Mednarodna literarna nagrada KONS / The KONS International Literary Award ® was founded in 2011 as a tool to combat the oppressive atmosphere and bleak prospects for critical intellectuals and creative people, especially poets and writers in Slovenia following the university purge at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Primorska in Koper in 2010. I invited two Slovene poets Barbara Korun and Tatjana Jamnik to join me in the project, and be the co-owners of the prize. 
The name of the award comes from a cycle of poems entitled KONS (meaning CONStructions, in Slovenian KONStrukcije) by Slovenian poet Srečko Kosovel (1904–1926). He was a poet who burned out his genius in just a few years, dying at the age of only twenty-two. More about him and some of his poems can be found below.
Some of Kosovel's belongings from his memorial room in Tomaj in the Karst region, Slovenia
The project, initially established in the open spirit of honoring the literary work and life commitments of brave individuals, unfortunately did not stand the test of time and circumstances. Today, I believe that my exile and the circumstances that inevitably accompany it (the degradation of the exile at all costs, so that she/he does not come to a position of speaking out and shining a light on the secrets of her/his homeland and its criminality, pressure on those who do not want to accept this, blackmailing and harassing exile's friends and colleagues, then their weaknesses, conformity, personal ambitions, the craving for symbolic capital, envy, etc.) contributed to the breakup. (For some of my thoughts and reflections on this topic, see the last section below).

First, let me take you through this journey, which I do not regret in any way. Some projects are long-term, while others are just a flight through the high skies. Both have their charm and beautiful moments.
KONS award founders at the begining of a journey 2011 ... (From left to right: Jamnik, Kramberger, Korun)
The project "KONS" at its beginning seemed to be a generous and powerful voyage. It gave me - and I strongly believe that others too - many wonderful moments. I spent an unforgettable evening with poet Claribel Alegria, her son Erik and his American girlfriend at her home in Managua, Nicaragua, in February 2013. Claribel Alegria was the second laureate of the KONS Award, and she accepted it with noble emotion. And this despite the fact that the prize was totally unknown and came from an insignificant country. She had read my poetry and she was happy to share her precious moments with Braco and me. She wrote me that she used the at the wedding of his son Erik. She later wrote to me that she had used the white tablecloth with her embroidered verses, which was part of the KONS award, at her son Erik's wedding. One could not wish for anything more beautiful.

I met Margaret Randall (who aftewards wrote an article about the KONS bestowal in Granada for the New Mexico Mercury), Barbara Byers, Rei Berroa, Edenilson Rivera, Jerome Rothenberg with his wife Diane Brodatz (who kindly visited us later in Paris and we spent a vivid diner disscusion together in Maison Suger), and many more kind and generous poets because of the award. With many of them we remained poetic friends for good. New young poets have also written to me after reading about the KONS award here, trying to persuade me to continue with it. 

Then, I had a lovely, intensive and affectionate two hours talk with Nataša Velikonja at the modest, somewhat "chamber" last bestowal in 2018. These are the heights of a project. It was absolutely worth it.

​The good memories are infinitely stronger than the idiot wind that swept the project away once and for all.


"KONS" Laureates were:
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2011 - Iztok Osojnik (Slovenia)                         Short CV (Slov / Engl)    Utemeljitev   /   Justification
2013 - Claribel Alegría (Nicaragua/Salvador) 
                                                                                                                      Short CV (Slov / Engl)    Utemeljitev   /   Justification
2015* - the award shoud go to Radka Denemarková (Czech Republic), but something went wrong and T. Jamnik who should deliever it, for whatever reason, has failed in her task. I kept the diploma and the present in the archive of the KONS award.
2018 - Nataša Velikonja (Slovenia)             Short CV (Slov / Engl)    Utemeljitev   /   Justification

