Marko Pogačar, poems, short selection
NOBODY IN THE ATTIC
There is nobody in the attic
I know
above us is a red-hot concrete roof,
a silver support for the sky,
and we don't have an attic at all.
there are so many things
that daily define absence.
of the attic
the house
the world.
the room is strewn with a low sleepy sound
as if dormice sneaked into the attic, however,
I already said,
there is no attic.
even the coast has left us. the buttresses
betrayed their walls.
tomorrow I’ll make three hundred
postponed telephone calls,
it’s been a while since I
could stand verbal closeness.
for the fourth time I started
watching Fitzcarraldo. I learned
that ships can be carried across hills
and that it’s not necessary to be defeated
in order to feel bad,
in fact,
rainy days say
the opposite.
Kinski is best, it seems.
reels with Jagger speak in broken tongues.
there is no reason for silence
and nobody should be blamed:
I don’t get mail, commercials don’t avoid me,
(capital is a night-
cap for the scented
hair of the world)
coffee is never hot enough,
neither is information, there is never enough new records
and never enough rustling classics
all is a gigantic
tepid puddle of anxiety.
things defined by absence mostly scare me.
e.g. loneliness (conditionally)
religion (and its horrid absence of the other)
death (unconditionally) and all
I could draw from them is momentary love,
a meaning threaded by rain,
the drop
that makes the glass overflow.
there is nobody in the attic.
there never has been
anybody in the attic.
there is no attic and everything hung
above our heads is a massive star-lit pendulum,
a cradle of music, a dark
sheet of sky with which I
cover myself every night when I sleep.
LIGHT, SOMETHING FORTHCOMING
Like half of a peach
in its southern sweetness.
like raspberries, like peas.
a cow mooing
out of the white alliance of bones.
baked beans, earth’s kidneys,
meat for domestic animals.
something that breeds milk
when the roads are distant
and winter righteous and severe.
like fish, ragout, something like that.
we live quietly in the darkness of a tin can
then someone lifts the lid
and lets in sound and light;
there, suspicious white light.
ST. MARKO’S SQUARE
Something is happening, but I don’t know what.
a chest expanding and tightening,
the vein walls constricting, those grooves, glands,
releasing immense bitterness over Zagreb.
that’s what the sky is like these days: a nightmare
without a bit of holiness. a sketchbook in which many things
have and have not been drawn, the rustle
of millions of legs on the move.
nightmare, voices repeat, nightmare
you repeat. the sharp stripes down which
rain descends into its ruts; fingernails, surely fingernails.
leaves tied around wrists, because it’s autumn and these things
painlessly pass. water is boiling
in pots. dogs blossom black. those who approach me
approach the blunt evil: nightmare, I repeat,
nightmare, they repeat. the entire sky has
huddled into the clavicle, and in the sheer noise
no one can hear each other. everything’s new, and everything’s foul,
everything in Zagreb. eyes, plates, things
across which we look at each other. all holy, all sharp
all dogs, all our dense voices. the speech
of a city eager to bite, pine trees, a flock, something
in the air, under the ground, in the walls; something
above us and somewhere else. something is happening,
I don’t know what.
TECHNIQUE OF A POEM
The first Croatian president is slaughtered by oblivion
his junta by too hot soup and the dead waiters
who now ignore them; as I walk the city in the opposite
direction of death, as I buy newspapers, buy coffee at
a kiosk, I listen to my belligerent charm, to my soft character
and Haustor, the band; an average Croat is slaughtered by co-existence,
tolerance, with his mouth full of snow– wide and light smog eases
down on him and takes him, together with all that fall, its
morning dark, with water that rises up along your neck,
water, material and soft; the church is slaughtered by constant quoting
of Christ, by love, unconditional and lasting; a pig disappears on its
own, cowers, into a puddle of breath, into a fistful of blood flowing
before experience; a poem is slaughtered by Drago Štambuk; a mother
as some detailed records describe; nothing remains nothing
that shiny scorched sun.
