Pino Pograjc
- Slovenia -
Pino Pograjc (1997, Slovenia) graduated from the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, with a double MA in English and Comparative Literature. He grew up in Kamnik, where he first read his poems in front of an audience at slam poetry competitions at the Kotlovnica Youth Center, winning several times. In 2022, the independent publishing house Črna skrinjica published his debut poetry collection Trgetanje, for which he won the prize for best literary debut awarded at the 38th Slovenian Book Fair. In March 2024, his second collection of poetry Trepete was published by the LGBT+ publishing house ŠKUC – Lambda, after which he won the “Young Pen” award, which is given out by the Delo newspaper. His third collection, Megalomast in Izbruhijada, was published by Črna skrinjica in November 2024. Schizofag, a collection of his selected works, translated into English by the author, was first published in 2025 as a part of Pograjc’s residency at the Mediterranea 20 Young Artists Biennale. The title comes from the fact Pograjc included the poems that deal with his queerness and schizophrenia diagnosis.
Literary reviews:
Rationale for the Award for Best Literary Debut at the 38th Slovenian Book Fair:
Although especially in the first half of the book it may appear to form a single, breath-taking narrative whole—a story that each new poem complements, builds upon, or illuminates with a new image or perspective—each poem is at the same time a world unto itself. This is made possible by Pograjc’s pronounced sense of suggestiveness, economy of language, and empathy. In the jury’s assessment, the collection radiates an electrified sensuality, an intensity, at times even a shiver, but never pathos or self-pity. “Not even when it seems that images, thoughts, and emotions are themselves irrepressibly boiling out of the mouth.” The poet also uses silences with great deliberation—not the kind that in poetry often open up or emphasize hidden metaphoricity or metaphysical meaning, but rather those that speak aloud precisely where despair, horror, or passion would more often literally choke the throat. As the jury further noted, something surprising happens here: “the more personal, intimate a poem is, the more universal it becomes—the more tangibly and directly it exposes the coordinates of the world in which we live.”
Diana Pungeršič for LUD Literatura on the collection Trgetanje:
Groundedness is certainly one of the main strengths of this already award-winning poetic debut, which does not exploit trauma or pain to attract attention, but rather transforms it and places it alongside other modes of lived experience. Poetically, it is capable of (re)cognizing poetry almost around every corner: “in the toilet under the Triple Bridge / I hear someone sucking // and in the background an accordion.” Pograjc’s poem most often arises from (forbidden) sexual desire and (internalized) primal fear, yet it persists above all thanks to the aforementioned redeeming ironic laughter and an extreme honesty toward experiential truth: “I’m drunk enough / to love him.” This openness and distance—which neither denies nor humiliates, neither elevates nor belittles—is a poetic skill and an evidently hard-won (confessional) maturity: in accepting oneself and the world as it is. At once good and evil, open and hidden, hetero and homo, serious and humorous, oppressive and supportive, urban and rural, intoxicated/mad and sober, spiritual and carnal… Above all, however, the world of Trgetanje is wide—so expansive that there is more than enough space within it for the birth of an intriguing, full-blooded confessional voice, one we encounter only rarely (not only among poetic debuts).
Miša Gams for MMC RTV SLO on the collection Trepete:
The poetry collection Trepete, by postgraduate comparative literature student Pino Pograjc—also an occasional literary critic, selector for the LGBT Film Festival, and slam poet—calls forth deeply repressed layers of the collective unconscious and presents them to the public in an unvarnished form. Just as he writes without mincing words about his sexual orientation, his mother’s dying, a suicide attempt, and psychiatric diagnoses, he approaches pressing social issues with the same lightness and apparent lack of restraint. The strength of his poetic expression does not lie in metaphor, sound, or a refined sense of dramaturgy or architectural composition. No—the “impact” of his poetry lies in the way that, through an honest and minimalist poetic idiom, he provokes trembling and discomfort in the reader precisely where it is least expected.
