AMAZON — Slavica Trajković
A Translators’ Note
There are people who spend all the
paper in the world and still write nothing; and then, there are those who write
almost nothing, and contain a whole world. Mrs. Slavica’s poetry very much belongs to the
latter.
Often desolate and gritty, yet equally
lively and vibrant; these miniature pieces will disarm you with their honesty, impress
with profoundly hitting the bull’s eye, shock with images that durably glue to the
retinas, and teach cautionary tales.
Set in an economically broken,
war-ridden country, where freedom always comes at a price of a grave sacrifice;
this tale is of true unpredictability, of being lost and scared, and alone in
raising three children, while clenching onto the last straw of sanity. In it,
the protagonist prevails victorious and gifts us a spark of hope.
Above all, it’s a deeply and truly
personal story, cherished by the author as a labour child of her
suffering and love; which gave me an immense pleasure and responsibility to
make it as perfect in this English adaptation, as it is in its original form. I
hope I did her proud.
Ana Korntner. 2018
Are we at the same time free and
dead, as the title of the book says? While reading this poetry, bit after bit,
page after page, I’ve come to conclusion. Firstly, we can be mentally,
metaphysically, soulfully free. Moreover, we can freely get rid of social ties,
preconceived ideas, let go of our “social body” and strip down to the core of
our soul. And for once, at least try to experience complete turnover in the
process of enlightenment of the soul. At the same time, while this process
blooms, we bury our old self, full of questions, fears, preconceived ideas,
regrets, things that have to be, things that we must.
To conclude, we experience a kind
of rebirth, a kind of clean slate in freeing one true self and burying the old,
social one. A kind of no-strings-attached process. After reading this work, I
believe that the title Now I Can (Free And Dead)
can stand like a hallmark for the free spirit of the next generations. And my
personal experience with this poetry is that it made me fell more alive than
ever, in the most liberating sense.
Tijana
Tomić, 2018
A Critics’ Note
Slavica Trajković’s collection of
poems Now I Can (Free And Dead) is rebel poetry,
confronting all the family and societal authorities and values.
With a hypnotic
pace and liberating fierceness which emanates from every poem, this book would
make even the likes of Charles Baudelaire and
Arthur Rimbaud proud, as well as the so-called “haunted
poetesses”- whose lyrical artistries are making us ponder about the sources of
their intimacy – Gilberte Dallas and Marie-Helene Martin from France, and the
most famous member of the above mentioned
crowd – Sylvia Plath. With her poem
collection Now I Can (Free And Dead), Slavica
Trajković joins these “Prometheuses” of the humanity.
The animosity of the established
order of things towards the poet’s will, expresses the most obviously in the poem Free And Dead:
“The porcelain cups / Are flying
out of my hands / Free and dead / I fall into the sink”.
The author’s poetry in a pursuit
for ethereal and metaphysical reality, resembles the search for the Holy Grail
of her own soul. Truthfully, this poetry was built only out of sorrow. This is
why Slavica Trajković’s poetry is soon to become one of the most turbulent
messengers of the collective subconscious in
the post-Tito Yugoslav era. I am certain that it will influence numerous
generations of poets, ready to embark upon the local literary scene. In this
poetry, “On a lacquered shelf among the books / Are supplies of sedatives”, and
in her rebel against the authority, desiring to break free from the
soul-clenching shackles, the poet exclaims:
“Now I am allowed to get naked /
Now I can / Write whatever I want!”
The poetry of Slavica Trajković
isn’t just a personal confession. It relies on the tradition of one of the
youngest arts – film. Upon our eyes, the startling moving images are lain, and
a mythical world of death and resurrection.
Despite it being an unfruitful
task giving such categorical reviews, the author of these lines cannot resist
to, lastly, convey that the book of poems Now I Can (Free
And Dead), within our borders, will make an enormous influence on poetry,
the same way Allen Ginsberg with the poem Howl,
or the author’s lyrical sister Sylvia Plath with the poem collection Ariel, did in their own time and place.
Dušan
Cicvara, 2000
On the first glance resembling a
speech of pure emotions, a sum of self-reflections and swift negations, or a
rebellion against the authority and all types of (life and literary)
conventions – the way Dušan Cicvara sees it – the poetry of Slavica Trajković
showcases as something significant, lyrically fresh, and an origin of an
extraordinary reader’s pleasure, above all for its truthfulness, authenticity
and individuality. A miniscule number of contemporary poets, with such ease,
rejected the poetry constructed as a beautiful lie. Preaching and revealing the
world its, carefully decorated, lexically overcrowded and self-indulgent face,
those eternal laureates leap straight into the presumptuous Pantheon. However,
the realms in which dwells the poetry of Slavica Trajković, are the ones of
daily, bitter reality, in which every day is a struggle for authenticity, for survival
and endurance of oneself. Therefore, her “dramaturgy of lyrics” isn’t in the
slightest pathetically contorted, it’s as appropriated to her impression of the
world, as her language is a pure energy, an illuminating flash of corrosive,
but enlightening effects.
Resembling the brief assessments
of silenced “inner monologues” and linguistic sublimations with crisp knowledge
and states of mind, the poems of Slavica Trajković seemingly reject the form
and order. The structural qualities of this poetry, and its building blocks,
arguably are a fruit of lucid spontaneity. But once we discover just how
poetically and meaningfully “dense” those unassuming poems are, and
simultaneously renouncing the “general rules” and exhausted revelations, it
becomes abundantly clear that Serbian contemporary poetry becomes enriched with
an unquestionably important artist, and that the book we’re holding in our
hands has abundant meanings and re-readability.
Srba
Ignjatović, 2000
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