Editor’s note: These poems are from ‘Book of Holidays' by Marko Pogačar, whose previous book—also translated by Andrea Jurjević into the English—was a finalist for the National Translation Award in Poetry. ‘Book of Holidays' consists of 52 linked prose poems (and a few illustrations) that ask what happens to holidays of places that no longer exist or perhaps have never existed.
These poems have been published as images to preserve the language, which browsers sometimes auto-translate.
Marko Pogačar (Split, Croatia, 1984) is one of Croatia's most translated contemporary poets and a leading literary voice of his generation. He is an award-winning author of nearly 20 volumes of poetry, short prose, essays, and travelogues. A frequent guest at literary events worldwide, Pogačar has received numerous honors, including Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, Récollets-Paris, and DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm. In addition to writing books, he collaborates with musicians and occasionally writes for radio and screen.
Andrea Jurjević is a Croatian poet, literary translator, and painter originally from Croatia. She is the author of two poetry collections and a chapbook: In Another Country, winner of the 2022 Saturnalia Books Prize; Small Crimes, winner of the 2015 Philip Levine Prize; and Nightcall, which was the 2021 ACME Poem Company Surrealist Series selection. Her book-length translations from Croatian include Olja Savičević’s Mamasafari and Jadranka’s First Life as well as Marko Pogačar’s Midnight Verbs and Dead Letter Office, which was shortlisted for the 2021 National Translation Award in Poetry. Her poems, stories, translations, and essays have appeared in The Believer, TriQuarterly, The Missouri Review, Joyland, The New Republic, The Writer’s Chronicle, and many other publications. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, where she teaches in the English Department at Georgia State University. To learn more, visit https://andreajurjevic.com/