from ourselves the path is the only refuge is moving always just a promise to return are we saved by leaving already before leaving between being asleep and being awake beneath us rivers blossom in the color of the leaves the tawny sun keeping us warm the memory of the weight of a warbler in the palm or a cricket Translated by Helena Fošnjar STORKS the leaves of the cherry tree shrivel slowly shedding they are rushed towards the blazing sun by early fears of frost in scorching nights the blood flows slowly faithful to their nesting place the silent gliders have started to gather in flocks above the old nest by our house as I became pregnant they made a comfortable crib brought branches moss and lichen now my son has a bite mark on his nape from you who had carried him for so long clacking your bills and waiting with me for late dusk approaches us freshly we wrap ourselves in one another anticipating return Translated by Jernej Županič TIJGER everyone in the embrace of no one the burden in tons whisper in the ear of no one into darkness staring eyes in the distance fizzling female voices what is the sound of the ocean in still air it is dark or azure the water of Hudson cold needle pointing northwards wood crackling full weight in the fire the dead rain into snow then ice then bones remaining close wild turkeys tremoring stars are somewhere in the hope of clearing up of surviving another winter Translated by Helena Fošnjar THE WORD THAT ISN’T and then a new turn bird of the year becomes a thumb-sized bat defeating all riflemen parrots snipes albatrosses when did I write that bats were birds then heartbreak because they weren’t the eternal yūgen inside me a word that isn’t like gazing into silent water turning towards the south floating its flowering foliage that isn’t into the deep of gloomy trunks of pines shades of oaks birds without voices of snow on their wings the mysterious extends Translated by Jernej Županič LAPWINGS there lies the sea a vast mirror sanctuary far away from the dam on which we stand masts in search of feathers wind rushing to islands barely visible next to which we whisper poems in strange tongues in each other’s ears above which coastal birds of cold of wetlands of short grass keep chasing reliant on moonlit nights swarming with insect tunnels faithful to the constant companions wind and death in a mystic shriek homesickness pushes deeper now to the fog now to the grass now to the waves now to the calm sea lies nearby for a fleeting glance at the shining green with the body with the throat with the black eye like with a compass towards warmth Translated by Helena Fošnjar Kristina Kočan Bio Kristina Kočan (1981) is a poet and translator who holds a PhD in English and American literature. She has published four collections of poetry; her first collection was nominated for the Best Debut Award, while her most recent collection won the 2022 Veronika Award and was nominated for the 2022 Jenko Award and the Velenjica ”’ Cup of Immortality. She has also published a multimedia book, and a book of short fiction. Her poetry has been translated into more than ten languages and included in numerous international poetry anthologies. Her translation work focuses mainly on American authors, and in addition to translations of works by Carolyn Forché and Audre Lorde, she has translated anthologies of literature by Indigenous North Americans and African Americans. She is a professor at the Department of Translation Studies at the University of Maribor. Miklavž Komelj HIPPODROME The fence planks are all chewed up, the grounds pitted with uneasy footprints. The only evidence of resistance. A forgotten three-hundred-year-old manuscript: someone chanted verses upon the death of a racehorse: “Baggiano - generoso destrier - faster than an arrow - like Pegasus - he trumps the wind - taunts lightning - morto è Bagiano - torches in his eyes - a soldier’s heart - he killed himself with a leap - broke his spine - offered his back to the gods - now he pulls the chariot of the Sun…” - The stale madness of treacherous rhetoric cannot hide the terrible, silent figure: a horse who silently flies by in a gallop. Electric pulses wrapped in gauze. Not too strong - so as not to irritate. Crowds of snails cross the track at regular hours, before daybreak blankets it with hooves. Buzzards perch on white poles, drilled into the winter ground, into the snow. - Mama, don’t the horses look at little clouds too? O despair! Which I have no right to ascribe to anyone. But that does not diminish it. That makes it grow. As it writes itself into a figure of power and grace, into an emblem of freedom. - Have you ever seen a free horse? - Have you seen an unfree one? - Have you seen a free one? There is no plan to acknowledge anything else. The eternal skidding of hooves. Resistance, inseparable from dance. Which is recorded nowhere. Evidence, which is recorded nowhere. Circles, endless circles. Cramps from sprinting begin in dressage. Deadly tiredness. A body bolts through the air, weightless, weighing 500 kg. Two guys talk in a bar: - All the horses that won the races - They haven’t been seen since… Flies crawl around the edges of enormous eyes and into a cut under the forehead’s white blaze. Horses are not the same anymore. People talking among themselves: yawning, fainting. Water, which runs from rubber hoses over the unreachable legs stepping high, over the backs, strangely calm, twitching wildly, retreats before your eyes. Ritual curses. The sadism of friendships. The blessed, stunned staring of children. Translated by Boris Gregoric and Dan Rosenberg *** O to see things in the exact sharp light that took my sight away! Now I cling to the crackling grains of the scratched plaster and with my careful listening I acclimate my eyes. O to see things in the exact light that took my sight away! Translated by Dan Rosenberg THE SICKLE AND HAMMER OF TINA MODOTTI I Will the red flag manage to flap with that burden on itself? With that sickle? With that hammer? Taken not from a banner but from the palm of a hand. And put together for the first time. The sickle sharp, cutting. The hammer that pounds, heavily. The red flag ought to flap lightly with much more weight - indeed with all the weight - on itself. But if the flag had to tear itself - reducing itself to a Pasolinian rag - should I have broken my heart in a taxi? II Pounds and pounds again. Pounds and pounds again. Not the heart. The hammer that forges. This tender naked body. Not the heart. The hammer that forges. That forges an amorphous emptiness to shape a spot distinct as a bullet, that transforms the sickle into a question mark, then the question mark vanishes and changes into a hard, graspable sickle. Whose hard grasp-ability is due to its photographic form. The ecstatic pang that to the view lacks the hands for the blade for that potential slash that can be felt on the tongue. In photography. Tina Modotti even gave up photography. (I’m writing this to her during a solar eclipse. During an imperceptible partial solar eclipse at noon.) An absolute renuciation. And at the same time: accompanied by festive sounds. (“I think about the great chats together with good coffee, /better because one drank it together/, near the phonograph /transformed into a fox-Felicita knows the whole story/ and I think about Toio’s legs doing a pirouette to the sound of a Rumba.” ) Scratchy sounds. It’s not about bloody iron. But of blood that oozes from the iron, This tender naked body is of iron. Iron or steel? Of a special substance. Made of vapours. Vaporous glooms. Of quicksilver. She gave up the effect of hard grasp-ability, immanent to the sickle and the hammer in her photo. Beyond grasp-ability, to take up this sickle and this hammer! Who’s still provided with hands? Tina Modotti, nurse in the war of Spain, in the Spanish revolution. How the hands of the wounded stretched over the nurses! Not counting how the pain in the hands of the one-armed ones could be stretched. (The wounded one that has lost legs to the wounded one That has lost arms: “Whattaya complaining about, you! You can run, slink off, and a prosthesis can be applied to your stumps. What the hell can I ever apply to the stumps of my legs?” The comrade without arms: “Get on the crutches and go wherever you want. It’s easy to replace legs. But hands? One can at least button one’s pants with the hands. If you’re deprived of them, without a nurse you can’t even go to the john. And what girl would ever accept me looking like this? … … There’s nothing worse for me than feeling myself pitied. Do you think she’d dare approach me in that way if I still had my hands?” /Words of Veljko Kovačević: In the Spanish Trenches/) Of steel. Don’t prattle to me of hardgrasp-ability or ungrasp-ability. Ask yourselves, whoever’s still suppled with hands. Take up the sickle and hammer! (Who, once that image is taken, will have taken up the sickle and hammer in the fist?) Take up sickle and hammer! And leap outside, outside. Where one still falls back to suffer the clash of symbols. With the sickle and hammer in hand I fall back to undergo the clash of symbols. JURAD SOBRE ESTAS LETRAS HERMANOS ANTES MORIR QUE CONSENTIR TIRANOS SWEAR ON THESE LETTERS BROTHERS YOU’D DIE BEFORE ALLOWING TYRANTS The letters of the oath invoked as an guarantee of my oath. “The petition of the letter.” And Frida Kahlo And Marcel Duchamp became friends in no time. While Tina Modotti abandoned everything for an assault on the sky. A combatant in Spain described one of his most anxious moments at the front almost like it wasn’t about a front but about a film. “We feared for it as if we weren’t at the front but in front of a cinematic screen.” Tina Modotti has, in the past, even played some roles in silent movies. Tina Modotti gave up even photography. So that from the black and white photo Woman with Flag The unmistakable red might emerge. Not as a colour. As space. Translated by Jack Hirschman and Diletta Torlasco Miklavž Komelj Bio Miklavž Komelj (1973) has published seventeen books of poetry, a novel, three books of short fiction, a dramatic poem or static mystery, and a book of paintings as part of a multimedia project, two collections of essays, a scholarly monograph on Partisan art, and numerous scholarly and other articles in the fields of art history and theory, and literature. Komelj has also co-authored books on painting, and, among other things, edited the collected poems of Jure Detela and writings from the literary estate of Srečko Kosovel. He has translated from several languages, including works by Petar Petrović Njegoš, César Vallejo, Djuna Barnes, Fernando Pessoa, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Alejandra Pizarnik. As a painter, he has had several solo exhibitions. He has received numerous awards, including the Prešeren Fund Award, the Veronika Award, the Jenko Award, the Rožanc Award, the Župančič Prize and the Velenjic - Cup of Immortality. Matej Krajnc IF I WERE TO CLAIM TO KNOW THE OPUS OF THIS KRAJNC FELLOW I WOULD BY LYING (CARY GRANT) if i were to claim to know the opus of this krajnc fellow i would by lying but this man has been writing for 40 years this is his 57th volume of poetry and he’s still fucking young and that’s what i resent honestly we played tennis for the first time when he was 28 he said this is my first time playing tennis but i knew that was not true because for a great many years that lie reflected in his poetry at least since his second volume which the primary schools were forced to buy but he wasn’t old enough yet to play with count basie that came later count of course died in the process he didn’t wait for krajnc to become a real poet and write his first poem about fucking in the backstage of a jazz club but that’s nothing to be frowned upon we played tennis for the second time when he was 28 and a half he said that’s my second time playing tennis but then i flicked my cigarette butt into the garden shed and grumbled krajnc don’t fuck with hollywood legends don’t you remember how you went number 