Damir Šodan (1964, Split) is a poet, playwright, editor and translator who graduated from Zagreb University with a BA in English Literature and History. He has published four volumes of poetry: Sound Changes (1996), The Middle World (2001), Letters to a Wild Scythian, (2009) and Café Apollinaire (2013), two collections of plays: Safe Area (2002), The Night of the Long Beams (2009) and an anthology of contemporary Croatian "neorealist" poetry: Walk on the Other Side (2010). He was awarded the Držić prize for the burlesque Chick Lit (2012) and the 1st prize at the playwriting competition for ex-Yugoslav writers in Vienna (2000) for the dark comedy Safe Area. Internationally, his work has been among other featured in The American Poetry Review (2007), New European Poets, (Graywolf Press, USA, 2008), Les Poètes de la Méditerranée (Gallimard, 2010), The World Record and A Hundred Years' War (Bloodaxe, 2012 and 2014). He translated Raymond Carver, Leonard Cohen, Charles Bukowski, Charles Simic, Richard Brautigan and Frank O'Hara into Croatian. He is an associate editor of Poezija and Quorum magazines in Zagreb.
Madiba in "Top Gear"
"have you ever had a lap-dance?"
roared from the doorway
the former traveling salesman
of plush Paddington bears,
Mr Jeremy Clarkson, nowadays a slightly arrogant
and supposedly humorous
British TV-star;
the host of an automobile show
viewed devotedly all across Europe.
upon hearing that, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
(whose life and work need no discussion here)
simply raised his eyebrows gently
and directed his gaze towards the ceiling fan
as if the answer to such an unexpected
and ludicrous question could drop down
from somewhere above.
"Madiba, you don't have to answer that!"
the ever-considerate and attentive Zelda
quickly jumped in, but in his thoughts
he was already racing back to
Robben Island during that fatal 1964
trying to remember if back then
anyone around him had been shaking
their ass except maybe when stung
by Apartheid's eel-like baton
slippery and hard
that always unmistakably found its way
to a piece of black flesh
classified as "class D"
and locked in an eight-by-seven foot cell
or maybe later in 1982
in that "comfy" maximum security facility Pollsmoor
where those upgraded into a lighter category
were allowed to receive and send
as many as fifty-two letters a year!
no, he could not remember if anyone had
merrily wriggled his behind
unless plagued by a case of bloody dysentery
or tortured by a sneaky pubic crab or two...
but maybe later in 1988 somebody
had done it at that quite permissible establishment Victor Verster
but Nelson had hardly been aware of anything then
as he was recovering from a mean case of TBC...
"you don't have to answer, Madiba"!
repeated Ms La Grange
and Nelson just smiled
as if watching a kid walking towards him
with a rare specimen of turtle in his hand...
"no!" he finally replied succinctly
so that the conversation might continue
with the expected civility and finesse.
yet, at the end of the meeting
he looked Clarkson in the eye and asked:
"have you ever been on the Moon, Jeremy"?
for it is only from there perhaps
that the dry British humor could hit the even drier
heart of black Africa - in the right place.
The Fifties
after Adam Zagajewski
father and his father
stomp down the gravel road
all the way to the town to see a football game.
high noon buzzes through the young summer air;
the roar of cicadas in the pine trees,
glassy hoppers glint in the grass:
the Mediterranean
as we once knew it
– is still there.
a bit further to the north
the airy crowns of convicts
melt under the belting Sun
dripping like the sweat underneath
their sleeveless white T-shirts
as their sad and bitter sigh
carries itself all the way to the gray Maltese docks
then echoing out into the icy mountains
of the Altai region in the far east.
somewhere behind Žrnovnica
grandfather, like an ancient lizard,
suddenly scowls his fissured face.
wincing from his tight shoes
that are killing him,
that damn pair of footwear
he's sharing with his first cousin,
a locksmith who compulsively steals rusty pliers
and steel nails from the dusty workshop
of the local power-plant,
absolutely unable to explain to himself for what
purpose in the devil's name he needs them for.
simultaneously, in a Dedinje salon in Belgrade,
Tito cracks jokes as comrades
from the Central Committee laugh raucously
while he tries out his new metallic
- polished as a dog's balls -
light duty lathe machine.
all across the country
generations with pointed chins, much like Modigliani's,
are busy building Socialism
with a human face: the system
that would gradually like mean drops of vitriol
burn a deep hole in their souls.
but in father's head
the world still bubbles unexplored,
floating like a translucent jellyfish across the unsailed sea
as he daydreams of a new DKW motorcycle
as black and shiny as Silvana Mangano's high heels
and as powerful as Mons Jerko's untied robe;
so in my thoughts
- for I can't help it -
I worry endlessly about that boy,
because I know his ride
will be an uncertain and long one.
