poetry

Irena Delonga Nešić: A note to yourself

Irena Delonga Nešić (Sinj, 1984) is a Croatian poet and former editor of the The Split Mind magazine. In 2010 she published a poetry volume ''Riječi kupuju zločine koje ćeš počiniti" and was awarded Goran prize for young poets. She lives in Split, where she hosts literary events.



 

THIRD TIME'S THE CHARM

 

I said: third time's the charm and swallowed a razor. I was scared

to lie down because it might not go down, slide down, stream down

I sat on a wall and cried into the sea into the blue into ships

into three islands

I sat on a large sun-broken stone

still warm when night falls

walls are as tall as I am, only a head short

so when I sit I cannot see anything but the sky

then I feel as if I were in a pool

without water.

I sat in an anthill and spoke on the phone as if I were talking to myself

or I was talking to myself as if I spoke on the phone.

I sat on the beach stranded and forgave everything

(I wanted to lay in a boat and rock like in a cradle)

so much blueness made me forget my sunglasses and my new perspective

I had wine stains under my nails and could not remember when it was that I hurt you.

I sat on a blue chair until my petty petit cyberheart broke

so I became childish and ran away from home

(it is hard to find a forest in a city

even if you do, it is always a step, two, a hundred

too short)

I sat on the bath tub and gently asked it to sail

when we did not move, I realised that nothing is in my power

to change. I can only give up. so I lied down

in bed.

just as I feared,

the razor got stuck in my throat.

 

 

GENIE

 

from time to time

a woman must clean her bag

dump the crumbs of tobbacco from the bottom

excite over recovered lipstick

lost twenty days ago

smilingly pick up bombons

murmur

fool does not know how to open a pack of bombons

smile with content

because the fool is two metres tall

and has hands that would drive you mad

from time to time

a woman must open her wallet and take out

old bills

small papers, wrappings, tickets

from time to time

a woman like me

must be scared

by that big genie in a bag

which devours meaningless things

(it does not fullfil wishes)

it lives only to remind

of the irrelevant

the almost forgotten

kept only in the numbers on a bill

in a date on a ticket

from time to time

a woman must throw her time in garbage

just to make room for some new past

worthless

always short-termed

replaceable

do you know that the greatest messages are carried

in the smallest of things

do you know that we contaminate everything

with the breath of wistfulness

and that your own retrospective

can be found in your garbage

do you know that a reciet is a confirmation of life

that your garbage is your testimony

and that only papers can tell a story

do you know that we are all

cripted in letters and numbers

and we have a special code

do you know that every crumpled paper

thrown behind you

is a letter in a bottle

a note to yourself

where were you

last Friday in October

and until you find

in a bag, in a pocket

in a drawer

a genie with huge eyes

filled with un-forgetting

you will not believe

that someone remembers everything

 

 

*

 

I got tired of effeminate poetry

and subordination

now I am strong and not a bit meek

I roll tobacco as a bearded Turk

with honey, mistletoe and plum brandy

I wash out conceited loves

when I walk, my step is soldierly

and beats asphalt like a curse

when I think I will turn into a little girl

I adorn my arms with bracelets

and tinkle to the coffee-house, to the port, to the alley

to the first corner

in which I can smile

like a woman

with a husky voice and a heavy makeup

a woman with a cracked heart and predispositions for arthritis

from too much writing, overtired grandmas and their genetic testaments,

from washing dishes in cold water

and spasmodic clinging on small utopias.

 

 

*

 

On Sunday afternoon

I wish to wash your laundry.

a lodger’s quadrature perfectly endures

solitude

or softness in twosome.

I have a sun, yellow walls and dead lilies of the valley in a glass.

the day is lazy, soft and without teeth. come tired so I won’t be afraid of you.

take all your clothes, and the bed linen

stuff everything into bags as if you were running away

to me.

 

we will strip everything off ourselves, everything needs to be washed

we’ll be lying down hungry and naked

we will fill ourselves up with fingers and flesh of shoulder blades and thighs

I will let you eat me and love me

in that wild way of yours.

you can’t run away while your clothes is sluggishly turning

inside the washing machine

lazy, drowsy and more and more mine.

 

*

 

there are mornings

when I get up

alone in the world

I don’t see any householders

they walk around me in concentric circles

tightening the noose

until they encircle me entirely

and confront me

with their little rosy lips

that mutely move.

there are mornings

when I don’t see my householders

they seem to me like a draught in the hallway

sometimes I count toothbrushes in a glass

and I don’t know who they belong to

I don’t know who I belong to

(are families glasses

with toothbrushes?)

sometimes a round of cards

passes in a silence

that can devour good will

because I don’t see anything

except

too many stains on the tablecloths

I shuffle myself with the cards

in the deck

one of my householders says

that verses ovulate in me

and that this is why I am quiet.

sometimes I ride in an elevator too long

because that is the only place in the city

in which you can truly be alone

my claustrophobia is

almost insignificant

but still I never stop the elevator

though it comes to me like that

to sit in a tin box

hanging over a thirteen-floor abyss.

to sit alone.