* The award was not given out. 
On the left (above and below): Iztok Osojnik (below with the founders of the KONS award and members of the jury);
​in the middle: Claribel Alegría; on the right: Nataša Velikonja
All photos are from personal archive of Taja Kramberger, please, don't use them without the permission.
I translated selected poetry and prose of Claribel Alegría into Slovene language (Več kakor zloščen kamen, KUD PD, 2013). Below, you can read 10 of her poems - in Slovene language (further references are to be find in the book). Sorry, if you're not a Slovenophone reader ... bur you can read some of her poems in English here.
Poems of Claribel Alegría (KONS 2013) in Slovene
Here are also the poems of Iztok Osojnik (KONS 2011) and
Nataša Velikonja (KONS 2018) in Slovene and in English.
The name KONS is taken from a series of poems entitled KONStrukcije (constructs), written by the young and renowned Slovene poet Srečko Kosovel (1904–1926) only a year before his premature death. These poems epitomise the perennial need for social change, criticism, humanism and constructivism (as a movement of his time). KONS poems contain words that grow into space, voluminous and resonant, combined with political notations in meanings. "A  poem has to be a complex," said the poet.

Kosovel left behind a rich, unique, and thematically diverse literary oeuvre (traditional lyric poems, children's poems, somewhat reified "construction" poems - kons(es), socially and politically sensitive late poems - integrals, short articles and reviews in journal Mladina, diary entries, and before his death he also tackled prose – he planned a novel Kraševci, a story about the people of Kras), in which he explored themes of social justice and the search for meaning in a rapidly changing world that was already sliding into fascism. Part of the Slovenian-speaking Primorska region – and with it the Kras region, Kosovel's homeland – came under Italian rule after the First World War, and Kosovel experienced the fierce and destructive effects of fascism on a daily basis almost two decades before other European artists.

Introductory text in his posthumously published collections of poems Pesmi (Poems, 1927) reads:
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I would like to say something beautiful, something good, something bright to people, like the brigh November sun in the Karst. But my words are heavy and silent, bitter like juniper berries from the Karst. They contain suffering that you will never know, pain that you cannot understand. My pain is proud and silent, and better than by people it is understood by the pines on the meadow and the juniper bushes behind the rocks.
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Kosovel's poetry is characterized by a modernist avant-garde sensibility that embraces experimentation and constant searching (let us not forget that he was under twenty when he began writing and died at the age of 22; in this brief period he wrote few thousand poems), but at the same time does not stray from reality. He explored various styles that characterized the turbulent and dynamic political and artistic landscape of Europe between the world wars (impressionism, expressionism, constructivism, futurism with its technological fascination, collage poetry; his texts in the final phase are also a critique of materialism and exploitative capitalism). He studied them all and he mostly rejected them or used them to build his own originality, which includes a recognizable combination of precision in expression, unconventionality (loose syntax, collage, various graphic and typographic elements), and fragmentation.

He was also greatly influenced by Zenitism (Micić's categorical imperative) with its links to European trends and by Bauhaus artists (Walter Gropius, Moholy Nagy, Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer, etc.), among whom was Kosovel's then friend, Slovenian painter Avgust Černigoj (1898-1985). What they all have in common is their preoccupation with themes of technological progress, the absurdity of existence, the search for identity, and alienation in a world increasingly marked by terror and existential uncertainty. The uniqueness of Kosovel's endeavors lies in his desire to build art tailored to man and humanity, beyond all isms.

Finally, he defined himself as a constructivist in favor of humanity (certainly also under the influence of Russian literary constructivism, which his friend Ivo Grahor had introduced him to after his return from Russia in 1925), but – significantly – distanced himself from any dullness and mechanicalness. In 1925, in keeping with the times, he wrote a manifesto on the subject of constructivism.

In his diary entry (Dnevnik III, p. 809), we read about the "flexible philosophy" at work in his poetic writings:

"Art has not only a direct meaning for people [...], but also an indirect meaning. Movement is that which emanates from the artist's individuality into the individuality of the reader, arouses movement there again, and from there moves into the individuality of the non-reader. Like every idea and movement, art wants to embrace all of life and spread through hidden sources to all people and influence everything."

Kosovel's poetry can be compared to other European modernists of his time, such as Vladimir Mayakovsky or the Parisian experimentalist Branko Ve Poljanski, and - with his exceptional and sudden burst of novelty - to Arthur Rimbaud or Guillaume Apollinaire, with some of his preocupations to Rainer Maria Rilke (who actually wrote in Duino castle his Elegies in 1912 - published in 1923, and that is only some miles away of the Karstic Tomaj, where Kosovel lived and created), with his musicality and poetic flux to Taoist poet Wang Wei, and some others. Richard Jackson (in introduction to Look Back, Look Ahead. The Selected Poems of Srečko Kosovel, translations by Ana Jelnikar and Barbara Siegel Carlson, Ugly Duckling Presse, Brooklyn, New York, 2010 - see below the cover) sees in some of his verses similarities to Wallace Stevens' "believable fictions."