I wish I could tell him not to worry,
to relax and take it easy for everything will
more or less someday fall into place.
but words fail to leave me:
perhaps I have no mouth to speak them yet,
perhaps I'm not around as much as I should be,
perhaps I'm myself still only - slowly but surely - just getting there.
Ramones On the Bedroom Wall
the first thing I see
every morning
is Dee Dee's reproving gaze
the man is no moralist,
but his knowing, junkie eyes
have that effect
they give me the urge to start my day off
by apologising to everything: from the flowers in the Ikea vase
to the Pentecostal Church across the street
but in the end
like a born-again opportunist
I sneakily manage to avoid it
leaning further to the right is Joey
the perpetually understated
obsessive-compulsive
with the hips of a Russian gymnast
and the hair of a crazy headmistress
like a shaggy Heraclites from Queens
he tells you that everything can change
that at any moment you can be grabbed by a dark avatar
or end up blacklisted by some secret sect, trade, ministry or committee
on the far left - oh the irony! - is the Nazi-schatzi marmot
Johnny, whose face says that he’s in it
(the band, not the picture)
only for the money, the papers, the royalties
and Joey’s ex-girlfriend, leading the former to pen him the ditty
The KKK Took my Baby Away!
beside him stands the always amiable Tamás Erdélyi
aka Tommy Ramone1, a Holocaust survivor, born in Budapest,
now a mandolin player with his own bluegrass band,
the steady compass and last remaining member
of the legendary foursome’s first line-up, dubbed by Spin magazine
- alongside The Beatles - as the greatest r'n'r band of all time.
so these are my four morning perspectives:
the four blackbirds of Wallace Stevens,
my wife’s four zen-jokes,
who carefully guard
the gentle rebelliousness of her Anglo-American
maiden roots,
all those innocent and rosy dreams
of a perfect world, where Courtney, like Amfortas,
still embraces her dead Kurt
while poet Ann Lauterbach
wallows endlessly in her affectations,
like the ethereal essence of mannerism,
and Germaine Greer lives in a home
on three acres, with two dogs, sixteen geese
and a fluctuating number of pigeon wings,
a world so far removed
from my toothless Balkan accordionists
and their bloody war cries,
a world where it’s perfectly natural
for high school girls to dream of translucent, expensive,
engagement rings,
gaudy
and shiny, kitschy and smooth,
huge like the lobby of Fitzgerald’s Ritz,
even though these are nothing more
than transitional objects,
as psychologists call them,
which we use to clip the wings
of that sweet bird of youth
before she turns her back on us for good.
The Afternoon of a Clown
for Leopoldo María Panero2
a serpent of light
draws unbearably close.
the epaulette
of Franco's raincoat
expands in the orange pupil
of its eye.
under a massive desk
the stony faces of cardinals
silently service
the horny black bulge.
someone's taking out the trash
with a tattooed siren on his arm
and a leather dog collar
around his neck.
but there's no one else
on the street
except for the unbuttoned
widow on the balcony
caressing a shiny spike
behind the cast iron fence.
on the muggy blanket of summer
amidst a siesta
overturned garbage cans
rattle like dying
industrial plants
in the ploughed
silicone valleys
of some relative future tense.
finally, out of a cat's fur
you clearly hear
the pompous and vile
Devil's cough
as loud as
an empty silo.
at 03:00 PM on a Friday
in the yard of the mental clinic in Las Palmas
there you are
- el poeta es un pequeño dios!3
On the Train to Cascais
on the train to Cascais
you saw the most beautiful girl.
with olive skin
and round breasts
(just like Ornella Muti's)
wearing a T-shirt
by Dolce & Gabbana,
poised like St. Theresa of Avila
contemplating that spear
about to pierce her chest
etc.
she must have been put off
by the Wittgenstein's biography
in your hands, for she suddenly
sprung up and exited
in Estoril,
as you continued to Cascais
with the sad realisation
that you'd just missed
the woman of your life
(or somebody else's):
an Atlantean as beautiful
as the body of her slippery language,
juicy and rustling
like the samba
you heard that summer
on the lake of Bohinj
when you were eighteen.
so what choice did you have,
but to continue reading that damn book
bitter in the knowledge
that the limits of your language
are indeed the limits of your world
that is the case;
much like this one
whereof you wouldn't want to be silent;
not even in death.
