Boris A. Novak (born in 1953) is a Slovene poet, playwright, translator, and author for children. He teaches Comparative Literature at the University of Ljubljana. In the name of International PEN he organized humanitarian help for refugees from the former Yugoslavia and writers from Sarajevo during the war.
He has published 100 books, among them poetry volumes Daughter of Memory (1981), The Gardener of Silence (1990), The Master of Insomnia (1995), Alba (1999), Rites of Farewell (2005), and LPM: Little Personal Mythology (2007). Popular are his handbooks of poetic forms. Novak’s opus magnum is the epos The Doors of No Return, 44.000 verses on 2.300 pages in 3 books – Maps of Nostalgia (2014), The Time of Fathers (2015), and Dwelling Places of Souls (2017).
Novak’s poetry has been translated into many languages, among them French (Poèmes chosis, 1996), English (The Master of Insomnia: Selected Poems, Dalkey Archive Press, 2012) and Spanish (El jardinero del silencio y otros poemas, 2018).
Novak translates literature from French (Mallarmé, Verlaine, Valéry, Jabès), Provencal (Troubadours), Dutch (Paul van Ostaijen, Monika van Paemel), South Slav (Josip Osti) and other languages. He translates his poetry into English as well.