2 in your pants watching danny kaye when you were young and he wasn’t even mean looking we played tennis for the third time when sanja doležal said she said i won’t sing anymore then she changed her mind she was jealous of milena and krajnc he was 59 ok that’s a bit into the future well anyway were i to claim to know the opus of this krajnc fellow they’d say i’m full of shit but they don’t know what do they know what can they do tennis they can’t do cigarettes they can’t do basie they can’t do but krajnc publishes two new books and asks cary cary are you also hyperactive or just sick cary are you ok cary THE JEALOUS MIND GOES A LONG WAY (MOTHER) fuck me if i know but last friday i visited my mother’s grave and there were letters inscribed on the tombstone asking me about the street illumination i don’t live on that street since birth mother i’ve never seen those streetlights to be exact the house doesn’t exist anymore and the neighbours all died of boredom exhausting boredom and sadness ignited by the realization that they never really knew me i was declared dead and my family was cast from that garden of neighbourhood love and empathy this tombstone mother wasn’t it brown it’s grey now how’s that possible a year rolled by my siblings didn’t come or if they did they never told me i have only one candle mother shopping is not my forte these days but that can be excused or can it anyway that’s the candle and there’s got to be a match here somewhere not being carl perkins i’m sure that i had some of those sticks lying around just in case i gave up smoking long ago because i couldn’t operate a cigarette lighter that’s palsy you know or do you but that can be excused or can it fuck me if i know but there are silhouettes over there are they coming here or is that you and your friends dancing laughing listening to the late night radio well fucking that’s a big part of it or so i guess i wouldn’t know i’m not a night type of guy not a morning type either but am i hearing right are you jealous mother jealous of my relative youth you being dead and all and i’m alive lighting you a candle with a very strange device that’s not a matchstick but neither is it a lighter it’s probably something that i inherited from my second mother lying in there with you old as fuck how are you two getting along you never really knew each other but are forced to be together now for eternity how does it feel you a bit younger her a bit older you a pop music lover her a classical soul you not a conflict person she well how shall i put it do they have a word for “goropadnica” around here i’m sure they do but it’s ok you obviously get along and my siblings who never got to meet the goropadnica never complained about any kind of fuss they come more often they should know those silhouettes they’re coming closer i don’t know them who are they mother do you know them are they your deceased friends playing games with me saying well hey hey a lost son is here the one who’s supposed to be dead he came to visit oh oh my he’s trying to light a candle let’s dance him to oblivion wait he is already there according to some facts i hear whispers mother but they don’t scare me you almost died all those years ago mother carrying me wanting to stop afraid to bring another one into your pile of shit but it turned out fine we have the same eyes we have the same smile that’s something that should be something those silhouettes they’re moving away now they’ve shared a pack of marlboros between them i heard them saying they’re going to fuck themselves blind but that’s ok the silhouettes can do that without collateral damage and i’m standing here at your grave looking at all that marble thinking about lunch should i miss you should i miss both of you or should i take out the guitar and record a couple of songs just to say it’s a graveyard album recorded live in the middle of all those dead bodies or dust it’s a graveyard album maybe it’ll be my commercial breakthrough being almost 50 i’ve never had one i deserve one but i had to sell 20 guitars mother to afford a candle that i finally manage to light right now at your not so narrow grave the tombstone is turning back to brown must be the evening lights or the lack of them but i guess that’s not germane to the situation and carl perkins surely isn’t i want his guitars mother now HONESTY i started to miss my brother around the second grade i knew he was older than me probably bigger when he came from the army he smoked cigarettes and sported a moustache he said i will shave that off but everybody had moustaches in the army and everybody smoked we said yeah yeah we understand smoking is important in the army we didn’t order him to go to the balcony we didn’t say we don’t want you smoking in the living room we were so happy just to see him he was just like his father the mouth the cheeks well the hair or lack thereof he came from the army to visit and then he went home and he never came back billy joel was singing honesty frank zappa was still alive what was i thinking collecting tapes of pop song festivals comparing them to the masterpieces that he brought from the army billy joel had personal problems even ray charles had personal problems and he saw the light well what to say i thought about my brother’s tobacco for 37 years then he reappeared with a broken hip i didn’t ask he told me himself there were things to be done people to be taken care of and you were always on my mind little things i should’ve said and done i just never took the time we had lunch by the river he shaved off the moustache and stopped smoking when the army gets you it makes a man out of you i asked about his mother i asked is your mother still alive although i knew she wasn’t he said she died sometime in the past one day i pulled the blinds and her head just fell down on the street for all the songwriters to see that’s not what i heard i said i heard it was dementia that is dementia said he your head just falls off for all the songwriters to see i thought about your tobacco for 37 years i said and then we chuckled and then we guffawed and then we snortled and said honesty is such a lonely word everyone is so untrue honesty is hardly ever heard but mostly what i need from you Translated by the author Matej Krajnc Bio Matej Krajnc (1975) has been combining poetry and music into a singer- songwriter routine since 1992. Between 1998 and 2024 he has recorded more than 400 albums for various labels, participated in nearly every important literary- music festival, worked for national radio and other media as a music connoisseur, and written or translated over 100 books as a member of the Slovene Writers’ Association and the Slovene Association of Literary Translators. He is also a member of Slovene PEN. He has written several books, including on the works of Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, The Beatles and Slovene singer Oto Pestner. He has translated works by Alexander Pope, Lord Byron, Samuel Coleridge, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, Kris Kristofferson and many others. He has been reviewing, and writing articles on, music and literature. He writes and performs in English as Matt Kaye. In 2024, he was awarded the Cup of Immortality for his poetry. Meta Kušar THE COLD Singing is warm oil that spreads to the bone. I cover it with wool. With bare hands I hold back the barriers so life can germinate. Let us both, so carefully, move earth and sky! The universe can hear words uttered in a room. Inside me a thousand hectolitres of pent up river. Into the mountain, it evaporates, into the clouds. And if I dive into the waterfall, into the thunder that smokes? When the eyes don’t ease up, their burdens don’t dissolve. They don’t sink into soil, don’t snap off flowers. Who tucks nuts away in a bush? Or a man wrapped in wind think? I wade through snow and the cold doesn’t get to me. What is he thinking? He sings too beautifully. Inhumanly. Beautifully. Translated by Ana Jelnikar and Barbara Siegel Carlson SUMMER, SUMMER I’m wrong, I’m not wrong. Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays it’s crucial to live life through the heart. Mondays Tuesdays, Wednesdays, even more so. Thursdays it is utterly vital. It hurts, but it helps. It hurts even more when it’s your own heart. I lavish him with all kinds of berries. I give him water to drink. Burn Ludvik’s stove a year and a day. You break & I burn. They break you & I burn. They rip a secret out of you & I burn. The gods frown and start doing manoeuvres in the garden & I burn. On the coasts, it’s the same. There’s war in the forests. Naked, she casts her nets, marching downriver to catch fish in her hands. Agility, beauty, a trick, machinations, power, they’re all useless against Aphrodites. With true goodness, with inner necessity, it is possible. What perpetuates summer? I found a dead fisherman. No goddess could give him back his life. I watch the dead man calmly. Professor Jung thinks I’ve no need to flee. I rebuke him, I scold the dead man harshly & he moves his head. He starts nodding. I haul him back to the chopping block, scold him some more & he opens his eyes. I silver spoon him verses in the morning, massage him with rose oil at noon, by evening we’re drinking wine. All day I look him in the eye. Thus I heal the fisherman. The hunter I bring back to life at night. The dead Jäger needs to be cooled down. He died in the crossfire. Such sideways war wounds him deeply. He shouldn’t touch wine. I try to douse the embers of the poet’s guilt. With blue cotton I wipe his forehead when he falls asleep. Mostly at midnight. Dead judges are trickiest of all. When the goddess hides his urge, he dies. I fan him back to life, because he opens neither mouth nor eye. His lineage is that of Hamurabi. Rusalka drives him to disaster. It’s not possible to breathe with such a dry & dreary will. Even if naked, you can’t breathe. Fisherman, poet, hunter, judge - Each knows no sign can be stashed away in the dark. I sit at the stove with a scholar. He kisses me every day. He knows why the dead admire my weighted wings. Give them life! Look after them! he says when I waver. Don’t be afraid! Don’t think! You can’t know to what vocation you’ll restore them. Translated by Ana Jelnikar and Stephen Watts There is something in a kiss for which the moon’s wrought silver remains. Only the yellow scents of the island stay on the edges of winter like this, folded inward. Translated by Ana Jelnikar and Barbara Siegel Carlson I dream of an old lover. You want facts? Nope. Nope. I love life too much to be poured white-hot into a mould. Translated by Ana Jelnikar and Barbara Siegel Carlson MATTER I walked in the sun. My heavy book isn’t too heavy. In this book I postpone mortality. When I can. I draw small squares. Circles inside. Academic polish is all hot air. Drafts retain the maximum. Notebooks. I can’t reach the other world through eyes and ears. The connections are a real hot soup. Already on a small plate Materia prima smells good. Eros wakes up. Rubbing his eyes and stirring Aphrodite. Even on the surface I can hear you from afar, deep inside me. I can tell from your voice when you’re walking uphill. From the paw I stroke, I can feel your breath. I can feel it when it comes. When it purrs. Translated by Ana Jelnikar and Barbara Siegel Carlson ONE The first has his eyes, the second his hair, the third his voice. The twentieth his sentences, the two hundredth his ear for music. The thousandth his laughter, the three hundred thousandth his tongue. Do I have his heart? I wasn’t imagining things. Embellishing anything. I never waited. Only expected. I taste the imagination of days old and new. What a happy course. Translated by Ana Jelnikar and Barbara Siegel Carlson Meta Kušar Bio Meta Kušar (1952) is a poet and essayist who has authored nine much-translated books of poetry, a collection of interviews, and a book of essays. She has received the Veronika Award, the Rožanc Award, the Schwentner Prize and the Velenjica - Cup of Immortality. She has founded and directed