Poetry
1. POETRY
A. Original books
A. Original books
Between 1995 and 2014 Taja Kramberger published 10 books of poetry.
While first two books were of the same initial creative flight - first (Marzipan, 1997), a vital and unbearably light jump to the abyss of the language, and an amazing intellectual and poetic tour de force accomplished with a great author's risk and, finally, with some visible bruises, and second (The Sea Says, 1999), a rather hard, much drier but still safe and sovereign energetic landing - defining the frames and frontiers of her language experience, the next three books (Genegströmung, 2001; Velvet Indigo, 2004; Mobilizacije / Mobilisations / Mobilitazioni / Mobilizations, 2004, reprint in 2011) mark a complex transitional poetic period of building and elaborating T. Kramberger's proper and idiosincratic poetic language (de facto already present from the beginning, but now reinforced and peeled off of unnecessary compounds) that later bore a strong transformative poetic cycle of her last five books written in Slovene for Slovene reading public.
Kramberger's last 5 books of poetry (2006-2014) are at the same time basic and central books of Slovene poetry (though actually denied) from the beginning of the 21. Century: Everyday Talks (2006, transposition of poetic vision to the micro-poetics of daily conversations, struggles and small objects), Opus quinque dierum (2009, a poetic narration of the Dreyfus Affair and its dimensions, possibly unique in the world, and with an inner magnetic force hardly imaginable), a singular book of blackout poetry in Slovene littérature - *stava **publike *****ni** (2010, humorously revealing the corrupt pragmatism of the "social justice" in Slovenia) - done on the basis of the Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia and some other legal acts (revealing the constitution as a screen-trap covering the truth and deforming the reality), From the Edge of a Cliff (2011, with an essential exile cycle and some other anthological poems) to her last Slovene book In Your Embrace, There's a Place for Me (2014, written already in exile in Paris, "an absolutely Key-Book of the Slovene poetry at the beginning of the 21th Century" and a must have for every poetry lover). Last two Kramberger's books are poetic masterpieces and they designate together an amazing resistant front of a singular, unique and liberated emancipated poetic language, which is simultaneously socially sensitive and intellectually open, so that author's words and verses are practically huge dikes against all the oppressive mechanisms, polluted discourses and other social pathologies of the time and space.
A Slovene poet, intellectual and publicist Iztok Osojnik (Kosovel and Kramberger: Between the Avant-Garde and Contemporary Slovenian Political Poetry, 2011) wrote a propos Kramberger's poetry:
"Her verses are written like slaps that the contemporary poet metes out to the tradition of poetic vacillation of the central (or mainstream) Slovenian literary scene. However, they are more than just an expression of mockery and rebellion toward tradition; they are also clearly established signs of poetic power, which marked the hitherto still invisible horizon of poetry and changed the relations that are not only relations of symbolic values in a poem, but also newly established relations of the material world, which determine not only different types of art, but particular configurations of what can be seen and thought, certain means of being in the material world. [...] This represents a rebellion and a change of a particular situation, which in the case of Taja Krambereger acts to completely and openly change existing ruling hierarchies not only in Slovenian poetry, but also in the hierarchy of the social scene, affirming what Rancière calls “democraticness” as the creative inheritance of Europe in general. Here, however, I am not merely dealing with a political performance, but with the determined appearance of a woman in politics that changes politics as a whole, changes “the means of doing things with words” and signifies a strong expression of the hitherto “mute,” poorly asserted voice. Here I am speaking not only of her own voice, but of a universally suppressed voice, which belongs to the world and superseded her person, the voice of the repressed world, which has, by speaking, destructured ruling hierarchies and transmitted the focus of action into new speech. Moreover, Kramberger’s poetry not only means a new “division” of voices in poetry or a new speech, but a new division in the material world, which displays and engages an invisible reality that up until now was incapacitated by obstacles."
