Introduction to the April 2008 issue
This edition of contemporary Croatian poetry brings together two poets of the younger or, more precisely, the youngest generation.
Slađan Lipovec (1972), one of the most interesting younger Croatian poets, dedicates the greater part of his poetry to Nature. He sees Nature as a great, everlasting and universal topic, in the finest tradition of Western lyricism. And as a poet he is fully focused on the present, so Nature in his poems appears as the widest, global framework of life and as a powerful, all-encompassing current that permeates and connects urban and rural spaces and has a deep impact on the way every individual leads his or her life.
Marko Pogačar (1984), according to the critics one of the most talented poets to appear in Croatian literature in the past ten years, thematizes and describes the fast and often very dark rhythms of modern life in his memorable poetry. His poems are eclectic, teeming with numerous references to modern poetry. Their cultural background is deeply immersed in popular and rock culture and thus allows for different, fresh readings. His poetics tends to approach ethics so that, while speaking about separate, individual and completely detached events, which take shape as we read his poetry, he can, in the same breath, speak about what surpasses the immediate present, which in turn can be recognized as a delineator of of a new generation’s sensibility.
