We had various guests from Croatia so far in our writers-in-residence programme in Krems, but they were mainly prose writers, such as Edo Popović, Jagoda Marinic, Robert Perisić, Ivana Sajko or Ivana Bodrožic. In October 2016 we will finally welcome a poet from Croatia – Marko Pogačar.
Marko Pogačar was born in 1984 in Split. He has been publishing books poetry since 2005. Two collections („An die verlorenen Hälften“ and „Schwarzes Land“) appeared in Austrian Edition Korrespondenzen, translated by Alida Bremer.
Apart from being an excellent poet Marko Pogačar is an editor of Quorum, a literary magazine, and Zarez, a bi-weekly for cultural and social issues. He works for various publishers, editing poetry, translations, various non-fiction and theoretical editions. He is a programme board member of Goran’s Spring, the oldest and most significant Croatian poetry festival and thanks to this festival also part of the VERSOPOLIS platform.
Before even arriving in Krems Marko Pogačar will already have a reading on October 4-th at Café Museum in Vienna.
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 have.
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 in one move.
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.
© Translation: 2008, Tomislav Kuzmanović
