Mrtve matere žive majke / Umbilical Cord is a bilingual, experimental poetry project written in Slovenian and Croatian that explores the political, bodily, and collective dimensions of motherhood and womanhood in times of crisis. Inspired by real events such as hunger strikes, loss, and systemic injustice, as well as broader conditions of war, militarization, femicide, and gender-based violence, the poem examines how structural violence is inscribed onto women’s bodies.
By bringing together two authors and two closely related languages, the project creates a transnational literary space that underscores the universality of its themes, connecting experiences of resilience and resistance across cultural and linguistic borders. Through fragmented, visceral poetic language and the tension between languages, the work foregrounds exhaustion, hunger, breath, and endurance as poetic material. Motherhood is framed not as a biological requirement but as a shared symbolic position of exposure, care, and resistance, while women emerge as a collective force refusing silence and erasure.
With inherent performative potential featuring dual voices in its audiovisual realization and the dedicated website developed specifically for the project, the work creates a space of solidarity and dissent. Between bodily collapse and political lucidity, light appears: hope that flickers in the darkness like a neon sun, articulating the possibility of a safe space co-created by living women. Physical vulnerability becomes a form of political speech, and the poem functions simultaneously as an intimate elegy, a political alarm, and a gesture of persistent hope, insisting on the necessity of collective responsibility in the face of ongoing violence.
Team
Authors: Nina Kodrič and Snježana Vračar Mihelač
Translation from Croatian: Ivana Maksić
Translation from Slovenian: Nina Hudej
AV: Nina Hudej
Website: Bojan Mihelač
The project is part of the subthemes Writing After – Catastrophe, Memory, and the Archive of Loss, Disrupted Realities – Poetry and the Politics of Truth, Hybrid Selves – Gender, Identity, and Posthuman Intimacies, Poetic Infrastructures – Reclaiming Space, Building Commons, Unruly Forms – Experiments in the Poetic Wild, The Poetics of Care – Intimacy, Tenderness, Repair.
Author
Nina Kodrič
Nina Kodrič (aka NinaBelle) is an academically acclaimed musician, lyricist, songwriter, activist, DJ, and producer based in Ljubljana. She also works as a musical accompanist for literary programmes on Radio Slovenia (Ars and Prvi) and as an organiser of club and concert events in Ljubljana.
Since 2017, she has co-developed the electronic duo Warrego Valles with producer Nina Hudej. The duo has released four albums with the local independent label Kamizdat [Location Off (2017), Botox (2018), Save as (2019), Turbo (2024)], along with several singles and remixes, and performs at festivals and club events in Slovenia and internationally. Their sets are unconstrained by genre or format, remaining deliberately unpredictable and driven by an ongoing search for new sounds and directions within post-club electronic music. In parallel, she writes and develops original song lyrics. She is a member of the queer DJ collective Ustanova, a co-organiser of the Grounded Festival (a festival of electronic music, critical thinking and activism, based in Ljubljana) and a producer of music events at the cultural centre Pritličje. Her practice is rooted in collectives led and created by women.
Author
Snježana Vračar Mihelač
Snježana Vračar Mihelač (born in Pula) lives and works in Ljubljana. A poet, journalist, and translator, she is active on the Slovenian and post-Yugoslav literary scene. Her poems have been published in literary magazines, online portals and in anthologies, including Sreća je sol (2025), Signali u noći (2024), ZaNa III (2023), Tanane revolucije (2023), Susret riječi (2020, 2023), Beseda upora (2022), and Biće bolje – Bo že (2019).
Her manuscript Kad zatvorim oči vidim modro (When I Close My Eyes, I See Blue) was awarded the Presing competition (Serbia) for the Best Poetry Collection in 2022 and was published the same year. She has received numerous international and regional awards, including the Ulaznica Award, the Pesmomat Award, Susret riječi, the Solin City Library Competition, the ZaNa Literature Festival Award, Sosed tvojega brega, the Zagrebu – riječju i slikom competition of the Književni petak literary forum, and the art+science Climateurope2 competition. Her manuscript Srce na baterije (Heart on Batteries) received a Special Mention from the jury of the Drago Gervais Award and was shortlisted for the Jovan Popović Literary Award; it was published at the end of 2025 by the Croatian Writers’ Association (HDP).
Her poetry is translated into Slovenian, English, Albanian, and Macedonian.
