Veronika Dintinjana

- Slovenia -

Veronika Dintinjana. Best young author in Slovenia in 2002, she has since had her poems published in Stony Thursday, Banipal, Mentor, Literatura, Sodobnost, Nova Revija, Dialogi, Poetikon, Lirikon, and Apokalipsa magazines. In 2008 she won the Maribor poetry tournament and the 6th Ljubljana Poetry Slam. In September of 2008 her first poetry collection, Rumeno Gori Grm Forzicij (Yellow Burns the Forsythia Bush), was published by Literatura and received the Best First Book award at the 24th Slovenian Book Fair. Her second book of poems is awaiting publication. She has read at the Vilenica and Days of Wine and Poetry festivals in Slovenia, Struga Poetry Evenings (Macedonia), Days and Nights of Literature (Neptun, Romania), Trieste Poetry Festival (Italy), PordenoneLegge (Italy), Cuisle Limerick City International Poetry Festival (Ireland), Pontepoetica and Poetas di(n)versos in Galicia, Spain, and Marche de la Poesie in Paris, France. Her poems are translated into German, Italian, French, Croatian, Serbian, Galician, Dutch, and English. As a translator, she has published selected poems by Louise Glück, Denise Levertov, and Ciaran O’Driscoll, and essays by and Ursula K. Le Guin. Her interest as a translator is contemporary and 20th cent. North American and Irish poetry. She is the founder of Kentaver arts and literature society and runs the monthly poetry reading series Mlade Rime, as well as the annual poetry festival with the same name hosted at Metelkova Autonomous Zone in Ljubljana. She also edits the poetry book series at Kentaver. Her other vocation is medicine.


Veronika Dintinjana is a poet and translator of poetry and essays who works and lives in Ljubljana. She has studied medicine at the University of Ljubljana and is currently working as an ER surgeon.

Her public literary inception dates back to 2002, when she was recognized as best unpublished author at the Festival of Young Literature (Festival mlade literature Urška) in Slovenj Gradec. Consequently, her work has appeared in numerous literary reviews such as Mentor, Literatura, Sodobnost, Nova Revija, Dialogi, Poetikon, Lirikon and Apokalipsa.

For her debut collection of poetry, Yellow Burns the Forsythia Bush (Rumeno gori grm forzicij, LUD Literatura, 2008), Dintinjana won the Best First Book award at the 24th Slovene Book Fair and Festival. The book received favorable critical reviews, praising it for its lush imagery and the delicate flocculence of verse. In the foreword, Uroš Zupan writes that the poems

“[…] are constructed with exceptional accuracy and a keen ear, permeated with tenderness, sporadically humorous. […] The best poems come together as an alchemistic, finessed confluence of careful use of language and that which the poems in their final form should be able to reproduce: a stratified field of content, in itself a certain conglomerate of associations that time and again converge into an ever elusive meaning. […] I can assure with certainty that I have read only two debut poetry collections in the last ten years that have in themselves conjoined a similar compelling imagery and pure innocence […] These are indeed the qualities of outstanding debuts.”

In an interview dated from 2012, Dintinjana encapsulates the principles of her creativity: “That which inspires you in a way touches you, launches you into a different sort of motion, a new draw of breath, and the words follow. Everything has the potential of becoming an object of inspiration – be it beautiful, ugly, shocking, painful, or so tiny that it is considered banal.”

As a translator, Dintinjana has published poems and essays by Louise Glück (Onkraj noči, Nova lirika, MK, 2011), Denise Levertov (Proti točki noč, KUD Kentaver, 2014), Ciaran O’Driscoll (Nadzorovanje življenja, KUD France Prešeren, 2013), Ursula K. Le Guin (Ples na robu sveta, KUD Apokalipsa, 2007) and has co-translated the 20th century Irish poetry anthology, Marvelous mouth (Čudovita usta – antologija sodobne irske poezije, KUD Apokalipsa, 2007).

An avid performer, Dintinjana has won the 2008 Maribor poetry tournament and the 6th Ljubljana Poetry Slam the same year. In 2011, she represented Slovenia in the final of the first European Poetry Tournament in Maribor with the poem “Medeja”.

Dintinjana is also the founder of the Kentaver cultural society and co-organizer of the monthly poetry reading series and of the festival Mlade Rime (Young Rhymes) at Metelkova in Ljubljana, where young and unpublished writers can present themselves to the general public. The festival has in recent years found a broad following and recognition in the cultural life of Ljubljana and is currently in its 10th year of operation.