numerous events that promote books and reading, directed memorial evenings, and her The Throne of Poetry, a musical performance, has taken her around the world on many occasions. For RTV Slovenia she wrote the script, filmed and directed a film about the actor Jurij Souček. Josip Osti THERE’S A TRELLIS BEFORE THE WINDOW, SWEETHEART, WITH A CLUSTER OF RIPE GRAPES ON IT There’s a trellis before the window, sweetheart, with a cluster of ripe grapes on it. Like time. For it’s the end of summer with autumn beginning. Its grapes, not long ago green, took on the color of amber. I left some of them for you. Some of them I ate myself. Some of them were nibbled by a redwing. After the autumn, the winter will come. Perhaps the very last one. An all-embracing one. And it will all come to nothing. The cluster. Myself. And the bird. Translated by Andrej Peric THERE ARE MOMENTS WHEN I WANT TO BE YOU, AND YOU WANT TO BE ME There are moments when I want to be you, and you want to be me. So we could get to know love from both sides. Seen through your eyes and mine. … Longing. Lusting… What the man wants and feels, what the woman does. The one caressing and being caressed. Loving while being loved. What the body and soul experience and what they remember… There are moments when I want to be you, and you want to be me. For us, like a boy and a girl that will become an old man and an old woman tomorrow, to constantly repeat our run under the rainbow. Trying to avoid love, even unintentionally, turning into its opposite. Translated by Andrej Peric WHATEVER MAY HAPPEN IN OUR LIVES, SWEETHEART Whatever may happen in our lives, sweetheart, I beg you to maintain on your sunny face that sunflower smile, having seduced not only me, but also the bees of Tomaj. Translated by Andrej Peric I KNOW NOT WHETHER THEY ARE SIGNS OR WHETHER I CAN INTERPRET THEM PROPERLY I know not whether they are signs or whether I can interpret them properly. Prior to returning to the path you had followed before the two of us met, with me returning to my Tomaj solitude without us knowing whether it meant a short-term or lifelong separation, I caught sight of a single sunray in a dark wood. Unlike any other sunray I’ve seen to date. I didn’t know whether it meant I was destined to be and to remain alone like the sunray, or that you were the sunray, continuing to shine upon me. Not even yesterday did I know whether something similar was implied in the storm carried by the large and lone black cloud following a bright and sunny day, making it look, in the middle of the day, as though it were the darkest night. After the heavy downpour, the sun, before it set, began to shine all around. With a light much stronger than before. I can say marvellous, for every rain-washed roof was glittering, as was every treetop with its every gilded leaf. Translated by Andrej Peric THE DOOR OF MY HOUSE WILL REMAIN OPEN The door of my house will remain open. From now on, as it has been so far. Although you never had to ring or knock, now, when somebody rings or knocks in the middle of the day or night, it strikes me that it must be you. That you’ve returned. And I rush to open the door for you. You may return sooner or later. The same way you left. Wordlessly. And if you don’t say so yourself, I won’t ask you where you’ve been or how you’ve been. I’ll embrace and kiss you the same way we embraced and kissed for all of our time. Finishing our countless letters mostly with these very words: A hug and a kiss. I’ll do the same if Death precedes you. I’ll embrace her. When she comes, I’d like her to look similar, if not identical, to you. To have your face. Your eyes, hands, hair… To even wear one of your colorful dresses. With very bright colors. For me not to be able to tell which is which. Or whether you returned before she came, or she came before you returned. Translated by Andrej Peric TONIGHT, SWEETHEART, I WROTE THE POEM I WROTE TWENTY YEARS AGO Tonight, sweetheart, I wrote the poem I wrote twenty years ago. Which I only realized after that. Also that I had written it then, unknowingly, for you. Like most love poems, especially the most beautiful ones, are written for the one named Love. It goes like this: Did you also, as I did, rise from a warm bed? Did you walk, naked and barefoot, into the night? Are you, as I am, standing under the starry heaven? Are you gazing into the twinkling light of the same star? Are your feet also freezing, buried to the ankles in the crisp snow? Did the quiver of bats’ wings shift a lock of hair from your forehead as well? Did you halt halfway from yourself toward me like I halted halfway from myself toward you? Are you also bringing to your lips a cup full of moonlight? Will you also, not knowing how, return to a bed grown cold? And will you, as I will, dream about what has already been described in that poem? Is the star-burnt black velvet undulating from the beat of our hearts also staying awake tonight like every night? Translated by Andrej Peric Josip Osti Bio Born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herze­govina, Josip Osti (1945-2021) died in Tomaj, Slovenia; he was a poet, essayist, translator, and editor. His unique, rich, and varied opus, which includes poetry, short fiction, and novels, was written in two languages, as Osti started writing in Slovene in the 1990s, when he moved to Slovenia. Osti published more than thirty books of poetry, among them a series of collections based on the traditional Japanese haiku form, as well as numerous books of fiction, essays, and criticism. He worked as an editor, organised the international poetry festival Sarajevo Days of Poetry, and was the president of the Association of Bosnian Translators. In Ljubljana in the early 1990s, he published 160 chapbooks by (refugee) authors from then occupied Sarajevo. His work was translated into more than 20 languages and his poems are included in several Slovene, Balkan, Central European, and worldwide anthologies. He was the recipient of several awards, beginning in Yugoslavia with the award for Best Debut in 1971 and including the Slovene awards Golden Bird, the Veronika Award, the Jenko Award, the Župančič Award, and also international awards, among them the Vilenica Award, the Umberto Saba Award, and the PONT Award. Ana Pepelnik SONNETS for Joshua Beckman I Incomplete dreams. And easy morning. Towels are spinning. The pinwheel is dappled. Incomplete morning. And easy dreams. Trash men are clearing glass jars. This is morning pinwheel. Quite improper for incomplete dreams. Mist. Leftovers of rain on oxeyes and chrysanthemums. Close to beginning of November. First smell of winter. Easy trash men. Dappled rain and incomplete flowers. Improper November. It always begins with trash men and ventilated coats. Close to beginning. First smell of November of ventilated rain. Incomplete dreams. II Red van full of forget-me-nots slides over streets. I’m trying to find your poem. I don’t give name to streets. I share them with people from this town. Red van full of forget-me-nots. Still. Trying to find your poem. Red airplane landing on airport from red town. Blue forget-me-nots. I never remember airports. I don’t run after red airplane. Too much of forget-me-nots. Your poem. Sliding. Van full of streets. Clown sitting behind the wheel. Red van in front of red fire station. Sky growing out of red house. Blue forget-me-nots. Your poem. I share it with people from this town. Red sky growing out of house. III Boats are distant. Rain was falling until they were swept away. Now we peel chestnuts. Roasted shells are little boats. When they are soaking you can hear cracking coming out of dried ones. Boats are distant. How many people do you think still use firewood in town? Not many. All I do is move. And peel chestnuts. From one station to another. Sometimes I say more than usual in one day. Firewood emits enough heat. Sometimes I listen to pipes cracking until I fall asleep. Sometimes people are in the rain. Until they start crying. Translated by Joshua Beckman and Ana Pepelnik TECHNO On how I don’t even think about not feeling a thing. On suicide. Preventing my own. On gratitude. On how life took my friend away. And me soon after. On the child on two. Both born from this belly under this page and this pencil. That they don’t need a mother. Not me mother. That there is nothing. That all vanished said fuck you. That’s it. Find something to lift you up. But there was nothing. All was just a single straight line without colors. Scent. Taste. And what to do with that line. Nothing. What. Stay inside stay down. Eat yourself. Nothing matters outside. No sun. I don’t need sun. On everything. Not on high heels. Not on skirts tended bodies nice cars houses furniture kitchens cups. Not on veganism not on lacto-ovo paleo bullshit. No. On flip-flops. I want to wear them and colorful nails to brighten your view. On my bike speeding with vertigo on the one-hour swim to sweat and pee in the pool on stretching my body and on music. On life. On David. Your pain is distant to me. I feel my own. You are one of them. This endless horrible pain. Though pain is not the right word. Emptiness. No. A hole. Yes a hole David. You threw a stone and a hole appeared where your heart used to be. And then. Then I saw two kids and one boy. All mine. I said god what now?! Rise up woman. Even if I feel as a child. A child who is old since it was born an old man or an old lady. But yet a child. And then I went and re-read Ariel. And now I read her in a different way. People that’s so crazy. Do you really know what happens to a woman when she gives birth? When she is giving birth? Hell, purgatory, paradise. There’s no pain. 2 arms 2 legs stomach head breathe in. Cry out. Breathe in breathe out wheezing. Blood umbilical cord. filth. Aesthetic filth coming from an inside. A new woman is born. To you to herself. And a child. Which is yours. This is just a photograph. As a conception for you who still have to go through all this and as an archive for you who have already ex-pe-ri-en-ced it. Life hurts. Life. Hurts. And one of the nicest tricks my brain can process is the fact that the body and the mind remember only the beauty. Which is more rare than pain and nastiness. Those can rest. But not disappear. Still they’re part of me. Secrets too. They just sleep. That’s enough. Love. Is beautiful. Hope. Is beautiful. Faith. Is beautiful. Faith not faith. Moments which happen. When a child gets his first tooth. When you wait more than he does to poop himself. To wake up. Because you are already bored because everything is quiet. Enough about this photograph. The next is MUSIC. My techno which you do not forgive me which my best girlfriend does not forgive me. What is techno. To me techno is earth. Heart. The prime principle. Pre-history. When everything was one giant beating of a heart. And when techno beats my heart beats. My love my rhythm. My skin my everything. That is when I am me. Techno is my drug on the bike in the sprint up the mountain when above the vine sprayed with sulfur the sun rises and the birds awaken and I’m already here. Alive. And the tears throw me off my bike. Sprint. Techno. Love. The warm thoughts that you are safe that you are waiting for me. That I am waiting for you. That I’m yours that you’re mine that we have each other. Love each other. That we yell at each other when we get too close. That is love. What is faith. Faith is techno. What is hope. Waiting for techno in this fucking depression. That you can handle as much life as this will mean at least as much as it once did. People?! I wasn’t there. But I was. But I wasn’t. That is unbearable. When you are not to yourself. When you lose yourself from you. You stay in the cellar. In cellar number 2. Below cellar number 1. In the shelter. Which once you close it remains impenetrably closed. And they can open it only from the outside. But I found a gasmask. And a shovel. David threw it to me and said dig (!). And I dug. I cut into the concrete like into the soil in the garden. A millimetre. And another. And