Literary Birthday – 4 July – Tomaž Šalamun

Tomaž Šalamun was born 4 July 1941 and died 27 December 2014.

Tomaž Šalamun Quotes

1. Things are completely simple. I only describe what they do or they do what I order them to do. And they like to do what was not done before. (via)
2. I like awkwardness, awkwardness is the crucial thing in my writing. Things should not be clear. If clear they’re too domesticated. I de-domesticate, invade the language, delogify. (via)
3. Every true poet is a monster.
4. I demand unconditional love and complete freedom. That is why I am terrible.
5. As a writer, I’m a moonwalker. I don’t know what I’m doing. As a translator of my own poetry, I just do it like a lumberjack with a dictionary and try to be accurate and precise. (via)
6. I usually write while I’m travelling. I’m not writing when I’m a middle-class father, a grandfather, a husband. But as soon as I move, when I travel, I start to scribble something. (via)

Tomaž Šalamun was a Slovenian poet. He was a leading figure of postwar neo-avant-garde poetry in Central Europe and an internationally acclaimed absurdist. His recent books in English were The Book for My Brother, Row, and Woods and Chalices.

Source for image: M. Biedrzycki, CC BY-SA 2.5 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5>, via Wikimedia Commons

by Amanda Patterson

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