Poetry Expo 26
/ 23 February 2026
From Stone to Stone: Poems of Family, Body, and Survival
Poetry Expo 2026
From Stone to Stone is a poetic cycle that explores family, memory, and the body as sites of endurance and fracture. The poems emerge from lived experiences shaped by motherhood, childhood, care, and inherited wounds, examining how intimacy is formed, damaged, and renegotiated over time. Rather than reconstructing events, the cycle writes from what remains after them: from silence, scars, and gestures that persist beyond explanation.
The poems use a direct, corporeal language in which flesh remembers, hands cut and hold, and care is inseparable from pain. Family is not presented as a stable structure, but as a terrain of survival, where protection and harm often coexist. Moving between tenderness and violence, the cycle resists idealization and refuses moral resolution, focusing instead on attention, precision, and emotional truth. Writing becomes an act of staying with what hurts without turning away, allowing poetry to function as a space of ethical presence rather than consolation.
The project is part of the subtheme Writing After – Catastrophe, Memory, and the Archive of Loss.
Author
Marijana Ilić
Marijana Ilić is a Serbian poet based in Belgrade. She writes poetry that explores family bonds, the body, illness, memory, and the quiet violence of everyday relationships. Her work is marked by a restrained, precise language and a strong physical sensibility, often focusing on moments where intimacy, vulnerability, and distance intersect. Ilić is particularly interested in how personal experience is shaped by social roles, inherited narratives, and unspoken expectations.
In recent years, she has been increasingly writing and publishing in English, treating the non-native language as a space of resistance, reduction, and renewed attention. Her poems frequently balance narrative tension with minimalist form, allowing silence and omission to carry meaning alongside words. Ilić’s work has appeared in literary journals and international platforms, and her poetic cycles have been selected for presentation at Poetry Expo 2026 within the Versopolis network. She continues to work between languages, viewing poetry as a site of ethical attention and emotional precision