dear techno is when you take your clothes off. When we take our clothes off. Techno is sex. Techno is techne. I need this. Out of the cellar to the ground floor with a shovel. And now I am here. And you 3. And us 4. Me with an almost broken leg. It’s pain. Pain makes me nervous and annoying. But alive. And so I nag and am alive and I can laugh and cry and cry and laugh and you have to understand me. And when you give birth you give birth to the whole world. That’s how it feels. Magma lava oil rosemary stars earthquake lavender torrent flood landslide sage. Smell taste touch sound. Sight. All in a couple of hours. Evolution and revolution. My experience. My techno. Translated by Jasmin B. Frelih THE TIGHTEST POEM The shortest poem begins today. In this moment when the snow is falling for the third time this year. This is 2013. February. When sometimes you get scared by a fact. First there was thunder. Before that there was lightning. Once. Just once. Then the earth shook. And fear was born. But it passed soon. Through the open window I was hit by life. Just as it is. The song of birds the noise from distant roads the melting sun. Snow. Stuff like that. Let’s not think about sadness. But it wants to manifest itself now. Meanwhile the snow stops. Night falls. And we sleep. What used to be snow is flowing down the gutters. Now it must be water. The water cycle will come full circle. That is circulation. Snow melted among leaves turns suddenly into a puddle. A tiny hollow in the middle of concrete filled with water. Leaves dog fur and sand. And then it rises. Above the clouds. It spins above them you and me. It looks at the sun. And then. Then it breaks through. It falls again. It comes full circle. It always comes full circle. Whether this calms you depends on your character. Wet or dry. Fat or slim. Gentle or rough. Sensitive or rough. All this above the poor puddle. Pointing at where nature and man touch. How much he takes and how much he gives. All this. And yet I want to say something else. About dreams. How it is when you wake up and don’t know what to do. Ok I make a snowman in the middle of the city and complete the first suggestion out of four. For the second one I whistle the death march every single time I cross revolution square (the silence of the trumpet carried on a clear day to our street from the cemetery by the western wind). The third one every time I light my tobacco with a match and hear the wood crackle in the flame. I hold my breath and make my own silence for a human. And the fourth. I am not afraid of people. I live with them and I share. This city. I turn around in the line with them at the grocery. And I watch them and I want for them to breathe more easy. In the meantime this became the tightest poem. And the snow stopped and began again twice. To fall. I began my battle with the germs and I fell. I cried and reasoned that the world could change. If we could all for a moment stop believing that it spins. Around us. Because it doesn’t. But when you lie all powerless and the ceiling once in a while touches your forehead you really believe in something else. That you are a bad person. That you don’t exist. That you’re not there. And that hurts. But yeah. People are bad. That is how you write the tightest poem. Without an eraser or hair or second thoughts. With the pen tongue and the heart. Everyone is sick now and then. The only difference is in how much stuff you use to overcome this unbearable battle with yourself. You are worse off if you fight only with tea and lemons. You sleep less. They say that to sleep is to forget. I sleep little sometimes I even don’t or I sleep badly. Too little. And so it’s hard to walk around this city. When I wait seven hours a day for the doors to a certain house at the outskirts to open and for pure joy to rush inside and it shakes me and ties me down. This happiness unknowingly takes care so I don’t believe that the world is spinning. Around me. I am spinning around it and all over it. I have my good and my bad days. And I make an effort. And I take care. Mostly to not become a bad person. The snow hasn’t been falling for two days. On Tuesday night the whole delegation of roadkeepers descended on the streets of our city. Municipal services. Infinite ploughs spades vans pickups liquids salt and hands attacked the silence. And the calm brought on by falling snow. It was all disappearing minute by minute. Street by street. From one shadow between two streetlights to the other. When nature is guided by man. When it is blocked and destroyed just a little bit more. All this shook me for a bit. My silence. And calm. My night walks. I wasn’t there anymore. I wasn’t alone. Not even by sight. Translated by Jasmin B. Frelih Ana Pepelnik Bio Ana Pepelnik (1979) is a poet and translator. She has published seven books of poetry, which have been nominated for the Best Debut Award, the Veronika Award and the Jenko Award. For her latest book, she received the Critical Sieve Award. She translates poetry from English (Elizabeth Bishop, James M. Schuyler, Matthew Zapruder, Joshua Beckman, Noelle Kocot, Matthew Rohrer) and into English. In the United States, her translation (with Matthew Rohrer) of Skin by Tone Škrjanec was among the among the ten finalists for the PEN America Translation Prize. Her poems have also been translated into a few foreign languages. She participated in the international project Metropoetica and Poetrix, a sound installation by Jaka Berger Brgs, and is an active member of the improvisational poetry-sound trio CPG Impro with Primož Čučnik and Tomaž Grom. Gregor Podlogar CORINTH Clouds travelling low. September. Changing cities doesn’t change me. This poem is for Corinth. At least four types of addiction. If I could only swap Rome for Athens. If only I had that power. By nightfall we’ll have forgotten. Until then there’s television instead of the hearth, digital postcards of violence instead of a wild boar hunt, armchairs instead of rocks. Translated by Ana Jelnikar and Barbara Siegel Carlson IT’S NOT FEBRUARY Already a week I’ve been carrying a collection of poems by Tom Raworth, a letter from Paul Killebrew and the light of autumn streets. And summer’s melancholy has ended, the truce has ended. If I say improvisation, I think of friendship. The plan accepted, the destinations conquered. … so to fix bitter melancholy neon shine shifty regards and I am AGAIN asking, if they know, how cold and dirty it is. And neither did we succeed in escaping our own regard of the seasons’ turn. This relation to tea is insanely pleasant, next to this sound another sound. And it’s different from the feeling, when you walk around the city, to watch moving pictures, carefully rummaging the interior, and sometimes you’re only spinning faster the reel. Translated by Laura Solomon VIDEOTAPE And the second line is silence because today we already know, sometimes it’s better to be silent. Ligeti didn’t lecture, Cage didn’t play. Africa is roaring, slums at the courtyard of history. This is not a political poem. Two thousand stops and not any bases. February pushes on the windows. Now you are just, you say to yourself. You boil the water for tea, turn off the cell phone, open the book. Something is scratching in the attic. The afternoon on its knees. I am in Šiška. American poets are still rallying to Šiška, usually at the beginning of summer. This poem won’t say anything new. This poem is not a secret. This poem is taking meaning from this poem. It will repeat in your head. Until the end, when you will have ended in any one of these hotel rooms. Mute and drunk as John Wayne. Translated by Laura Solomon *** all the worlds communicate among themselves some how history throws an empty bottle through the window and you cut yourself Tokyo is overflowing with mini fictions everything is simple everything cannot be simple some things you keep to yourself images fluttering it may already be morning in Africa it is March trees measure time from within their trunks look where we are clouds even when we are no more a brush of the eyes perhaps your touch on my skin a detail in the collage everything glued together into a series of photographs faces of the world cities streets from above the relief of a house so very very small the silver of last summer’s wings flat corridors of fantasy screens everywhere different stories same house of history all the worlds communicate among themselves Translated by Ana Jelnikar and Stephan Watts AS YOU KNOW As you know a wasted imagination won’t get you very far and it isn’t hard to get lost in the time you’re saving till later A couple of women change seats for the third time A damaged neon sign still flickers a little How much love could ONE WHOLE life contain? My 15 minutes by myself have passed away together with the afternoon The waiter at the next table is showing off again I haven’t forgotten all those small wounds that open softly And then the dark falls out of them A police car opens the fever of Friday night And there’s nothing mysterious in cigarette smoke even though it looks like a prophecy a statement for the 20th century Tomorrow there will be another Saturday it will rain again You can call me a dreamer but in this poem there are no dreams a cruelly banging bass some laughter hubbub No clear words only a whirl of sounds pulling on the other world Narrow narrow light Translated by Zoë Skoulding Gregor Podlogar Bio Gregor Podlogar (1974) is a poet, a broadcast journalist, and a host on Radio Slovenia. He has published six books of poetry, as well as one in co-authorship with Primož Čučnik and Žiga Kariž. His poetry, shortlisted for the Veronika Award, has appeared in various literary magazines in Slovenia and abroad, with a selection of his work having been included in the anthology Six Slovenian Poets (Arc, 2006). He was the Slovene editor of lyrikline.org and co-organiser of the “Trnosvki terceti” poetry festival in Ljubljana. He has translated contemporary American poets (Christian Hawkey, Laura Solomon, Paul Killebrew, Anselm Berrigan, among others). He sometimes performs as a DJ. Jana Putrle Srdić FISH No matter how carefully you cut into the belly of this wonderful silver fish and clean the entrails, wipe the dust from the shelves, and place fragile objects somewhere high, safety will not save you from fear. Misery doesn’t ensure a good poem. The closeness of death only makes you more alone. Filled with joy, like an aquarium with spawning fish, we watch the ducks follow one another with their shovel-like feet, one two one two in a line. There is an order in everything, some feathery lightness. Translated by Barbara Jurša BREATHE OUT, WHEN YOU LET GO Breathe in when you reach out, he tells me breathe out when you grab it. I breathe in the oily floral scent of summer, the worker on the bus, marijuana. I breathe out three by ten meters of unread books, walking across Antarctica, sled dogs that won’t take me anywhere. I breathe in the gorgeous ad light with autumn leaves and a beauty in a Renault, then I try to breathe out a woman and a car. Take a walk into the virtual he tells me, and sit down among the nano parts. Breathe in, breathe out, this is your world. These polished electromagnetic impulses you call music and the evenly dished out screams from the retirement home late into the night. Breathe. Breathe in and breathe out. Breathe in when you reach out, breathe out when you let go. I breathe in white pills. Planes. Words of people who have surrounded themselves with a lot of silence. Sledges. Snowfall. Sled dogs, I might have a use for them. Tiny impulses of hope like pornography in childhood - an open slit into unknown worlds. I breathe in completely random details, tiny movement of hands, head turns, interjections without a place of their own in epic novels. Smoke from the movie In the mood for love. I breathe out and listen to the crackling of networks, the unfathomable path of information in this saturated, empty space, the hum of contradictions within me. Everything is unrepeatable. Do it again: breathe in