Dominik Lenarčič on the collections Megalomast and Izbruhijada for Koridor
(“pograjčizem” may be translated as “Pograjcism”):
The illustrations mentioned above appear only in Megalomast and on the covers of both collections, and they convey the playfulness of the poetry in this book. This playfulness—foreshadowed in its own way by the epigraph from Šalamun’s Gobice—manifests in the poetry itself through “Pograjcisms.” With this term I denote the author’s characteristic portmanteaus: alongside the titles of both collections, we find for example neronijada, atilepsija, wikipediater, and others. A “Pograjcism” differs from an ordinary portmanteau through its deliberately humorous resonance and through the fact that its meaning is entirely bound to the context of the collection (a non-reader would not know what atilepsija refers to—the illness of the god-obsessed father). Alongside these, similar wordplay appears, as do numerous vulgarisms and colloquial expressions. These linguistic games entertain the reader while simultaneously functioning as a means of playful critique of homonormativity, society’s step-motherly attitude toward art, and so on—in short, the shortcomings that the poetic subject perceives in contemporary (Slovenian) society.
Muanis Sinanović on the collections Megalomast and Izbruhijada for SIGIC
(“pograjčizem” may be translated as “Pograjcism”):
The utterance in Izbruhijada is thematically oriented more outwardly, while sonically it is simpler. It is accompanied by a gentle atmospheric undulation of accordion sounds, which functions tactfully. Rather than situating Pograjc’s text within the domain of elitistically conceived “strict” poetry, it would be more appropriate to place it in the domain of so-called spoken word, thus granting it a more fitting starting point for interpretation. The text blends more overtly narrative elements, essayistic passages that do not primarily refer to the poetic function of language, and elements that do make use of it. Reading with sound accompaniment somewhat recalls hip-hop music. Through various ideas, references to the external world and people, word inversions, comic vocal transformations—for instance when quoting other persons—anecdotality, and hints of battling, Pograjc wittily probes his social milieu, which, as in rap, is often self-referential or scene-referential, yet simultaneously embedded within broader dynamics. Alongside his skillful scattering and thrusting of thorns, he is also marked by self-reflection and self-critique. The themes he addresses include homophobia, homoeroticism, mental illness, social habits, and pressures. These are by now an established repertoire of themes, but Pograjc infuses them with vitality through multifaceted observation, the assembling and disassembling of identity—including the identity of the victim—through distancing himself from corporate practices, historicizing the movement to which he belongs, and through largely lucid positioning within social dynamics, thereby convincingly presenting his perspective. Megalomast turns more toward introspection, although in neither work can we speak of a fully cemented distinction between outside and inside. The words are more melancholic and spoken in a more mournful tone, without a humorous undertone. Berger’s musical direction is excellent and reminiscent of radio drama. Caricatured statements by famous figures from the past, environmental sounds, instrument samples, and the like are wittily embedded, meandering and at times elevating the content. Its impact occasionally diminishes slightly due to recurring ideas—Pograjcisms—linked to a repeating set of themes. With even a small change in sound accompaniment, the emotional perception of what is spoken can also shift. Pograjc places the rapper’s mode somewhat in the background and increasingly foregrounds the lyrical, thereby expanding his repertoire of poetic skills and broadening the listener’s experience.
Megalomast and Izbruhijada (2024) was listed among the “books of the year” in the newspapers Delo, Dnevnik, Mladina, on the Disenz platform, and in the 10 Books from Slovenia 2025 bulletin. It was also reviewed as a musical album and included on the list of “best alternative albums of the year” on the national MMC portal, due to the QR codes included in the book that lead to recordings of Pograjc’s readings of the two long poems that make up the collection, sonically and musically processed by the musician Jaka Berger (with the accordion performed by Mrtvo Rođena Živa Lešina).
Poetry
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Burlesque / Burleska
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In French / Po francosko
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Eruptum XXI. / Izbruhek XXI.
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Eruptum XIV. / Izbruhek XIV.
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Palestine / Palestina
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Faggot / Buzi
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excerpt from “Megalomaim” / izsek iz »Megalomasta«
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excerpt from “Megalomaim” / izsek iz »Megalomasta«
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excerpt from “Eruptusseia” / izsek iz »Izbruhijade«
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Lotophag / Lotofag
