News

/ 18 May 2016

IN MEMORIAM FABJAN HAFNER

A couple of days ago we read the shocking news that 49-year old Carinthian-Slovenian poet and translator Fabjan Hafner has died.

Although we in Krems – located on the other side of Austria – did not have too much of personal contact with late Fabian, he was so often present in our longterm exchange program with Slovenia (since 2003) as we had quite a few Slovenian poets in Krems, who had been translated by Fabjan Hafner into German. He was something like our „poetic bridge“ to Slovenia.

He deservedly received a lot of prizes and awards, among them the European Prize for Poetry by the German city of Muenster (2007) for his German translations of the poems of famous Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun.

Besides being a recognized translator he was also an editor and a poet himself.

Thanks a lot to VERSOPOLIS-poet Helwig Brunner for dedicating his thoughts to Fabjan Hafner:

WENN DIE ZEIT VERGEHT

für fabjan hafner (1966–2016)

ich weiß nicht was geschieht

wenn die zeit vergeht

geht sie durch uns hindurch

oder wir durch sie

wenn die zeit vergeht

vergehen wir

wir sind die zeit

https://www.facebook.com/helwig.brunner?fref=ts

WHEN TIME PASSES

for fabjan hafner (1966–2016)

i don’t know what happens

when time passes

is time going through us

or we through time

when time passes

we pass

we are the time

(translated by Wolfgang Kühn)