and breathe out. Translated by Jasmin B. Frelih TONIGHT THE BUGS WILL CRAWL OUT OF THE EARTH The mycelium web grows at night and the connections are made from neuron to neuron. The woods breathe through the fossil trunk into the bark of a living tree and we are all cocooned into the most ordinary secrets: capillaries and pimples, running out hours, someone kneeling on the grave and the moisture penetrates his synthetic pants to his cold knees and a dog flinches in its sleep, smelling what was for millennia written in DNA, merely a more fortunate form than 010110100. And though we rarely allow ourselves a loving attitude to technology, tonight it is a part of the signal, it flickers in the dark of the room with lights on electronic devices. Omnipresent it is unnoticed like the neighbor, walking up from the mailbox each morning, carrying bills and closing the circle of information, her face in a glow afforded only to the chosen ones, very old, very young. Tonight the bugs, feeding for four years under the ground with the juice of trees, will all together crawl out into the open and turn into something different. Translated by Jasmin B. Frelih CONSTRUCTION AT THE END OF SUMMER You can learn a lot, living near a construction site. First they set up azure-colored plastic toilets. Rain pouring down for three days and yellow helmets under jutting roofs, laughter from a warehouse. The leaves are still green, but it seems like we are moving somewhere else, bit by bit every night, we awaken in the same house, near the same construction, only the sky is colder and the noise from the street is filled with obligations. What to do now with the hot stones we have been placing on our bellies all summer? The leaves are still green, the workers wear yellow helmets. Everyone has their own tricks for survival. Embarrassed salesgirls wrap naked mannequins in wrapping paper. Every morning Črnuče’s bum makes a pilgrimage to the center for a Franciscan lunch. You spit over your shoulder at multicolored cats and the dog persistently carries off your slippers into the unknown. The leaves are still green, but the yellow helmets no longer look back when I pass by the fence. Helmets accompanied by buzzing, throbbing, pounding, rattling, deepen the hole in the earth. Next autumn, 10-20m in the air above, two people will make love bathed in gentle light from erotic films and sink into the darkness - our house will stare in wonder. Translated by Travis Jeppsen A WOMAN AT THE WINDOW A woman at the core of her family is slipping towards the edge of society, a woman in front of an empty screen, in the naked cube of a gallery, is an unnoticed mistake, an empty space in the crowd of voters and demonstrators, nobody needs her. She’s standing there, shuffling her left leg, not knowing what to do, she’s waiting to be saved by the bus or an e-mail or someone calling her on the phone. In a foreign part of the world, a woman’s standing at the window, watching the snow falling heavily and erasing - the woman is staring into her own void, and in this desolate space where nobody needs her, in the uncomfortably turned head, in a sweater that is barely hers, with snow on her shoulders, she’s trying to conjure up something yet unrecognizable, something about a form into which she will stretch her hand, the structure of the world that penetrates the visible only through the branches of trees and thin lines in the ice. Everything that is calling to the woman at the window makes her mute. She ponders taking a step into the unknown. Translated by Barbara Jurša Jana Putrle Srdić Bio Jana Putrle Srdić (1975) is the author of four poetry collections and a short novel. She also writes short stories and essays, and occasionally translates poetry from English, Russian, and Serbian. Her poetry books have been nominated for the Jenko Award and the Veronika Award. Her books have been published in Spanish, Romanian, German, and English translations, and her debut novel will be published in Argentina and the United States. In Ljubljana, she works as a producer of science and art programmes. Tone Škrjanec DON’T KNOW DON’T KNOW Stay together. Learn the flowers. Go light. GARY SNYDER i’m writing in lower case out of sheer joy and laziness. i’m reading a book of poems, some kind of manual on sailing, ropes and ancient skills. is it making me better. perhaps, i don’t know, but certainly i breath better, it’s easier for me to ride the bike up the slope of the morning. i remember the days when we mentioned spruces mostly in connection to slenderness and beauty, and in this context we shouldn’t forget about majestic ships with thick ropes lowered into the sea, overgrown with moss and families of shells and surrounded by larger and smaller fish and multitudes of very tiny things - i’m convincing myself that this is plankton and not decomposed litter - and everything together looks like outer space, as i am thus sitting on the edge of a pier, swinging my legs and observing, between my knees, this mini cosmos covered with the reflection of the sky. the dance is, like always, extended into a carnival and in the evenings, when the music stops, the lights are turned on, the lights are turned on and the doors are shut. there comes the time of weaving infinite thresholds, babbling about superbeautiful witches, a reflection on first letting yourself be seduced and then being drawn back home. there’s a lot of sea, on all ends, and a lot of birds. no sails in sight. only the remains of eastern cuisine, exotic swinging of hips, a lava of words, and a small heap of collapsed panna cotta. become immaterial, be light. i’m thinking, but still, i don’t know. Translated by Barbara Jurša PRAGUE EARLY AFTERNOON met a lip that got me thinking of a certain train from my youth. slowly i remove her panties, lift her skirt, so i can see if my hands will still recognize her warm hips. then the befuddled morning and as ever prague in the czech republic. it is quiet. i listen to my body pulsing. mid-afternoon i sit in a totally empty pub on a side street. i am drinking beer. dark leather, velvet and reddish gloom underlaid with dreadful music. the waitress brings me my drink along with a bit of a view of her left breast. time races slowly by. on the red wall hangs a big black-and-white photo of marilyn monroe in a white skirt. a woman comes in, concentrated and firm as an apricot, like a small clenched pussy. then the road again, slowly climbing, pulsing more and more. i want you to one day put that friendly fogginess of yours on, which is like morning in greece with a long walk uphill to the first coffee and goat’s milk yogurt. i love small occurrences. let this be a poem today and let this poem be for everyone separately, for the birds and for the stones. Translated by Rawley Grau HOLE IN THE SKY it must be written down since what comes today is true for tomorrow too. a soft burble of talking entwines with the rumble of an old tractor in the ambient music of morning. for just a moment, the birds fall silent and listen, hidden in the colossal green crowns of the trees that surround our yard. the girls, to every last hair, to that narrow arrow-shaped wedge which descends to the groin, rub fragrant oils and lotions onto their naked and mostly bronzed bodies until the taut curves of their contours (which our eyes follow automatically like simple machines) glisten like dewy bottles of beer in a television commercial. for there’s a hole in the sky. between my folded legs i observe the island. small, bare, totally uninhabited. we went there by boat once. with great care we stepped daintily over the sharp rocks to gather a bunch of wild garlic. Translated by Rawley Grau DUST it was an average dream. there were two long waves that were - it was like they were slicing through the lake. there was a bit of night, it was totally silent, and in fact everything was closed, there were no problems, we were all healthy, no cancer, no other similar mortal troubles, just ordinary fucking, and none of that who loves who, who put what into whom and where, it was really beautiful, it was a long, smooth lake, there were little coloured lights everywhere, there were two greyish pigeons, a lot of ducks, which were black with white bills. And a flock of titmice on our balcony, 5 to 10 fluttering grams of them. my body is hurting. i’m not saying anything, i won’t speak, my peace is the silence of the guilty, it is dark outside, it is cold and who cares, well i care, it matters to me, my muscles are hurting, my body is telling me something, an old story that everyone knows, that i know too, or at least i sense on some slightly metaphysical level. nothing seems real to me, my body is what I am transmitting, i don’t feel like being anything. i feel horrible, i sit in the car and feel horrible, and there is total silence, which maybe is why, nothing but the sound of the engine and breathing. not a lot means very much to me. a lot of those self-satisfied giants are nothing to me but a feeble arabic version of a saturday stroll, to me sometimes a lot of things mean that i am small, that in fact i am forever infinitely small, it hurts me when people close to me think i know all about electricity, all those unimportant wires, that sitting silently and listening is not a “statement” and that I like to be pensive, taciturn, that my everyday vanities are inborn even if they are just a peculiar obsession, that dust on objects is a serious and unforgiving rebuke, that with each passing day the world is more and more a dimwitted joke and not just, sadly, that the whole thing is something entirely incidental, a tiny quibble, a few camels, a few miniscule animals, the barely meaningful perception of something that was never really real. i am he who recently stood on a grave, the same grave as years before when somewhere inside myself I said stupid things: look, look what is happening to me, but nothing was happening, almost nothing in particular except that bit by bit we were dying. we stood there and the world wouldn’t wait, it was just there somewhere, like some fucked-up eternity that knows everything, understands everything, and doesn’t actually have a clue. outside it is cold and snowing and i want to be happy but somehow i can’t, something always gets in the way, always happens, always these structures, although we are always beautiful, always have our naked body, which shines like a star. always beautiful like a star. and i don’t want to go home. Translated by Rawley Grau BUY A SOFT SHIRT Don’t look for deer by the highway. We’re in a hurry, don’t forget about beauty. Look at the raindrops rolling down the windshield. Listen to the silence if you find it hidden somewhere among the clouds. Lay your hand softly on the velvet. Don’t forget about beauty when you’re in a hurry. Speed is a mistake that happens. Walk slowly over skin and draw infinity with your finger. Kiss the bellybutton. Do something else that’s physical. Touch music. Say, make music so I can touch it with my entire body. Reject actions of destruction. Buy a soft shirt. Let it be your new homeland. Translated by Ana Pepelnik and Matthew Rohrer Tone Škrjanec Bio Tone Škrjanec (1953) published his first collection of poetry in 1997. This was followed by more than ten others, including two books of selected poetry and, in 2024, one containing his collected poems. He has been awarded the Velenjica - Cup of Immortality, the Veronika Award, and the Jenko Award. Eleven books of his poems have been published in translation and have also been included in anthologies. He has released an album of poetry set to music and has contributed to three other such compilation albums. Marjan Strojan SPRING IN MERCATOR PROJECTION Winter retreated, and as the mountain ridges were closing in on the sea cliffs - there, at the time of my first recorded use of a subordinate clause in the language, sprouted the crossroads of pathways and winds. From its subterranean vaults ice travelled on galleys to Capri and Ischia, some of it even as far as Egypt. In lunar temples wet nurses required