Ivan Isailović
- Serbia -
Ivan Isailović (1989, Belgrade) is a Serbian poet and literary critic. He studied at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade at the Department of Serbian Language and Literature with World Literature. He was a long-term member and moderator of creative workshops of the literary society “Orfisti”. He is the co-founder and content creator (literary podcast, critical reviews of fiction) on the YouTube channel “Bookvalisti”. He works as the editor-in-chief at Kontrast Publishing in Belgrade, where he lives. Behind Teeth is his first poetry collection.
Isailović's poetry is characterized by the merging of distant concepts. "High" becomes "low" and bland, losing significance; hence poetry must be refreshed with those "low" elements. His style nurtures and combines public and artificial language, professional phrases of banks, advertisers, and politics, but also religious, feminist, philosophical, and theoretical discourse, as well as digital and street slang. He literalizes metaphors and typical linguistic units, aiming to deautomatize perception and compel us to experience commonplaces anew.
The poeticization of the everyday prompts the politicization of the poetic. Engagement with the avant-garde also implies proximity to its political activism. The world of failed utopias is engulfed by transition, so exacerbated capitalism becomes the subject of the action. Man is a being who suffers the forces of the market, ideology, and language. As an active, emotional, and thinking creature, and as a lyrical subject, man is expelled from the profitable world. Things happen, but they are not understood in the world of this collection of Isailović’s poems.
Behind Teeth is a pessimistic demonstration of the power of language. The poetic self is helpless because the classical poetic language is helpless, and the collective We transforms into a giant, sedated body sinking into the abyss under the caress of bureaucratic language. What is loved is what cannot be attained: "the chronic revelation of god in the mist" / "the incense of mother's milk." Heavy poetic images want to renounce themselves, the experiment wants to abandon experimentation, the poet wants to nullify himself and transform into an all-knowing narrator who would know how to live better, and language would like to transform into such a volume of noise after which only Silence can follow.
Therefore, resistance to pessimism resides in the style of this collection. It represents a passionate play in the cage and the shaking of heavy bars. Isailović expresses himself through a controlled stream of consciousness, sticking close to the experience of surrealism. Behind Teeth mimics chaos but does so carefully and beautifully.
- Miloš Živković
Poetry
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UNEXTINGUISHED / NEUGAŠEN
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CERVICAL / CERVIKALNE
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AUTUMNED / OJESENJENA
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EXTUINGUISHED / UGAŠENA
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IV (CLUMSY) / IV (TRAPAVAC)
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V (SLACKER) / V (ZGUBIDAN)
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DIPPING / PROPADANJE
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DINING / OBEDOVANJE
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CANKER / RAK-RANA
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HUSKY EYES / HASKI-OČI