Translated by Damir Šodan and Majda Bakočević
_______________________________
[1] Tommy Ramone died in 2014.
[2] Leopoldo María Panero (1948-2014), arguably one of the finest contemporary Spanish poets, a victim of Franco's regime, who lived and died in a psychiatric asylum in Las Palmas, Canary Islands.
[3] Vincente Huidobro (1893-1948) Chilean poet known for promoting avant-garde literary movements in Chile, creator and the greatest exponent of the literary movement called Creacionismo.
Philippe Lançon (1963.) novinar je, pisac i književni kritičar. Piše za francuske novine Libération i satirički časopis Charlie Hebdo. Preživio je napad na redakciju časopisa te 2018. objavio knjigu Zakrpan za koju je dobio niz nagrada, među kojima se ističu Nagrada za najbolju knjigu časopisa Lire 2018., Nagrada Femina, Nagrada Roger-Caillois, posebno priznanje žirija Nagrade Renaudot. Knjiga je prevedena na brojne jezike te od čitatelja i kritike hvaljena kao univerzalno remek-djelo, knjiga koja se svojom humanošću opire svakom nasilju i barbarizmu.
Sándor Jászberényi (1980.) mađarski je novinar i pisac. Objavio je knjige Vrag je crni pas: priče s Bliskog istoka i šire (New Europe Books, 2014.) i Najljepša noć duše, koja je 2017. dobila mađarsku književnu nagradu Libri. Kao ratni dopisnik za mađarske medije, New York Times, Egypt Independent izvještavao je o Arapskom proljeću, sukobima u Gazi, Darfurskoj krizi itd. Živi između Budimpešte i Kaira.
Sheila Heti (1976.) jedna je od najistaknutijih kanadskih autorica svoje generacije. Studirala je dramsko pisanje, povijest umjetnosti i filozofiju. Piše romane, kratke priče, dramske tekstove i knjige za djecu. U brojnim utjecajnim medijima objavljuje književne kritike i intervjue s piscima i umjetnicima. Bestseleri How Should a Person Be? i Women in Clothes priskrbili su joj status književne zvijezde. New York Times uvrstio ju je na popis najutjecajnijih svjetskih književnica koje će odrediti način pisanja i čitanja knjiga u 21. stoljeću, a roman Majčinstvo našao se na njihovoj ljestvici najboljih knjiga 2018. godine. Hvalospjevima su se pridružili i časopisi New Yorker, Times Literary Supplement, Chicago Tribune, Vulture, Financial Times i mnogih drugi koji su je proglasili knjigom godine. Majčinstvo je tako ubrzo nakon objavljivanja postao kultni roman. Sheila Heti živi u Torontu, a njezina su djela prevedena na više od dvadeset jezika.
Selma Asotić je pjesnikinja. Završila je magistarski studij iz poezije na sveučilištu Boston University 2019. godine. Dobitnica je stipendije Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship i druge nagrade na književnom natječaju Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize. Nominirana je za nagradu Puschcart za pjesmu ''Nana'', a 2021. uvrštena je među polufinaliste/kinje nagrade 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize. Pjesme i eseje na engleskom i bhsc jeziku objavljivala je u domaćim i međunarodnim književnim časopisima.
Ines Kosturin (1990., Zagreb) rodom je iz Petrinje, gdje pohađa osnovnu i srednju školu (smjer opća gimnazija). Nakon toga u istom gradu upisuje Učiteljski fakultet, gdje je i diplomirala 2015. godine te stekla zvanje magistre primarnog obrazovanja. Pisanjem se bavi od mladosti, a 2014. izdaje svoju prvu samostalnu zbirku poezije, ''Papirno more''. Krajem 2020. izdaje drugu samostalnu zbirku poezije, ''Herbarij''. Pjesme objavljuje kako u domaćim, tako i u internacionalnim (regionalno i šire) zbornicima i časopisima. Na međunarodnom natječaju Concorso internazionale di poesia e teatro Castello di Duino 2018. osvaja treću nagradu. Poeziju uglavnom piše na hrvatskom i engleskom jeziku.