The KONS Award therefore aimes, more precisely aimed to honor the memory of Srečko Kosovel and also of those among the poets who, using the tools of basic humanity, poetry, and consideration for their fellow human beings, who follow(ed) artistic buzz and exploration in Kosovel's spirit of

                    Alone, alone, I must be
                    everything that was hidden, I must discover.


Below are five of Kosovel's poems in Slovene and English, along with some poetic collages.
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On the left: Kosovel's poetic collage (Ujetnik zrcala / Prisoner of the Mirror);
on the right: famous Kosovel's KONS 5; 
in the middle: Kosovel (the graphic of Kosovel below was made by his friend Avgust Černigoj)
Media coverage of the KONS AWARD

Slovenia: ​
Austria:
Italy:
Poland:
  • Rita Baum:  Claribel Alegría laureatką II Międzynarodowej Nagrody Literackiej KONS, 7 April 2011

Chech Republic:   
USA:​
Some of the recent translations of Kosovel's poems and other textes (English and French)
(For the book in the middle, French translations were made by Zdenka Štimac;
for English translations, the names of translators are visible on the covers)
Some notes on the closure and fate of the award KONS (2011-2018/2021)


When my future in my small, mafia-controlled country was definitively ruined by the 2010 university purge and the insidious actions that followed until 2012 (and beyond), I tried to resist and fight for the little freedom I had left before I went into exile (in autumn 2012). Thus, I was the initiator of the idea to award courageous poets and writers (both women and men, but with a focus on historically marginalised women) whose life's work and attitude has demonstrated humanity, solidarity, charity and honesty in the face of intrusive ideologies and invasive policies. Who did not bow their heads, as an American poet Margaret Randall would say.

I invited two Slovene women poets, Barbara Korun and Tatjana Jamnik, to join my project. Why these two? Because, naively, I believed that, through literary projects we had done together and battles we had fought against politically accommodated writers and poets in the country over the past years (those whom you probably know, as they are export designs with a political backup), we had built firm trust, and that continuing on this path would be fair, if not honest and dignified.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

In camouflage democracy (based on old totalitarian premises and methods), nothing is ever built; only the appearance of incessant 'building' exists. Even if the image or reality seems real at the time, political interventions and the intrigues that necessarily follow, turn it into its inversion or a farce. I relied on this appearance of 'achieving something' or 'strengthening human or literary ties' through shared projects with my colleague poets, while behind the scenes, the strings were pulled in another direction by the consecrated inner social network of a small (totally controled) country, which is still run by the old-regime elites in the firm spirit of Stalinism and Titoism. 

The project lasted less than a decade. While I (and my husband, Braco Rotar) was in exile in Paris, trying to get back on my feet and doing my best to simultaneously take care of our KONS project in these circumstances, the two invited literary colleagues incessantly intrigued against each other and, most likely, against me first and foremost. After all, only I was the dissident and the outcast, from whom both could profit greatly in the specific conditions of the literary field in Slovenia.

And they did. Breaking with a dissident can accelerate your career, especially if you involve the media and the 'right' people (those confirmed by the political regime or simply their adulators) and create a spectacle or scandal that reinforces the mob's sense of coherence (this is exactly what happened with the theft of my translation of Salgado's work later on — a few words about it in the following). People like to gossip about others. They especially like to gossip about those who have fallen from grace and lost their high position. I had that: a rather good social position, though I remained critical to the power structure. I was a beloved university teacher, a praised and respected poet (at least locally in Koper and among honest people around the country), a translator and an editor. I was happy and had many plans for the future - some of them together with my students. I was also tireless in organising cultural and literary events and national and international projects on a voluntary basis. I engaged in social justice actions for the benefit of others. I don't flatter myself with this, it is just a description of my multiple acitvities.