TO MY NEIGHBORS (THIS MORNING MY FLESH IS A LOWERED FLAG)
Honey melts in tea, completely, unlike you with serious music,
and unlike me in you,
the tense wire of the never-ending call, a crowded bar,
no place for you, and the elevators that are always broken,
the stairs unfold into eternity, like conversations about politics,
and just as someone notices that totalitarianism and democracy
are only a question of numbers, someone pulls the plug,
the picture disappears and everything starts again: voices
leaking trough walls, and evening falls into your hands, like a miner
descending into his pit, yet still, the shoes left at the door
prove the living exist. but what does it mean to live
as winter comes scrolling like cold breath out of your throat,
and builds its nest in the dark alphabet; all those hurried unknown
people with familiar names, an afternoon split in two, like Korea;
the tea and honey have already melted, inseparable,
and this viscous liquid is love: how do I get to you; how do I reach you?
A STATEMENT WHICH I DELIVERED IN A DRUNKEN STATE TO A NATIONAL BOOK AGENCY EMPLOYEE ON AUGUST 16, 2011 AT 4:45 AM. WITHOUT A RECORD
Serpents silent in walls. the walls in serpents are
none: bare bone, flesh,
and venom in the bone and the flesh, venom
which eye by eye brings the world into silence.
where such numb dripping occurred there are no
crowded bars, stairways, bureaucrats,
hens that whisper come and take me, take me with your teeth, come,
take me in silence.
the world is a goldfinch. the thinnest black glass.
a pistil which, like a coin heated red hot on a hood of an enormous
black harvester, burns my eyes, and that white,
like the back of a girl whom I watched from behind
while she dug through her heart forgetting it all, the white space,
on this and that side of a tongue. serpents silent in walls.
Jews are waiting for the prophet. a song seeps out of the speakers, dead
hens whispering come and take me, take me with your teeth, come, take me in silence.
the world is a goldfinch, a black glass; you the awaited one.
YOUR CONDENSED SUN
How to climb the olive tree with those little claws,
stay a black lizard and survive the sun’s collapse?
every olive is an extinguished star,
and little claws are all we own.
and that’s the secret of gravity, the disappearance of light that swings
condensed in our metal bodies.
our claws are our vanity, the father shakes them off
the laced balcony curtain with a wave.
the world is the giant pedicurist Milena, she eradicates them with a safe hand,
she sings o sole mio, our claws are an over-ripe, naked beauty
love is our debt to the dead.
Translated by Dunja Bahtijarević, Tomislav Kuzmanović, Kim Addonizio, Anthony Mccann, Dona Massini
Pobjednica književne nagrade "Sedmica & Kritična masa" za mlade prozaiste je Eva Simčić (1990.) Nagrađena priča ''Maksimalizam.” neobična je i dinamična priča je o tri stana, dva grada i puno predmeta. I analitično i relaksirano, s dozom humora, na književno svjež način autorica je ispričala pamtljivu priču na temu gomilanja stvari, temu u kojoj se svi možemo barem malo prepoznati, unatoč sve većoj popularnosti minimalizma. U užem izboru nagrade, osim nagrađene Simčić, bile su Ivana Butigan, Paula Ćaćić, Marija Dejanović, Ivana Grbeša, Ljiljana Logar i Lucija Švaljek.
Ovo je bio šesti nagradni natječaj koji raspisuje Kritična masa, a partner nagrade bio je cafe-bar Sedmica (Kačićeva 7, Zagreb). Nagrada se sastoji od plakete i novčanog iznosa (5.000 kuna bruto). U žiriju nagrade bile su članice redakcije Viktorija Božina i Ilijana Marin, te vanjski članovi Branko Maleš i Damir Karakaš.
