Welcome to Croatian poetry - October 2005
“Is this the way to the Celestial City? You are just in your way.” The lines from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress standing at the beginning of Damir Šodan’s book of poetry The Middle World are inviting us to look better at the outside world and with our eyes wide open to think again about its real boundaries.
In this issue we present to you the poetry of Damir Šodan, one of the leading voices in contemporary Croatian poetry. It is a poetry, as a critic pointed out, “of moderate pretence and an ironic and self-deprecating sense of humour. The author has created a sort of a lyrical journal of both his geographic and imaginary roaming, a diary of both topological and typological positioning within the language that itself stretches between the regional and the global.” On this journey with Damir Šodan, readers are frequently cautioned not to take everything at face value, however great the value of what one faces in these poems might be. And yes, there are always hints toward the question of who is really travelling, and how to discern between ever interlocking spheres the “inward or intimate” and the “outer or objective”. Hope you’ll enjoy it!