In lethargic Slovenia, these activities certainly caused a reaction: a backlash, envy and quiet but furious rivalry, political monitoring. I remember that a poet and translator Barbara Pogačnik somewhere around 2009 told me that Tomaž Šalamun is spreading the rumors that I blocked his book at Gallimard in Paris. I laughed at such stupidity and a blatant lie (Later, I realized that there were many such lies, in fact, a web of outrageous lies about me, and that there are even more people around the world who still believe them; Šalamun was, of course, a collaborator with various authorities and not a dissident, as he liked to portray himself. The same applies to his notorious acolytes.) I did not pay attention to such gossip as long as I had secured my small space and a university niche in which to work. Perhaps I should have paid more attention to these phenomena much earlier, and resolutely pushed away those who relied on my work or seeked profit in my proximity, since malice and malevolence are omnipresent in my small native country, stemming from the widespread incitement of Schadenfreude in the 1930s that continued and blossomed under the communist regime after the war. After my experience in exile, I duly realised that I had no friends in the literary or scientific fields in my patria. On the other hand, I have maintained all my early friendships, which have been with me since childhood and early adulthood - and still are. 

I recently read (from France) in my (!) Slovenian Wikipedia entry that Barbara Korun left KONS in 2014 'due to fundamental differences in literary orientation and in the concept of how the award should operate'. The text in my Wikipedia entry changes through years depending on the current political affiliation of my opponents, who seem to watch over encyclopaedic entries in Slovenia and change small details. But I must say that nothing of the sort said or written by Barbara Korun ever came to my attention. Tatjana Jamnik, who visited me during my time in exile in Paris, had some kind of conflicting discussions with Barbara Korun at that time (2014/2015), which I never really understood. Probably, alongside other concerns that were more important to Braco and me, I relied too much on the word of T. Jamnik, who presented the matter to me from her point of view (later I got to know better this conforming "point of view" of hers) and she prepared a document on Barbara Korun's withdrawal from the award. I was perplexed, though I signed it, as I thought this would save the KONS. Perhaps I should have ended the KONS story myself at that point too, but I didn't.

Braco and I were tired of the conflicts and harassment that had been inflicted on us, and which had even reached us in France. Besides, we were becoming increasingly distant from the tricky Slovenian world at that time (2013-2016). We were trying to survive and explain to our French intellectual colleagues what had happened to us and why we were in exile (inside of the EU!). This was almost impossible to elucidate between 2012 and 2015, that is before the Charlie Hebdo attacks, before the Russian occupation of Crimea, the war in Ukraine and the wider knowledge of Russian dissidents. Not to mention recent academic purges in the USA. All these events summarise well retrospectively what happened to us and who were our opponents: we were basically thrown out of the Slovenian visible institutions and secure existence because we were critical intellectuals who took our public role seriously, who demanded real democratic procedures (and not dissimulations and appearances) in life, at institutions and at court ... - but this was premature for others (in the West) to understand. They had no idea what was happening in the ex-socialistic world. Apart from that, nobody really wanted to listen to the stories, which seemed like dystopian fantasies. 

The situation has changed today. At least some of our colleagues now realise that we were right to warn them about the resurgence of certain Eastern Bloc and Cold War mechanisms. They recognise the harshness of lies and fausses nouvelles (false news), which the French historian Marc Bloch described so precisely already in 1921. I remember a dinner in 2015 in Paris at the home of a very well-known French historian, where famous French intellectuals were completely unfamiliar with this little booklet. It was extremely difficult to convey anything serious to those people living in their own little comfort bubbles. Most of them even preferred to listen to our Slovenian oppressors, who said that nothing had happened in Slovenia and that we were exaggerating things.

I believe all of these factors, too, contributed to a rift in the KONS project. While all the others adapted to the new brutal Slovenian mode of living and an oppressive political operationalisation, we - my husband Braco and I - did not. 

We left.
We left when we had exhausted all paths and possibilities of action within our homeland, not before. When death was the only option left for us (and we felt it on our skin), we left because we wanted to live. We are not people who look back with nostalgia, but forward with bright determination and plans. 

Of course, I'm not saying that I didn't play a part in the breakup of the KONS, especially given my aversion to intrigue and lies, and the growing distance I felt from the Slovenian world. Barbara Korun was right at least about this (if this is indeed her view and not just Tatjana Jamnik's interpretation that came to me): we have become estranged from each other, emotionally and humanly, in the immediate years after I left - living in different contexts and with different social aspirations. True.