 

*

 

everything that is really horrible

fits into very short sentences:

snow hasn‘t fallen in years.

turtles will outlive us.

god died, resurrected and I never found him.

I think I dream of naked women

in your bed

I think I am superfluous

and that there is no place for me at all)

who has you?

who has you?

why, people are not key-rings

or beads on a thread

that anyone can possess you

(but I know that you are wolfish and hungry

and that there are key-holes through which you peek

and which you unlock

more easily than you unlock me)

August is a deception. time flows

without a shift. it steals from us.

I have a light purple-coloured lump on a thigh

that darkens and blackens when I am cold

when I look at it too long and when I think that I will die from it.

 

 

             Translated by Serena Todesco, Silvestar Vrljić and Irena Delonga Nešić

panorama

Rebecca Duran's Take on Modern Day Life in Pazin (Istria)

Croatia is a small, charming country known today as a prime European tourist destination. However, it has a complicated often turbulent history and is seemingly always destined to be at the crossroads of empires, religions and worldviews, with its current identity and culture incorporating elements from its former Communist, Slavic, Austrian-Hungarian, Catholic, Mediterranean, and European traditions.

review

Review of Dubravka Ugrešić's Age of Skin

Dubravka Ugrešić is one of the most internationally recognizable writers from Croatia, but she has a contentious relationship with her home country, having gone into self-exile in the early 90s. Her recently translated collection of essays, The Age of Skin, touches on topics of of exile and displacement, among others. Read a review of Ugrešić’s latest work of non-fiction, expertly translated by Ellen Elias-Bursac, in the link below .

panorama

Vlaho Bukovac Exhibition in Zagreb Will Run Through May

Vlaho Bukovac (1855-1922) is arguably Croatia's most renowned painter. Born in the south in Cavtat, he spent some of his most impressionable teenage years in New York with his uncle and his first career was as a sailor, but he soon gave that up due to injury. He went on to receive an education in the fine arts in Paris and began his artistic career there. He lived at various times in New York, San Francisco, Peru, Paris, Cavtat, Zagreb and Prague. His painting style could be classified as Impressionism which incorporated various techniques such as pointilism.

An exhibition dedicated to the works of Vlaho Bukovac will be running in Klovićevi dvori Gallery in Gornji Grad, Zagreb through May 22nd, 2022.

review

Review of Neva Lukić's Endless Endings

Read a review of Neva Lukić's collection of short stories, Endless Endings, recently translated into English, in World Literature Today.

panorama

A Guide to Zagreb's Street Art

Zagreb has its fair share of graffiti, often startling passersby when it pops up on say a crumbling fortress wall in the historical center of the city. Along with some well-known street murals are the legendary street artists themselves. Check out the article below for a definitive guide to Zagreb's best street art.

panorama

Beloved Croatian Children's Show Professor Balthazar Now Available in English on YouTube

The colorful, eclectic and much beloved Croatian children's cartoon Professor Balthazar was created by Zlatko Grgić and produced from the late 1960s through the 1970s. Now newer generations will be able to enjoy the Professor's magic, whether they speak Croatian or English.

panorama

New Book on Croatian Football Legend Robert Prosinečki

Robert Prosinečki's long and fabled football career includes winning third place in the 1998 World Cup as part of the Croatian national team, stints in Real Madrid and FC Barcelona as well as managerial roles for the Croatian national team, Red Star Belgrade, the Azerbaijani national team and the Bosnian Hercegovinian national team.

news

Sandorf Publishing House Launches American Branch

Croatian publishing house Sandorf launched their American branch called Sandorf Passage earlier this year.

panorama

Jonathan Bousfield on the Seedy Side of the Seaside

From strange tales of mysterious murders to suspected criminals hiding out to scams, duels and gambling, Opatija, a favourite seaside escape for Central Europeans at the turn of the last century, routinely filled Austrian headlines and the public's imagination in the early 20th century.

review

Review of new English translation of Grigor Vitez's AntonTon

Hailed as the father of 20th century Croatian children's literature, Grigor Vitez (1911-1966) is well known and loved in his homeland. With a new English translation of one of his classic tales AntonTon (AntunTun in Croatian), children around the world can now experience the author's delightful depiction of the strong-minded and silly AntonTon. The Grigor Vitez Award is an annual prize given to the best Croatian children's book of the year.

news

The Best of New Eastern European Literature

Have an overabundance of free time, thanks to the pandemic and lockdowns? Yearning to travel but unable to do so safely? Discover the rhythm of life and thought in multiple Eastern European countries through exciting new literature translated into English. From war-torn Ukraine to tales from Gulag inmates to the search for identity by Eastern Europeans driven away from their home countries because of the economic or political situations but still drawn back to their cultural hearths, this list offers many new worlds to explore.