the sacrifice of pheasants; on splendid shores libraries were built of sandstone, their departments flaunting the names of the heroes of the Argonaut expedition. True, the obstinacy of the local gods perplexed the conquerors, frustrating the advance of the natural sciences into their heartland, which kept returning expeditionary parties in forms of herbaria and dancing bears long into the night. With the approach of dawn as the history of the place was beginning to melt into its surroundings, we still see the monastic orders producing ever new forms of matriarchate, and in their books of maps we continue to read into their fondness for ornithology and theatre. Then, as the word for the atlas was finding its way into vernacular - busy making pacts with rich cities overseas by calculating the grid in which all directions crossing the meridians at the same angle were changed into parallel lines, none of them representing the nearest route to anywhere on the map - its founder cut their heavens to pieces, thus corrupting any conception they held of their surroundings. By the time the quotation marks entered correspondence we found the Emperor’s Nightingale singing among the fountains of the park and the Great Prince of Moscow making Aesculapius an onstage offering of a rooster. And as the old amber routes reopened and the new conqueror was given lease to crown himself in several churches at once, instead of bread and salt the citizens were bringing him buntings. But the simple truth was none of their treaties ever held water and no peace they concluded outlasted the dawn. Translated by the author CONFIDENTIAL REPORT On the lawn of his lovely college in Cambridge I once asked a well-known authority what he might make of this. We drank tea and he just chanced a kindly remark on my linguistic abilities (based on his deficient familiarity with the facts) when the question - made more difficult by my erroneous use of the conditional put him a little off track. But only so for a second, then the professor, regardless of being a celebrity, took time to retort with the story of a scorpion and a donkey, or was it a toad, which I found vaguely familiar and I thought I recalled Akim Tamiroff telling it to Orson Welles, but it might have been the other way around, and the title, too, slipped my mind. Yet here he was with his wild tale of the scorpion, and its assured and foreseeable demise. I think this explains everything - the brook, the donkey - conduct of the scorpion… What was left unexplained was why “hate” was the answer to a badly posed question. Translated by the author GUTTA SERENA There’s no place on earth they did not beat me. They beat the hell out of me, coming down on me wherever it hurt. Timbers of oak crashing onto my head, the morning moon shooting through, soaked in dew. I rise, I switch on the light: a forest halfway through life. At least my legs were not amputated, I say. I remember how in one of my biographies they beat me up with eyebright and dew towards morning on earth as they do in heaven. “So, this is what happens,” I say. “Nothing happens,” they explain. “Imaginary limbs hurt even more, we only amputate good ones.” They bring in a mirror- box into which they put what’s left of one’s limb, which life (believing what it sees) mistakes for the good part and is relieved … Phantoms! That’s what we need. Where are they? Someone is tearing them out from the books! There used to be libraries of them. They open me up for anyone to see and lay my bare insides into their fancy box like they can’t count to two. At once my condition improves. Still, oaks beat at my teeth and the morning dew burns away my health! “Don’t take notice,” I say to myself. “In panic even finches fly to the rafters for cover. Just keep your head up!” Last night, though, they pounded my head, they beat me like a dog, and I still don’t know what I look like nor why do we say that. It seems foul to beat up dogs, but they take their pleasure, they make me into a dog and release me from the box with dog’s head attached to my knees. Then they hammer those too, but at least I can keep them. “Not the teeth, though, they insist, that’s what we’ve agreed on.” “Man with no teeth is altogether a different animal,” I say at the doors. “Let’s not go into that, you keep your dog’s head on the leash, we are satisfied. It’s high time you do something for yourself, we could pound your eyes with more dew…” I go to see Doctor at once. I grapple in the dark until I’m there. In his chair there is already a patient. “Gutta serena,” he greets me, shampooing his patient’s head. “What does this mean?” I ask the one next to me. “A defect of the visual nerve,” he promptly translates, turning the chair around. I see a profile of John Milton from the Second Edition, and a spirit burner and a needle glowing through the darkness visible before he thrusts it into his eye socket. “Don’t budge,” he tells him, repeating the procedure which at first attempt produced no result. “How is this possible?” I protest, covering my mouth as it dawns on me the patient can hear me. “If you saw, you’d budge,” I whisper. “It’s all poetry, lad,” says the barber, the surgeon and father in one, flapping the towel with ringlets of hair against the air - or was it ether, who knows? “Go, here comes the dawn to count your ribs with rosy fingers.” Translated by the author THE DARK STAR We live behind the Hospital for Contagious Diseases, back in the fifties. Ours is a ground floor house, low down and yellow. To enter you go to the back door past the woodsheds coated with mortar and turned into homes. Next to them stand a latrine, a sink with a brass tap, and a leaky motorbike in an unlikely state of repair. The backyard is laid with gravel and slag with a hopscotch left drawn in the sand from the summer. Along the railings grey linen and chequered bed- covers flutter from the rope to dry. You can hear everything. No one is out. The sun is setting. We fight. You rush through the door, leaving the curtains and glass on the door-window shuddering. You splash water onto your face. No one comes to your side, as if the police may arrive any minute. It is likely I am the police. There’s an officer’s hat on a table and a chair pulled down on the floor with a brown chicken perched underneath and a djezva coffee pot turned sideways. You wipe your neck with a side of your slip. I lie low. I can’t see where I am and I’m not behind the barracks door either. I’m hidden so deep I can’t make myself out. It seems there’s another room farther back; maybe I play at not being there; maybe I reckon they’ll think you beat yourself up; they know you like to provoke. Then out into the yard walks a child resting its hand on its officer’s belt. In its other hand it carries a bicycle torch. I know at once it is me. It threatens you with the belt. You scream. You start back to lock yourself up. Next, you throw the police hat out into the yard. A chicken comes to peck at it. You look good, slender, with a long neck and washed-up eyes. I see an eclipsed red star rolling down from the invisible universe come to the ground. I kick it towards the playfield, then fall for the game. Translated by the author ON THE WATERFRONT I see through the waves an oscillating monster with its own thoughts in the deep, its invisible nerve centre thousands of miles away. If described in a novel, our moment would not touch the waves until page 200. However, what is truly delightful this wintry morning is their contact with the shore. This is like sitting in the dark in front of a garden in full bloom - You think, like the sea and the land, you touch me, but you only remember yourself. Translated by the author Marjan Strojan Bio Marjan Strojan (1949) has published eight books of poetry and many translations, including Beowulf, and works of John Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer, James Joyce, Robert Frost, Sydney Lea, and others. In 1997, he edited and in great part translated the first comprehensive anthology of English poetry in Slovene. He has published several books of poetry. His more recent work includes variations on Shakespeare’s stage poetry and a volume of Boris Pasternak’s poems. English translations of Strojan’s poetry have appeared in Verse, Words Without Borders, The Southern Review, The Iowa Review, Ascend, Plume, Num̵éro Cinq, Journal of American Poetry, and others. Strojan’s American collection, Dells and Hollows, was published by Autumn Hill Books in 2016. He received the Veronika Award, the Prešeren Fund Award and the Sovre Translation Awards for his translations of Beowulf and Milton’s Paradise Lost. Ana Svetel THE TRIANGLE The triangle is the one who says, “you gotta have rules,” or, “the point of agreements is to keep them.” The triangle has a wristwatch, strapped a notch too tightly, and never recalls his dreams. He sleeps alone, so he won’t cut anybody with any of his three blades. THE SQUARE The square is an avowed egalitarian. His platform states that nobody will experience injustice. The square adheres to the platform, “principles are principles,” he insists, trying to start spinning. THE OCTAGON The octagon is actually a kind of star, an extended family with a minivan and a dog. The octagon dislikes comparisons, monotheism and shapes with few corners. When at the seaside, he swims backstroke. Swimmers regularly confuse him for a shapely leaf. During the winter, he clings to snowflakes and reflects on the eternal circle of life. THE CIRCLE The circle has known for a while that he will never know himself fully, and so he keeps his silence. He knows pi by heart Only to five decimal places (which some may find surprising); however, the circle is no cynic. When a boy draws him in the snow with his finger, he is clearly touched. THE MOTH As she circles around, perhaps she feels as if she’s getting closer. There’s a deep religiousness to her perseverance, a devotion inaccessible to me. The fine grey dust on her wings is not of this world. MARBLE We all touch each other. But statues touch most gently. Their skin is thinnest. I’M A TENANT I’m a tenant, I don’t know which door prefers to stay closed, which spiders have signed non-aggression pacts, what to say to the tap to calm it down, I’m a tenant, I don’t know how to own a place, how to invest, how to enjoy the view, what to say to the super, I never step out of the bathroom in the nude, I don’t get attached to the courtyard cat and don’t know whether to put my name on the letterbox, my feelings are temporary, born into impermanence, born Buddhist and poor, because I’m a tenant, because I’m the one who doesn’t know. A SHRINKING CIRCLE Because you never walk further than the perimeter, the circle gradually, unnoticeably starts to shrink, as if concentric circles were spinning backward. Deep in thought, you never notice that you always reach the rim a bit sooner, and you think, “look how distances shrink with repetition,” you think, “how strange that I never tire anymore,” you think, “that’s life for you.” If the forest could speak, it would say, “for God’s sake, go further,” if the forest could, it would pick you up and flick you across the stream. “Why don’t you ever cross it? You haven’t stood here yet, start here,” and you’d walk, walk further, walk where you haven’t walked before, not hoping for something to change, just trying to keep space from shrinking. Translated by Jernej Županič Ana Svetel Bio Ana Svetel (1990) is the author of two poetry collections and one book of short stories. Her work has been nominated for the Best Debut, the Novo Mesto Award and the Veronika Award. Her poetry and short fiction have been published in all the main Slovene literary magazines, and her columns have appeared in the Saturday supplement of the Večer newspaper. She is a regular participant in national and international literary festivals and residencies. Her poetry and prose have been anthologised and translated into more than ten languages. She is an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. Aleš Šteger SELECTION FROM Burning