Faust, Part Two, should be mentioned. – So far, she has published ten collections of poems, Lasa pur dir was printed in 2013. – As an eminent Slovene poetess of the late 20th and early 21st century she was awarded the Veronika Prize in 2002 and the Jenko Prize in 2004, i.e. the two most prestigious Slovene prizes in the field of poetry, whereas Maribor’s highest cultural award, the Glazer Prize, was given to her for her life’s work in 2015.
FROM THE SEA towards eve it flies in with nerve, from sunsets nearly golden, day by day along the same sky’s curve, a seagull lone in breeze’s care. From behind the pines and a cypress thin, its wings are carried by the wind over the roof of a white house cute, ever higher and mute, who knows where to sleep.
ISBN 978-961-237-921-6
9 789612 379216
LASA PUR DIR
Lasa_pur_dir_naslovka_FINAL.indd 1
LASA PUR DIR
Erika VOUK
The translator, Andrej Rijavec, born to Slovene parents in Belgrade, started school in Cavendish Square in London during World War II. While studying English and German, he also graduated in music history from the Academy of Music in Ljubljana. After obtaining his PhD in 1964, he taught in the Department of Musicology of the Faculty of Arts. Since 2004 he has been an emeritus professor of the University of Ljubljana. – About ten years ago, he discovered a hidden gift, the talent for translating poetry into English. So, since his first undertaking, an anthology, Images and Poems from Slovenia, 2007, he has published individual selections of works by outstanding 20th or rather 21st century Slovene poets, including Lili Novy, Tone Pavček, Neža Maurer, Kajetan Kovič, Tone Kuntner, and two collections of poems, one of them for children, by Zvezdana Majhen.
Erika VOUK
Let Them Talk Translated by Andrej Rijavec
The title of the book, Lasa pur dir, is derived from an inscription on a late Gothic palazzina, a present to a Piran(o) belle from her Venetian lover. Hence, Benečanka (La Veneziana), nowadays the oldest house in Tartini square. – The collection of poems was almost entirely written at Beli križ (White Cross) nesting above this gem of the Mediterranean, and represents a unique Slovene tribute to the colour and colours, sights and sounds, stone and stones, scents and breezes of Southern climes, actually an intimately poetic, feminine contribution to the same European region treated, on a broad epic scale, in Predrag Matvejević’s famous Mediterranean Breviary. P. Matvejević, at the same time a scholar and a man of letters, dealt with the Mediterranean, the cradle of European civilization and culture, from many an angle, whereas the poetess, Erika Vouk, a devotee of the Adriatic coast, not only admires the milieu where olives grow and “where lemons blossom’’, but has imbued it with her expressively condensed “inner’’ self, thus achieving a hardly comparable symbiosis with this remarkable “outer’’ world. Erika Vouk was born in Maribor where, after psychological and philosophical studies, she has lived and worked as a librarian. In the early eighties she joined Tomaž Pandur’s group “Thespis’s Carriage’’ which gave her fresh impetus to write and publish again, and to translate, above all many dramatic texts (Wedekind, Büchner, Müller, etc.) for the Slovenian National Theatre in Maribor. Among these, her translation of J.W. Goethe’s ►
10.5.2017 10:02:41