Luka Ivković (1999., Šibenik) je student agroekologije na Agronomskom fakultetu u Zagrebu. Do sada je objavljivao u časopisu Kvaka, Kritična masa, Strane, ušao u širi izbor za Prozak 2018., uvršten u zbornik Rukopisi 43.
Bojana Guberac (1991., Vukovar) odrasla je na Sušaku u Rijeci, a trenutno živi u Zagrebu. U svijet novinarstva ulazi kao kolumnistica za Kvarner News, a radijske korake započinje na Radio Sovi. Radila je kao novinarka na Radio Rijeci, u Novom listu, na Kanalu Ri te Ri portalu. Trenutno radi kao slobodna novinarka te piše za portale Lupiga, CroL te Žene i mediji. Piše pjesme od osnovne škole, ali o poeziji ozbiljnije promišlja od 2014. godine kada je pohađala radionice poezije CeKaPe-a s Julijanom Plenčom i Andreom Žicom Paskučijem pod mentorstvom pjesnikinje Kristine Posilović. 2015. godine imala je prvu samostalnu izložbu poezije o kojoj Posilović piše: ''Primarni zadatak vizualne poezije jest da poeziju učini vidljivom, tj. da probudi kod primatelja svijest o jeziku kao materiji koja se može oblikovati. Stoga Guberac pred primatelje postavlja zahtjevan zadatak, a taj je da pokušaju pjesmu obuhvatiti sa svih strana u prostoru, da ju pokušaju doživjeti kao objekt. Mada pjesnički tekst u ovom slučaju primamo vizualno, materijal te poezije je dalje jezik.'' Njezine pjesme objavljivane su u časopisima, a ove godine njezina je poezija predstavljena na Vrisku – riječkom festivalu autora i sajmu knjiga.
Iva Sopka (1987., Vrbas) objavila je više kratkih priča od kojih su najznačajnije objavljene u izboru za književnu nagradu Večernjeg lista “Ranko Marinković” 2011. godine, Zarezovog i Algoritmovog književnog natječaja Prozak 2015. godine, nagrade “Sedmica & Kritična Masa” 2016., 2017. i 2019. godine, natječaja za kratku priču Gradske knjižnice Samobor 2016. godine te natječaja za kratku priču 2016. godine Broda knjižare – broda kulture. Osvojila je drugo mjesto na KSET-ovom natječaju za kratku priču 2015. godine, a kratka priča joj je odabrana među najboljima povodom Mjeseca hrvatske knjige u izboru za književni natječaj KRONOmetaFORA 2019. godine. Kao dopisni član je pohađala radionicu kritičkog čitanja i kreativnog pisanja "Pisaće mašine" pod vodstvom Mime Juračak i Natalije Miletić. Dobitnica je posebnog priznanja 2019. godine žirija nagrade "Sedmica & Kritična masa" za 3. uvrštenje u uži izbor.
Ivana Caktaš (1994., Split) diplomirala je hrvatski jezik i književnost 2018. godine s temom „Semantika čudovišnog tijela u spekulativnoj fikciji“. Tijekom studiranja je volontirala u Književnoj udruzi Ludens, gdje je sudjelovala u različitim jezikoslovnim i književnim događajima. Odradila je stručno osposobljavanje u osnovnoj školi i trenutno povremeno radi kao zamjena. U Splitu pohađa Školu za crtanje i slikanje pod vodstvom akademskih slikara Marina Baučića i Ivana Svaguše. U slobodno vrijeme piše, crta, slika i volontira.
Marija Skočibušić rođena je 2003. godine u Karlovcu gdje trenutno i pohađa gimnaziju. Sudjeluje na srednjoškolskim literarnim natječajima, a njezina poezija uvrštena je u zbornike Poezitiva i Rukopisi 42. Također je objavljena u časopisima Poezija i Libartes, na internetskom portalu Strane te blogu Pjesnikinja petkom. Sudjelovala je na književnoj tribini Učitavanje u Booksi, a svoju je poeziju čitala na osmom izdanju festivala Stih u regiji.