NAGRADA "SEDMICA & KRITIČNA MASA" - UŽI IZBOR
Eva Simčić (Rijeka, 1990.) do sada je kraću prozu objavljivala na stranicama Gradske knjižnice Rijeka, na blogu i Facebook stranici Čovjek-Časopis, Reviji Razpotja i na stranici Air Beletrina. Trenutno živi i radi u Oslu gdje dovršava doktorat iz postjugoslavenske književnosti i kulture.
Predstavljamo uži izbor nagrade ''Sedmica & Kritična masa''
Eva Simčić je u uži izbor ušla s pričom ''Maksimalizam.''. Standardnim setom pitanja predstavljamo jednu od sedam natjecateljica.
Juha Kulmala (r. 1962.) finski je pjesnik koji živi u Turkuu. Njegova zbirka "Pompeijin iloiset päivät" ("Veseli dani Pompeja") dobila je nacionalnu pjesničku nagradu Dancing Bear 2014. koju dodjeljuje finska javna radiotelevizija Yle. A njegova zbirka "Emme ole dodo" ("Mi nismo Dodo") nagrađena je nacionalnom nagradom Jarkko Laine 2011. Kulmalina poezija ukorijenjena je u beatu, nadrealizmu i ekspresionizmu i često se koristi uvrnutim, lakonskim humorom. Pjesme su mu prevedene na više jezika. Nastupao je na mnogim festivalima i klubovima, npr. u Engleskoj, Njemačkoj, Rusiji, Estoniji i Turskoj, ponekad s glazbenicima ili drugim umjetnicima. Također je predsjednik festivala Tjedan poezije u Turkuu.
Jyrki K. Ihalainen (r. 1957.) finski je pisac, prevoditelj i izdavač. Od 1978. Ihalainen je objavio 34 zbirke poezije na finskom, engleskom i danskom. Njegova prva zbirka poezije, Flesh & Night , objavljena u Christianiji 1978. JK Ihalainen posjeduje izdavačku kuću Palladium Kirjat u sklopu koje sam izrađuje svoje knjige od početka do kraja: piše ih ili prevodi, djeluje kao njihov izdavač, tiska ih u svojoj tiskari u Siuronkoskom i vodi njihovu prodaju. Ihalainenova djela ilustrirali su poznati umjetnici, uključujući Williama S. Burroughsa , Outi Heiskanen i Maritu Liulia. Ihalainen je dobio niz uglednih nagrada u Finskoj: Nuoren Voiman Liito 1995., nagradu za umjetnost Pirkanmaa 1998., nagradu Eino Leino 2010. Od 2003. Ihalainen je umjetnički direktor Anniki Poetry Festivala koji se odvija u Tampereu. Ihalainenova najnovija zbirka pjesama je "Sytykkei", objavljena 2016 . Bavi se i izvođenjem poezije; bio je, između ostalog, gost na albumu Loppuasukas finskog rap izvođača Asa 2008., gdje izvodi tekst pjesme "Alkuasukas".
Maja Marchig (Rijeka, 1973.) živi u Zagrebu gdje radi kao računovođa. Piše poeziju i kratke priče. Polaznica je više radionica pisanja poezije i proze. Objavljivala je u brojnim časopisima u regiji kao što su Strane, Fantom slobode, Tema i Poezija. Članica literarne organizacije ZLO. Nekoliko puta je bila finalistica hrvatskih i regionalnih književnih natječaja (Natječaja za kratku priču FEKPa 2015., Međunarodnog konkursa za kratku priču “Vranac” 2015., Nagrade Post scriptum za književnost na društvenim mrežama 2019. i 2020. godine). Njena kratka priča “Terapija” osvojila je drugu nagradu na natječaju KROMOmetaFORA2020. 2022. godine objavila je zbirku pjesama Spavajte u čarapama uz potporu za poticanje književnog stvaralaštva Ministarstva kulture i medija Republike Hrvatske u biblioteci Poezija Hrvatskog društva pisaca.