Perhaps I did not always react when I should have—due to stress and other concerns in France—but I believe that the breakup between the three of us would have happened sooner or later anyway, purely for structural reasons. I would add that from the very beginning I tried to combine three completely incompatible life, ethical, intellectual, and literary paths, which might have worked in France, where they are used to pluralistic stories, mutual respect and real solidarity in projects. And crucially: there is no monitoring background, no network, no political postulates that would put pressure on individual people, their freedom, ambitions, and dreams. However, in the forcibly homogenized and subjugated world of the Slovenian ghetto, where my "colleagues" still live and are accomodated to, such a plurality of different views and standpoints is unimaginable. In Slovenia, authority imposes itself everywhere in the most vulgar and insidious ways – read the poems of Nataša Velikonja, the latest KONS award winner, who describes this with rare poetic sensitivity, indignation, and boldness.

After the first two bestowals and in preparation for the third, which should have taken place in 2015 (but somehow didn't), one of my two initial KONS "colleagues" (the only one who was left) who has a little publishing house, stole my final, verified translation of M. Salgado's novel. I had introduced M. Salgado to this small publishing house in the first place - I surely regret it to these days. The theft was worthy of the well-orchestrated regime manoeuvres of the mid-1930s or early 1950s in the Soviet Union. It not only robbed me - and that in already difficult conditions of exile - of my meager payment for translation work but also more closely linked by complicity the people who clearly hated me and acted together against me at the European level (the translation was supported by the European Union, the irony of this is that Braco's and my references were probably the strongest among the applications). So, the scandal and theft were caused by a politically well-connected trifle.

I knew immediately what the theft meant. It was a needed scandal that helped T. Jamnik to consent and adapt to the ruling political regime in Slovenia and its demands. But it was too late. You have to throw mud at homo sacer to be safe or to move up the ladder in an oppressive social space, especially if you were at friendly terms with him (her) before. Or, was she all the time power's Mitarbeiterin and I was blind?

By that point I had had really enough of 'Slovene intrigues' and I abruptly closed this annoying homeland chapter for good, subsequently refusing to renew the 'KONS' trademark at the Copyright Agency of Slovenia in 2021. (However, future abuses cannot be ruled out.) From then on, I no longer participated in projects with Slovenian partners. And I felt, I feel so much better.

Perhaps it is worth noting that the MIRA award, established within the politically acceptable and 'elite' Slovenian PEN Club a few years after the KONS award, adopted all the main ideas from the KONS Rules. A "rebel yell" singer informant "kindly" asked me at that time to consult the KONS Rules, which were then slightly modified and transcribed into MIRA's founding documents. That informant would later become one of MIRA's laureates. I would rather not comment on the other recipients of the MIRA award, which even includes one of the two KONS colleagues. But if you want to find an anti-Taja herd society (of provincial women), you will find it there.

Terrible! All my life, I have loved people, women and men equally.
I have spent my life trying to stand up for their rights and against social injustices.
I fought for human rights, women's rights and students' rights; I supported their aspirations and demands.
I have never hated anyone or plotted against anyone.
I published everything I had to say openly and publicly.
I respected opponents who responded to me honestly and publicly. There really weren't many of them in my home country. 

And I left my native country, leaving behind a group of hostile people who appeared out of nowhere,  fed with lies and armed with bludgeons.

That's terrible and sad.

But this is precisely what happens when someone tries to change a corrupt system that is functioning at full capacity and with which almost everyone is completely satisfied. Sooner or later, such an individual finds himself/herself at the centre of terrible collective projections and becomes the target not only of the local intelligentsia (the profiteers and swots), but also of the most perverse elements in the community.

Ultimately, people get the political regime they deserve. We left because we do not deserve the kind of regime that Slovenia has today. We have always worked honestly for the benefit of others, whether they were students, colleagues or ordinary people. We do not want to live in an environment where this is not possible.

Finally, we are completely satisfied with our decision.
We love life and liberty and live them fully further in France.

Regardless of the fact that the world is slowly sinking into what we experienced in a small, despicable home country, it is always possible to find a microenvironment in an old democracy where an honest life, respectabilty, creativity and humour still have value.