Josip Čekolj
- Croatia -
Josip Čekolj was born in 1999 in Zabok, Croatia. He holds a bachelor's degree in Croatian language and literature, as well as ethnology and cultural anthropology. He earned a master's degree in Croatian language and literature, as well as in early modern history at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb.
He is the author of poetry books "The Decline of Heroes and Dragons" (Mala zvona, 2022), "A Boy Before the Harvest" (Jesenski i Turk, 2023) and “The Age of Useless Wisdom Teeth” (Croatian Writers' Society, 2024); a novel titled "The Rascals Deep in Mud" (Mala zvona, 2022), and a children's picture book titled "Srna and Mak in Pursuit of a Frightened Month" (Mala zvona, 2020).
His second poetry manuscript "A Boy Before the Harvest" won the "On the Tip of the Tongue" (Na vrh jezika) award and "Zvonko Milković" award. The manuscript also received commendation at the "Goran's Spring" (Goranovo proljeće) event in 2022. The children's novel "The Rascals Deep in Mud" made it to the shortlist for the "Grigor Vitez," "Mato Lovrak," and "Little Prince" literary awards.
A series of acrostic poems entitled "A Wreath of Nocturnal Journeys" was created as part of the "Small Literature Review" and was published in the anthology "Time of Thoughts" (Kulturtreger, 2021) and on the literary portal "Critical Mass". The short story "On the Other Side of the River" was published in the collection "In the Rhythm of Horror – Abyss of Dances" (Mala zvona, 2021), and the poetry cycle "The Time of Poverty" (Vreme bokčije) in the magazine "Poetry" (Poezija) in 2020.
He has participated in literary festivals such as "Verse in the Region" (Stih u regiji, Croatia), "Manuscripts" (Rukopisi, Serbia), "Encounter of Words" (Susret riječi, Croatia) and “Thessalian Poetry Festival” (Greece). In October 2023, he stayed in Hvar (Croatia) at the "Poemma" literary residency, and at the end of summer 2024 he stayed in Larisa (Greece) at the "Ulysses' Shelter" literary residency.
His short stories and poems have been published in regional and Croatian magazines and anthologies.
Bibliography (list of published works)
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Srna and Mak in Pursuit of a Frightened Month – Srna i Mak u potrazi za uplašenim mjesecom (Mala zvona, 2020), children's picture book
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The Decline of Heroes and Dragons – Junaci i zmajevi u zalasku (Mala zvona, 2022), poetry book
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The Rascals Deep in Mud – Hahari na dnu mulja (Mala zvona, 2022), children's novel
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A Boy Before the Harvest – Dječak pred žetvu (Jesenski i Turk, 2023), poetry book
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The Age of Useless Wisdom Teeth – Doba beskorisnih umnjaka (HDP, 2024), poetry book
Josip Čekolj, a poet and prose writer of the younger generation, has emerged as one of the most compelling voices on the contemporary Croatian poetry scene—an author whose poetics demand careful and devoted attention. With his poetry, Čekolj seduces the reader into a slippery poetic landscape and keeps them tensely alert with his elusive nature, constantly positioned in a tension between restraint and defiance of expression.
Čekolj’s poetics are shaped across three poetry collections that reveal both continuity and a clear evolution—themewise, formally, and linguistically. His work consistently constructs a lyrical matrix based on the convergence of seemingly opposed elements: rural and urban, mythological and everyday, standard language and dialect, narrative and lyrical fragmentation, tenderness and cruelty. It is a poetics grounded in the persistent tension between the personal and collective, the sentimental and the ironic, the stated and the merely suggested.
Čekolj’s poetry is most often written in long, free, rhythmically flowing verse, frequently broken through enjambment. This form generates a strong rhythmic dynamic that does not adhere to strict metrical regularity but achieves a sense of fluency and controlled pacing. Key features of his style include internal rhyme, sound-based wordplay, alternating assonance and alliteration, and complex figurative structures rooted in oral literature traditions and a lexicon tinged with infantile registers. These are not mere decorative devices but serve multiple functions: rhythmic, semantic, and affective.
Language is a central component of Čekolj’s poetic expression. His collections feature variations in speaker voice, differentiated primarily through linguistic register—ranging from standard Croatian with occasional Kajkavian inflections, to full use of dialect in entire poems. The dialect is not a simple regional code but carries emotional and cultural weight, serving as a tool for constructing belonging as well as a space of uncertainty, doubt, and even trauma. Through this linguistic stratification, Čekolj raises questions of identity—particularly concerning heritage and the inherited tongue—whereby the lyrical subject is repeatedly confronted with the question: what is my language?
Thematically, Čekolj’s poetic world is inscribed along several dominant axes: memory, the body, space, family, and death. His poems often immerse themselves in inherited stories and fragmented identities, in fictionalized biographies and mythologized forms of remembrance. The collections are marked by obsessive motifs of an irrecoverable childhood and striking images that merge the human and the animal, the bodily and the topographical: bodies are enveloped in bark, animals are described through anthropomorphic gestures, and nature takes on corporeal traits.
A particularly emphasized component of his poetry is its narrative aspect—collections such as Dječak pred žetvu (The Boy Before Harvest) are structured around letters, dedications, and direct addresses to imagined recipients. Within this framing device, polyphony emerges—not merely through shifts in speaker, but through changes in register, perspective, and tone.
Čekolj reaches the most developed and complex iteration of this poetics in his most recent collection, Doba beskorisnih umnjaka (The Age of Useless Wisdom Teeth), where polyphony is further enriched through a mosaic structure and dense intertextual play. While the collection retains the emotional nuance of his earlier books, it clearly signals a shift—the lyrical subject now increasingly oscillates between grief for a lost past and paralyzing fear of an uncertain future. The personal increasingly intersects with the generational, and melancholy and nostalgia coexist with ironic detachment and flashes of cynical humor.
In The Age of Useless Wisdom Teeth, this shift is mirrored by a topographical turn: the city of Zagreb becomes both a real location and a poetological motif, a projected space of freedom as well as one of symptomatic alienation. In that sense, the collection recognizes a generational sense of uncertainty—toward love, identity, and social structures—and inscribes into it a poetic self-examination. The collection, its framework and meaning, is constantly questioned—visible in motifs of self-reflection, in questions about the purpose of writing and the place of poetry in the contemporary world.
The emotional dynamic of Čekolj’s poetry ranges from melancholy to irony. Melancholy manifests as a profound sense of loss—of time, place, language, or close relationships—while irony serves as a defense mechanism and a tool for destabilizing sentimentality. Humor appears in the form of self-irony but also as a strategy for confronting anxieties that the poetic subject does not seek to resolve, but rather to transpose into form.
Čekolj’s work consistently strives to construct a coherent, yet never fully closed, lyrical-narrative world. His poetry is multidimensional: sensory and reflective, narrative and fragmented, intimate and collective. It reflects a deep awareness of language, of the vulnerability of expression, and the complexity of identity. Although his verses often depict landscapes of loss and disintegration, they also form a poetry of resilience—one that seeks, through speech, a way not to vanish. His third collection, then, is not a break but a natural intensification of his poetics—a phase in which mythological origins give way to generational horizons, and sentimentality is deepened by irony, fear, and a hesitant yet persistent glimmer of light and hope.
Poetry
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(growing up) / (odrastanje)
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Soup and Radio / Juha i radio
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Jesus by the Brook / Isus na potoku
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