Taja Kramberger is/was one of the rare and courageous poets who speak/spoke "truth to the power" in a hideous pathetic Central-East European world of the post-Yugoslave transition period, which which still flirts with the old Stalinist regime in its Titoist version. She was engaged in many areas (literature, translation, editorship, university teaching, research, cultural organisations, public manifestations), among other things she actively struggled for social justice, in the circumstances of more and more savage provincial capitalism and recidivous East-block Stalinism camouflaged by the flowery phrase of "democracy". For her transgression she paid a high price - she survived (together with his husband) a brutal social lynch and personal (character assassination!) and professional degradation (disqualification of her work in all domaines of her engagement) in her home-country (2004-2010), national and international detractions and intrigues sans fin, an exile (in 2012) and an, finally, a permanent emigration to France in 2016.
In December 2014, Taja Kramberger stepped out of the SWA-Slovene Writers' Association with an Open Letter that was suppressed in all Slovene media, though sent to them. Here is the Slovene original of an Open Letter, and its French translation.
While first two books were of the same initial creative flight - first (Marzipan, 1997), a vital and unbearably light jump to the abyss of the language, and an amazing intellectual and poetic tour de force accomplished with a great author's risk and, finally, with some visible bruises, and second (The Sea Says, 1999), a rather hard, much drier but still safe and sovereign energetic landing - defining the frames and frontiers of her language experience, the next three books (Genegströmung, 2001; Velvet Indigo, 2004; Mobilizacije / Mobilisations / Mobilitazioni / Mobilizations, 2004, reprint in 2011) mark a complex transitional poetic period of building and elaborating T. Kramberger's proper and idiosincratic poetic language (de facto already present from the beginning, but now reinforced and peeled off of unnecessary compounds) that later bore a strong transformative poetic cycle of her last five books written in Slovene for Slovene reading public.
Kramberger's last 5 books of poetry (2006-2014) are at the same time basic and central books of Slovene poetry (though actually denied) from the beginning of the 21. Century: Everyday Talks (2006, transposition of poetic vision to the micro-poetics of daily conversations, struggles and small objects), Opus quinque dierum (2009, a poetic narration of the Dreyfus Affair and its dimensions, possibly unique in the world, and with an inner magnetic force hardly imaginable), a singular book of blackout poetry in Slovene littérature - *stava **publike *****ni** (2010, humorously revealing the corrupt pragmatism of the "social justice" in Slovenia) - done on the basis of the Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia and some other legal acts (revealing the constitution as a screen-trap covering the truth and deforming the reality), From the Edge of a Cliff (2011, with an essential exile cycle and some other anthological poems) to her last Slovene book In Your Embrace, There's a Place for Me (2014, written already in exile in Paris, "an absolutely Key-Book of the Slovene poetry at the beginning of the 21th Century" and a must have for every poetry lover). Last two Kramberger's books are poetic masterpieces and they designate together an amazing resistant front of a singular, unique and liberated emancipated poetic language, which is simultaneously socially sensitive and intellectually open, so that author's words and verses are practically huge dikes against all the oppressive mechanisms, polluted discourses and other social pathologies of the time and space.
A Slovene poet, intellectual and publicist Iztok Osojnik (Kosovel and Kramberger: Between the Avant-Garde and Contemporary Slovenian Political Poetry, 2011) wrote a propos Kramberger's poetry:
"Her verses are written like slaps that the contemporary poet metes out to the tradition of poetic vacillation of the central (or mainstream) Slovenian literary scene. However, they are more than just an expression of mockery and rebellion toward tradition; they are also clearly established signs of poetic power, which marked the hitherto still invisible horizon of poetry and changed the relations that are not only relations of symbolic values in a poem, but also newly established relations of the material world, which determine not only different types of art, but particular configurations of what can be seen and thought, certain means of being in the material world. [...] This represents a rebellion and a change of a particular situation, which in the case of Taja Krambereger acts to completely and openly change existing ruling hierarchies not only in Slovenian poetry, but also in the hierarchy of the social scene, affirming what Rancière calls “democraticness” as the creative inheritance of Europe in general. Here, however, I am not merely dealing with a political performance, but with the determined appearance of a woman in politics that changes politics as a whole, changes “the means of doing things with words” and signifies a strong expression of the hitherto “mute,” poorly asserted voice. Here I am speaking not only of her own voice, but of a universally suppressed voice, which belongs to the world and superseded her person, the voice of the repressed world, which has, by speaking, destructured ruling hierarchies and transmitted the focus of action into new speech. Moreover, Kramberger’s poetry not only means a new “division” of voices in poetry or a new speech, but a new division in the material world, which displays and engages an invisible reality that up until now was incapacitated by obstacles."