Tongues: New & Selected Poems by Aleš Šteger, translated by Brian Henry (Bloodaxe Books, 2022). WALNUT You’ve come away empty-handed and have a walnut in your hands. At first you squeeze it and conceal it like some magic trick, But then everything squeezes you and you know you must Respond, and thus kill the magician, to survive. In the centre of the walnut there’s a kernel, but you don’t care, You need the solution written on the inside of the shell. The distress is too much, so you squeeze the empty fist and break it. The walnut goes silent, the broken signs become unfathomable And the answer sphinx-like, but you slip inside through the cracks And eat the kernel. Thus you carve out a space for yourself and become the kernel. And the kernel becomes You. You crouches and waits For the shell to heal around it. Like some foetus It crouches and waits, and in the walnut there’s less and less light And fewer and fewer wounds. Slowly You can start to read the signs And the signs are more and more whole. You reads aloud, but when the ending almost arrives, The shell heals and night falls around You. Caught in darkness, You hears A white rabbit with murderous incisors hop out of a hat, Stop in front of the walnut, and stare at it. Translated by Brian Henry RETURNING HOME On the winding metal staircase Rust blossoms around Pots of wilted flowers. Suitcases full of dirty laundry And old questions make me stagger. As if I were moving unease from threshold to threshold. We were quiet the last four hundred kilometres. Neither of us knows if we can conceal Even the silence of arrival. The face in the bathroom mirror That I ran so far away from Did not lose sight of me even for a moment. Translated by Brian Henry EGG When you kill it at the edge of the pan, you don’t notice That the egg grows an eye in death. It is so small, it does not satisfy Even the most modest morning appetite. But it already watches, already stares at your world. What are its horizons, whose glassy-eyed perspectives? Does it see time, which moves carelessly through space? Eyeballs, eyeballs, cracked shells, chaos or order? Big questions for such a little eye at such an early hour. And you - do you really want an answer? When you sit down, eye to eye, behind a table, You blind it soon enough with a crust of bread. Translated by Brian Henry The word NEAR. A word that wants To expand the body. To embrace until Annihilation. A word that wants To be near, To be more, To be where A word gives up. Someone hears Someone else gasp In his name, Rips him From the dictionary. Someone smells Someone else’s fear In their hair. He burns grass. Someone tastes lamentation With his fingernails. Drools on an envelope. The word NEAR. A word that wants From someone Who is someone To be, To be More and more a word That cannot Fall asleep In any other Words, A word That cannot Be Nobody. Translated by Brian Henry PERMANENTLY ON LOAN A poet is born When she hears a voice. The voice is immortal. It is here. Permanently On loan. For a moment the chirping of a blackbird Drowns out the roar of the crowd. Love is an unstitched thread. The textile industry is sacred. Where did you hear this? In my ear. Translated by Brian Henry X Aleš Šteger Bio Aleš Šteger (1973) is a poet and prose writer. His books of poems and his novels have been translated into over twenty languages. He has worked extensively with composers, musicians, visual artists and filmmakers. In 2011, his poetry book The Book of Things won two major US translation awards. In 2016, he was awarded the International Horst Bienek Prize for poetry by the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts and, in 2023, the Nuevo Siglo de Oro International Poetry award in Mexico. He received the title Chevalier des Arts et Lettres from the French state and is a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts. In Slovenia, his work has garnered several awards, including Best Debut Award, the Veronika Award, the Rožanc Award, the Winged Turtle Award, and the Pretnar Award. Nataša Velikonja I’D PREFER TO SPEAK as soon as the lesbian bar in the middle of the neighbouring quarter closes, the neighbouring rabble will all come back. we, lesbians, will migrate somewhere else. nothing will change. they’ll just come back and stay, and the lesbians will migrate somewhere else and will stay somewhere else. i’d prefer to speak about something else. it’ll never be possible to speak about anything else. Translated by Andrej Pleterski and Špela Bibič PLAYERS i ask her, is it not the same over there, and she says, not at all, sometimes one of them seems tender and sweet, but, later, there’s a total fuck-up in between the sheets. no one talks sex, she says, what you enjoy, your uncertainties, they just keep leaning against those walls, all of them, clashing with their attitudes, total players, and then you sit there, five years later, and find out that eighty percent of them fake orgasms and that, at the end of the day, it’s all the same: they lean against walls. the difference being that they stop being such players, she says, they lean against walls and are, indeed, passive, and when the chance arises for them to experience something, they start rushing and hungering, and then she really shouldn’t be surprised at them saying, come on, let me fuck you, they come up to the counter, they come with the whole pose of the strongest, but can’t hold it, they can hold it for a single minute, and so you’re at monokel in the time of utter chaos, you get to meet a babe displaying such a player pose, ending up having sex with her in an hour, and this pose gets passed down to the sex, and even during sex it only lasts for one short minute, and then there are those poor little bodies not knowing what to do with themselves, let alone with the other one, reaching the limit of their desires and fantasies after one short minute, just ending up being. Translated by Andrej Pleterski and Špela Bibič PAPER CUPS we’re talking about survival. we’re surrounded by ceiling-high stacks of books and the freezing cold and the wet and cold and endless winter and it’s already night and the heating has died and we’re drinking coffee out of paper cups, discussing survival. nina is talking about her job. she says that she wakes up every forty-five minutes at night. that she has nightmares. she says, this is no life. lesbian activism could be the way to go, I say, but lesbian activism is entirely in the hands of a specific amorphous entity called the authority, and it won’t let go, and nina asks me, would you let it have me, and I say, it destroyed me, it completely crushed urška, but maybe you’re stronger. but nina is, in essence, a musician, and she doesn’t understand why she can’t just make music and just music, because all she wants is to make music and that’s it, and so here we are, holding our paper cups in this freezing cold, joking how she should write a pop song because pop songs have a happy ending and that would do. Translated by Andrej Pleterski and Špela Bibič IF I ASSOCIATE, A LIE GETS WRITTEN DOWN These are sad poems, rebellious poems, I live in a society, I write about aloneness, I don’t believe in ties, this is not individualism, it’s a dissatisfaction of a female worker, nothing is mine, but who will read this. I dreamt that the city was empty, that the streets were empty, an invisible net of posts occupied by men from tribal films, from wartime snapshots, just before, waiting for their chance, for the licence to kill, and now they are here, standing motionless, nothing but dust swirling through the streets, grey swirls, northern wind, and no people to latch onto, all is carried away, love and society, and there is no one left for me to hug, and I have nowhere left to go. What if I will never be able to return home, what if I keep looking for one and the same spot, the same façade, scenery, the same people, what if my gaze is trapped in the bygones with me only seeing what my mind has minted, what if I am old and my eye rejects everything, what if this moving away and elsewhere has been in vain with me always looking for one and the same, the bygones, the tiny second of smell, taste, figure, feel, a motionless picture. How it went wrong, how lovely it was, how ignorant we were but knew everything, how we forgot, kept laying things aside, were everywhere but in fact nowhere, what on earth are we doing, there is too much of it all but in fact too little, all at the same time but in between we build spaces, distort, level out, calm your mind! rouse your mind! I scuttle between opposites as if it wasn’t me, I shear away opposites as if it wasn’t me, and at last I leave, I cut into their hubbub so as to survive, to die. I buy pencils, fountain pens, to write in the old way, I buy notepads, notebooks, to have - as when I was young - scattered, fleeting thoughts, tiny thoughts, words here and there, not linked, if I do link them emerges a lie, isolated fragments of meaning, sentences crossed out, mistakes, drawings and sketches to cheat the desolation of the spirit, to see people and write “beauty,” to see people and write “they’re still together,” to describe writing, as I used to, as a tempest of thought, not reflection. When I am disappointed, aching, empty, when the world is gone, shall I say: when the past world is gone, the one saturated, occupied, defined, unmovable, immobile, but I am still alive and the whole world is here and this present moment is all I have and this emptiness is a new place, which is now only mine and unoccupied and is all there is. Translated by Andrej Pleterski and Nada Grošelj IN EXILE Those two full days that we had together were in the smokers’ and book exile, we piddled around bookstores for hours, looking for bars where you could smoke, where there would be no idiotic and noisy music, where it would be comfortable and calm, in a word, we did not fit into the period. Then we found it, quietly musical, smoker-friendly, beautiful, classic, comfortable, it is still here with no one inside in the day and in the night, deserted, with three barflies and us - on the street where everything is noisy, non-smoking, uncomfortable, packed, thousands of people stacked on top of one another - we are elsewhere. At night, at the counter of a solitary bar, at a meeting place of the lonely, strangers turning into acquaintances, lovers, there are no other actions, just you and me by the long meeting surface, with a wall right next to us and a narrow passage preventing you to go elsewhere, only to this meeting place of the lonely, strangers you and me, such places are few, people prefer to be out there, in a circle, we can open the door at any time, but no, not before the end of this night. I am leaning here, the cigarettes in the cigarette case, the lighter, covered in dents, leaning with both hands against her stool, a millimetre from her legs, while she is leaning towards me on her stool, toward my face, my lips that, in the next second, will talk, kiss, and these small units, millimetres, seconds, are not distances, they are possibilities, prospects, close at hand. I tell her that I love her differently than I’ve loved the others, as if nothing were before me, because nothing is before me, I love her, as if I were facing death, because I am facing death, I love her, as if I were already beyond, because I am beyond, I love her, I love her as if it were impossible to be with her again, as if I were beyond, resisting the farewell; that love is resistance, that resistance is not aloneness, that love is not aloneness, love is not aloneness. Translated by Andrej Pleterski and Nada Grošelj Nataša Velikonja Bio Nataša Velikonja (1967) is a sociologist, poet, essayist, translator and lesbian activist. She has published seven poetry collections, the first of which is the first openly lesbian poetry collection in Slovenia. She is also the author of six books of essays and scholarly papers analysing the intertwinement of artistic, cultural, political and socio-­sexual realities, written from a lesbian feminist perspective. She has