Tomaz Salamun
Acclaimed Slovenian Poet
“One of Europe's great philosophical wonders.” —Jorie Graham
“[T]here's a music being played here—distinct rhythms, a consistently dream-like quality, a contrapuntal balance of acerbic humor and amorphous dread...you float along the poet’s twisting stream, not knowing or caring where you are, where you're going or where you've been.”
—Booklist
Considered Slovenia's greatest living poet, Tomaz Salamun (pronounced Toh-MAH-sh SAH-la-mahn) attracted critical notice with his first collection, Poker, which was published when he was only twenty-five. Salamun was born in Zagreb in 1941 and is considered one of the foremost figures of the Eastern European poetical avant-garde. He is revered by many American poets for his unique surrealistic style. His books have been translated in nineteen languages and nine of his thirty-seven books of poetry have been published in English, the most recent ones are The Book for My Brother (Harcourt, 2006, translated by Christopher Merrill and others); Poker (Ugly Duckling Press, 2003, 2008, translated by Joshua Beckman); Row (ARCpublications, 2006, translated by Joshua Beckman); and Woods and Chalices (Harcourt, 2008, translated by Brian Henry). His There's the Hand and There's the Arid Chair, translated by Thomas Kane and others, has recently been released by Counterpath Press. A new book of poetry, entitled Blue Tower, translated by Michael Biggins, is due out by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2011.
In 1964, as editor of a literary magazine "Perspektive," he was threatened to be jailed for twelve years , but due to fast world media reaction, he was released before the process started. He has a degree in Art History from the University of Ljubljana. Poetry, says Salamun, came to him as a revelation, dropping, “like stones from the sky.” Publishers Weekly writes, "Salamun has become an influence, and a mentor, for plenty of young American poets. One reason lies in Salamun's postmodern mix of giddy and global with the earthy retrospect he takes from his homeland . . . . [He] makes his new collection a whirlwind tour of sites and moods . . . . ” Salamun's first visit to the US was in July 1970, when he was personally invited to exhibit his work at the MOMA in the famous Information Show.
Salamun's many prizes include the Preseren Prize, the Jenko Prize, a Pushcart Prize, the European Prize for Poetry by German town Münster in 2007, and 2009's "The Golden Wreath" from Struga Poetry Evenings in Macedonia. He also received the 2003 Altamarea prize in Trieste, Italy and the Festival Prize at Costanza, Romania in 2004. He is a member of the Slovenian Academy of Science and Art. He occasionally teaches in the US, where he was also a Fulbright Fellow at Columbia University, a member of International Writing Program at Iowa, and a Cultural Attaché at the Consulate General of Slovenia in New York. In spring 2008 he was appointed as Visiting Professor in Creative Writing and Distinguished Writer in Residence by the University of Richmond. His next teaching position in the US will be the Spring Semester 2011 at the Michener's Center MFA in Austin, Texas. He lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
About THERE'S THE HAND AND THERE'S THE ARID CHAIR (2009)Poems born in "a time of abrupt needs," There's the Hand and There's the Arid Chair catalogues those individual and imperative fancies that, in the cosmos of Tomaz Salamun, eternity aims to replace: A genealogy of dressmakers and songbirds. A topography of hulking oil tankers and coldwater flats. A biography that locates the poetic "I" as, at once, a primordial being and a tamer of beasts, a monster and a guardian angel. With uncanny and sometimes harrowing grace, Salamun plumbs every reach of the imagination in search of a space where we can simultaneously delight in and mourn the disintegration of the body. And it is here, in this borderland of the unreal and the everyday, that love is consumed so its contours might not be forgotten, that life carries on in the dying wish that a bicycle might be purchased. There's the Hand and There's the Arid Chair brings nine accomplished translators into collaboration for a new book by this "major Central European poet". —The New Yorker
About WOODS AND CHALICES (2008)
Inspired by Rimbaud and Ashbery, the Slovenian poet Tomaz Salamun is now inspiring the younger generation of American poets—and Woods and Chalices will secure his place in the ranks of influential, experimental, twenty-first-century poets. Salamun's strengths are on display here: innocence and obscenity, closely allied; a great historical reach; and questions, commands, and statements of identity that challenge all norms and yet seem uncannily familiar and right—"I'm molasses, don't forget that."
Interview in BOMB Magazine with Charles Simic
"Slovene Invasion" on poetryfoundation.org