Taja Kramberger is/was one of the rare and courageous poets who speak/spoke "truth to the power" in a hideous pathetic Central-East European world of the post-Yugoslave transition period, which which still flirts with the old Stalinist regime in its Titoist version. She was engaged in many areas (literature, translation, editorship, university teaching, research, cultural organisations, public manifestations), among other things she actively struggled for social justice, in the circumstances of more and more savage provincial capitalism and recidivous East-block Stalinism camouflaged by the flowery phrase of "democracy". For her transgression she paid a high price - she survived (together with his husband) a brutal social lynch and personal (character assassination!) and professional degradation (disqualification of her work in all domaines of her engagement) in her home-country (2004-2010), national and international detractions and intrigues sans fin, an exile (in 2012) and an, finally, a permanent emigration to France in 2016.
In December 2014, Taja Kramberger stepped out of the SWA-Slovene Writers' Association with an Open Letter that was suppressed in all Slovene media, though sent to them. Here is the Slovene original of an Open Letter, and its French translation.
I) 1997: Marcipan [Marzipan]
ISBN 86-11-14944-0
Mladinska knjiga, Ljubljana (Slovene) Shortlisted (final selection of the two) for the First Literary Book Award of the Slovene Book Fair 1997 II) 1999: Spregovori morje [The Sea Says]
ISBN 86-11-15548-3
Mladinska knjiga, Ljubljana (Slovene) Shortlisted (final selection) for the Jenko Award 1999 |
III) 2001: Protitok / Gegenströmung
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VI) 2006: Vsakdanji pogovori
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B. Poetry books in translation
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Five books of selected poems written by T. Kramberger were translated and published into other languages:
I) In Croatian (Slovene and Italian): MOBILIZACIJE (translated by Ksenija Premur), Naklada Lara, Zagreb, 2008, ISBN 978-953-7289-31-7 II) In Hungarian: EZERNYI CSEND (translated by Lukács Zsolt), Pro Pannónia Könyvek, Pécs, 2008, ISBN 978-963-9893-07-8 III) In French (sold out): LE POÈME EST UNE MAIN OFFERTE (translated by Drago Braco Rotar), Addenda, Koper, 2011, ISBN 978-961-93031-7-7 IV) In Spanish (Argentina): NO PALABRAS (translated by Barbara Pregelj), Ediciones Gog y Magog, Buenos Aires, 2013, ISBN 978-950-9704-63-3 |
C. Some of the anthologies, containing Taja Kramberger's poems in translations
The World Record is an international Poetry Parnassus anthology of work
by the representative poets from all the countries taking part
in the 2012 London Olympics. Each poet in it features with one poem.
"With this book you can discover the world through its keenest observers, political activists, and most articulate wordsmiths. The World Record marks the first time so many living poets from so many countries have been gathered together in
one anthology - and 2012 is the first time so many poets
have been gathered in one place."
(From the site "Good Reads")
CONTENTS OF THE WORLD RECORD & INTRODUCTION (by Simon Armitage)
TAJA KRAMBERGER'S POEM FROM THE ANTHOLOGY
D. For other publications of Taja Kramberger's poems and translations in anthologies, journals, reviews, or else see Bibliography section