panorama

More Zagreb Street Art

Explore TimeOut's gallery of fascinating and at times thought-provoking art in the great open air gallery of the streets of Zagreb.

panorama

Welcome to Zagreb's Hangover Museum

Partied too hard last night? Drop by Zagreb's Hangover Museum to feel more normal. People share their craziest hangover stories and visitors can even try on beer goggles to experience how the world looks like through drunken eyes.

panorama

Jonathan Bousfield on the Future as Imagined in 1960s Socialist Yugoslavia

How will the futuristic world of 2060 look? How far will technology have advanced, and how will those advancements affect how we live our everyday lives? These are the questions the Zagreb-based magazine Globus asked in a series of articles in 1960, when conceptualizing what advancements society would make 40 years in the future, the then far-off year of 2000. The articles used fantastical predictions about the future to highlight the technological advancements already made by the then socialist Yugoslavia. Take a trip with guide, Jonathan Bousfield, back to the future as envisioned by journalists in 1960s Yugoslavia.

panorama

Untranslatable Croatian Phrases

What’s the best way for an open-minded foreigner to get straight to the heart of another culture and get a feel for what makes people tick? Don’t just sample the local food and drink and see the major sights, perk up your ears and listen. There’s nothing that gives away the local flavor of a culture more than the common phrases people use, especially ones that have no direct translation.

Check out a quirky list of untranslatable Croatian phrases from Croatian cultural guide extraordinaire, Andrea Pisac, in the link below:

panorama

Jonathon Bousfield on the Museum of Broken Relationships

Just got out of a serious relationship and don't know what to do with all those keepsakes and mementos of your former loved one? The very popular and probably most unique museum in Zagreb, the Museum of Broken Relationships, dedicated to preserving keepsakes alongside the diverse stories of relationships gone wrong, will gladly take them. Find out how the museum got started and take an in-depth look at some of its quirkiest pieces in the link below.

panorama

Cool Things To Do in Zagreb

Zagreb is Croatia’s relaxed, charming and pedestrian-friendly capital. Check out Time Out’s definitive Zagreb guide for a diverse set of options of what to explore in the city from unusual museums to legendary flea markets and everything in between.

panorama

Jonathan Bousfield on Diocletian's Legacy in Split

Diocletian’s Palace is the main attraction in Split, the heart and soul of the city. Because of the palace, Split’s city center can be described as a living museum and it draws in the thousands of tourists that visit the city annually. But how much do we really know about the palace’s namesake who built it, the last ruler of a receding empire? Jonathan Bousfield contends that history only gives us a partial answer.

interview

The Poetry of Zagreb

Cities have served as sources of inspiration, frustration, and discovery for millennia. The subject of sonnets, stories, plays, the power centers of entire cultures, hotbeds of innovation, and the cause of wars, cities are mainstays of the present and the future with millions more people flocking to them every year.

Let the poet, Zagreb native Tomica Bajsić, take you on a lyrical tour of the city. Walk the streets conjured by his graceful words and take in the gentle beauty of the Zagreb of his childhood memories and present day observation.

panorama

You Haven't Experienced Zagreb if You Haven't Been to the Dolac Market

Dolac, the main city market, is a Zagreb institution. Selling all the fresh ingredients you need to whip up a fabulous dinner, from fruits and vegetables to fish, meat and homemade cheese and sausages, the sellers come from all over Croatia. Positioned right above the main square, the colorful market is a beacon of a simpler way of life and is just as bustling as it was a century ago.

panorama

Croatian Phrases Translated into English

Do you find phrases and sayings give personality and flair to a language? Have you ever pondered how the culture and history of a place shape the common phrases? Check out some common sayings in Croatian with their literal translations and actual meanings below.

panorama

Discover Croatia's Archaeological Secrets

Discover Croatia’s rich archaeological secrets, from the well known ancient Roman city of Salona near Split or the Neanderthal museum in Krapina to the often overlooked Andautonia Archaeological Park, just outside of Zagreb, which boasts the excavated ruins of a Roman town or the oldest continuously inhabited town in Europe, Vinkovci.

panorama

Croatian Sites on UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List

A little know fact is that Croatia, together with Spain, have the most cultural and historical heritage under the protection of UNESCO, and Croatia has the highest number of UNESCO intangible goods of any European country.

panorama

Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb

The National Theater in Zagreb, Croatia’s capital, is one of those things which always finds its way to every visitor’s busy schedule.

panorama

Zagreb's Street Art

So you're visiting Zagreb and are curious about it's underground art scene? Check out this guide to Zagreb's street art and explore all the best graffiti artists' work for yourself on your next walk through the city.

panorama

Zagreb Festivals and Cultural Events

Numerous festivals, shows and exhibitions are held annually in Zagreb. Search our what's on guide to arts & entertainment.

Authors' pages

Književna Republika Relations PRAVOnaPROFESIJU LitLink mk zg