translated dozens of literary works, works of cultural theory, lesbian and gay theory and radical social criticism, as well as theories of architecture, design and art history. She was the former editor of the Lesbo magazine, a long-time ­columnist for Radio Študent, and she is currently the coordinator of the Lesbian Library and Archive at Metelkova. She is the recipient of the Župančič Award, the Kons International Literary Award, and the Jenko Award. Uroš Zupan SELECTION FROM Slow Sailing by Uroš Zupan, translated by Michael Biggins (Slovene Writers’ Association, 2022). SLOW SAILING This night is a calm sea and this bed is the raft that keeps us afloat. With each breath we touch and practice slowly counting on our fingers. As we press together asleep, we can’t help but erase the boundaries between our warm skins and the dreams that would just as soon part and disperse us through time. One child shifts between us. The other hovers and floats in your belly. The silence is equally distributed among all of us and the bed is trapped in a perfect calm, no breeze. We are its living sides, its guard rails, whether in light or in dark. Translated by Michael Biggins LEAVING THE HOUSE WHERE WE MADE LOVE I have to write while I’m still here. I’m witnessing the mute farewells of rooms that are losing their life. It seems like a slow kind of death. As though the house resembled a person saying goodbye. Its organs lose their functions and fail. Gradually become useless. Sometimes I bring them back to life, so they regain their original brilliance - I revive these dying rooms by washing the dishes, vacuuming the rugs, dusting the books on the shelves. Who would have thought that a poet would do such things to calm down? There’s a clock in the kitchen that shows 3:05. You were the one who set it and its arms still show that same time. Neither too fast, nor too slow for any change. Everything came to a stop in it and will remain there. I can’t speak for others, but I can tell you what that precisely set time captured for me - your body when, dressed in a short black skirt, you got up on tip-toe in the early summer afternoon light, amid the scent of the gentle July air, trying to set the clock to your life’s schedule. I never wound it up. I didn’t want it to interrupt my, our timelessness. Which is still here, in autumn, in this one remaining, live room, where I open myself to the lie that still promises some sweetness of duration, that on afternoons, for a few moments, gently disentangles itself from agony and allows it to nap. I’m going to have to leave this house where we made love, where I noted the resonance of your footsteps, where I bathed in the gentleness of your voice. The tree outside has dropped all its leaves overnight. I’m never going to be able to drop all my memories. The scratches on my back have healed, but the sound of your laughter still echoes in my ears and the things you gave me persist in caressing my eyes. There is no great poem, no perfect harmony. Better to keep quiet and soar in silence when you approach perfect harmony. Words are superfluous then. I’m going out now. Perhaps the speech of the November wind will reveal some mystery to me that’s been concealed until now, perhaps the figure of Cesare Pavese will do that, which I’ve been following lately. Ljubljana, Torino, small difference if you’re alone. My only life is poetry, and the more it wins, the more I lose. Translated by Michael Biggins MAY I saw him being born after the April showers. At first a thicket came in through a door of arrested time and addressed me in a forgotten language, after it the music of fleeting rain which plumps up the pillows in the dreams of crayfish, which plumps up the footsteps of startled deer. Then I saw seas breathing and the earth’s crust beginning to glow and rise like dough. Now mornings wash the windows and facades of buildings, mornings caress the soft skin of trees, the cool brows of stones, mornings awaken the seraphim of newly revived roads and the days caress girls wearing short skirts, their provocative asses and sexy eyes, their sweet-smelling bodies and boisterous laughs, echoing and flying into the evening, when mown grass brings its bounty of gifts and the night calls of crickets melt in the dark and I get a visit from Li Tai Po, who kisses my sleeping eyelids with moonlight. Translated by Michael Biggins THIRTY-FOUR I’ve crossed the border. It didn’t hurt at all. I don’t feel any different. Everything has stayed the same. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Rivers flow to the sea. They didn’t waste any time with my luggage. Just quietly waved me through. There wasn’t that much of it. A few sentences that survived the crosswinds. A few scars whose only season is spring. I haven’t changed any habits. I weave and undo, like Penelope, acquire philosophical systems and drop them, trying to find myself, but none of them feels like home, more like the belly of a whale, I light a candle and count the ribs, the wreckages, skulls, extinct languages. This hidden, inner chapter has bothered no one, it just serves to bring me in touch with myself at times when my wakefulness fills the silence and sleep has irrevocably lost its way, a chapter that’s useless for any quick shifts over the maps of passion and love. Because real life is out there, in the light, all around like the sea. Illuminated on all sides. Beauty flows through it. Sometimes it pauses and opens up, not on people, more on clouds and glorious sunsets, more on shadows that rise out of drowsy rivers, more on the ocean’s creased surface. Now I’m in another country. Behind me I’ve left one that somebody marked off with his departure for heaven. I’ve moved away from the point where my loved ones didn’t yet carry the dark mention of death and walk toward another, unknown, hidden beyond the horizon, which is either approaching or retreating, which, I can’t tell. The visa in my passport, like the breath of a traveler on the window of an express train being drawn into the night, grows fainter from one day to the next. But my vision reaches the stars. Translated by Michael Biggins THOSE OTHER THINGS ALWAYS REMAIN It’s good that you move from one life to the next. The air gets stuffy, the crowds unbearable. The old guard says it’s all downhill from here, the young that it’s only begun. You open the door and go, just like that. Whether you’ve left tracks or not, a fingerprint or not, maybe the scent of past years or not (because love’s scent doesn’t fade) doesn’t matter. Whether they quote you, talk about you with fear and respect, or depict you as the embodiment of stupidity and bad taste doesn’t matter. Every one-way street ends somewhere. Things are bad if they don’t lead to themselves, like this late afternoon sun, like the lost warmth, like wind torn from the air, painting the leaves from both sides. You get tired of words and finish them. The silence that separates them also ends somewhere. What remains are two wasps that kiss on the glass and a vague notion of the boxes of Joseph Cornell. Living time gathered up on the street and offered for the imagination to use. Those other things remain. A paradise that isn’t exclusively quiet. A hell that isn’t exclusively static and dangerous. Those other things remain. Being a writer is terribly boring; you use your hands just to type. Translated by Michael Biggins Uroš Zupan Bio Uroš Zupan (1963) is a poet and essayist, the recipient of numerous awards, including the Best Debut Award, the Prešeren Fund Award, the Jenko Award, the Župančič Award, the Rožanc Award, the Herman Lenz Preis, the Premio della VI Edizione del Festival Internazionale di Poesia, and the WisÅ‚awa Szymborska Prize. He has published more than thirteen collections of poetry and twelve books of essays. He has translated a number of poets, including Yehuda Amichai, John Ashbery, Aleksandar Ristović, Abdulah Sidran and Billy Collins. His own work has appeared in numerous languages, in both books and journals. A SELECTION OF SLOVENE AWARDS THAT HONOUR POETRY, INCLUDING SOME NOT LIMITED TO POETRY URŠKA AWARD Presented by the Public Fund for Cultural Activities and its Mentor magazine since 2000, it’s awarded to unpublished authors, offering the publication of their debut. KNIGHT OF POETRY AWARD Founded by Pivec Publishing in 2000, presented by Pranger Festival in 2022 and 2023, currently suspended. Poets compete with one poem for both a jury award and an audience award. JENKO AWARD Traditionally the most prestigious award for the best book of poetry, presented by Slovene Writers’ Association since 1986. ŽUPANČIČ AWARD Presented by the Municipality of Ljubljana, it honours exceptional artistic contributions in various fields. VERONIKA AWARD Award for best book of poetry presented by the Municipality of Celje since 1997. BEST DEBUT AWARD Presented by the Publishers’ and Booksellers’ Branch of the Chamber of Commerce of Slovenia in cooperation with the Slovene Writers’ Association as one of the awards hosted during the Slovene Book Fair, it acknow­ledges all literary genres. GOLDEN BIRD A former award, founded in 1975, renewed in 1994, honoured authors impactful works in various artistic fields. CRITICAL SIEVE AWARD Award for the best book of any genre, presented by the Association of Slovene Literary Critics since 2012. PREŠEREN FUND AWARD The highest recognition by the Republic of Slovenia for achievements in an artistic field, second only to the Prešeren Award for lifetime achievement. It honours various artistic fields, including literature. VELENJICA - CUP OF IMMORTALITY The award, presented by the Velenje Literary Foundation since 2008, honours exceptional achievements in poetry over a decade of dedication. VILENICA AWARD An international award, presented by the Slovene Writers’ Association at the Vilenica Festival. THE CANKAR AWARD Presented by the Slovene PEN Centre, the Slovene Academy of Science and Art, the Research Centre of the Academy, and the University of Ljubljana since 2020, it honours the best book of fiction, poetry, drama or ­essays - genres, at which Ivan Cankar, the award’s namesake, excelled. ABOUT THE EDITOR ANDREJ HOČEVAR (1980) is a writer, editor, and book designer. He has published six collections of poetry, one collection of short stories, as well as literary criticism, music reviews, and essays. His poetry has been shortlisted for the Best Debut Award and the Veronika Award, one of his short stories was included in Best European Fiction 2019. He has worked primarily with the LUD Literatura publishing house, where he has been a member of the editorial board since 2006. At LUD Literatura, he was the editor of the imprint Prišleki, which publishes contemporary Slovene authors, and the founding editor of the publisher’s award-winning online literary magazine ludliteratura.si. Currently, he is the fiction editor for Literatura magazine. Between 2020 and 2022, he worked as a literary agent at Goga Publishing. Since 2019, he has been the project manager for the Ljubljana UNESCO City of Literature office. 20 POETS ANANTHOLOGY OF SLOVENE POETRY SINCE 1991 : FEATURING WORKS BY MEMBERS OF THE SLOVENE W RITERS’ AS SOCIATION TEXTS © authors and publishers TRANSLATION © translators THIS EDITION © Slovene Writers’ Association EDITED BY: Andrej Hočevar TRANSLATION: Ljubica Arsovska, Joshua Beckman, Špela Bibič, Michael Biggins, George Elliot Clarke, Mia Dintinjana, Helena Fošnjar, Jasmin B. Frelih, Rawley Grau, Boris Gregoric, Nada Grošelj, Brian Henry, Jack Hirschman, Ana Jelnikar, Travis Jeppsen, Barbara Jurša, Patricia Marsh, Ana Pepelnik, Andrej Peric, Matthew Rohrer, Dan Rosenberg, Ana Rostohar, Barbara Siegel Carlson, Zoë Skoulding, Laura Solomon, Marjan Strojan, J. C. Todd, Diletta Torlasco, E. Underhill, Stephen Watts, Jernej Županič AFTERWORD: Andrej Hočevar PROOFREADING: Jason Blake DESIGN: Jerneja Rodica Gift edition PUBLISHED BY: Slovene Writers’ Association, Tomšičeva 12, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia Dušan Merc, President First digital edition, Ljubljana, 2024