-translated, from the Slovenian, by Ana Jelnikar and Barbara Siegel Carlson
It is only in poems that I realized what a poet is. A biography, forever obscured from the prying literary historian, comes out of a dark corner and steps into full view revealing the face for what it is. A weary, travelling face. The eyes wells of understanding, hands buckets that never tire of ladling life’s blood. The poet’s a botanist. He wanders around the Karst and his herbarium’s a collection of dried up flowers; he goes to the front and his journal is full of skulls.
Srečko Kosovel (1904-1926)
one of Slovenia’s first modernists, is now considered one of Central Europe’s major modernist poets. In 1925 he prepared a manuscript for publication called The Golden Boat, but it was subsequently lost and never published. Soon after, he died of meningitis at the age of 22. His Complete Works was published in 1977. The Golden Boat, a selection of his poems translated into English by Bert Pribac and David Brooks, appeared in 2008 from Salt Press. Look Back, Look Ahead, Selected Poems of Srečko Kosovel, co-translated by Ana Jelnikar and Barbara Siegel Carlson (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010) is the first U.S. edition of his work. An expanded edition is currently being prepared.
Ana Jelnikar is a translator and scholar, based in Ljubljana. She is the author of Universalist Hopes in India and Europe; The Worlds of Rabindranath Tagore and Srečko Kosovel (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2016). As a literary translator she has a number of publications to her name including Look Back, Look Ahead: Selected Poems of Srečko Kosovel (co-translated with Barbara Siegel Carlson, Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010), Meta Kušar Ljubljana (co-translated with Stephen Watts, Arc Publications, 2010) and Iztok Osojnik’s Drugje/Elsewhere (co-translated with Maria Jastrzȩbska, Pighog Press, 2011).
Barbara Siegel Carlson is the author of What Drifted Here (Cherry Grove, 2023), Once in Every Language (Kelsay, 2017) and Fire Road (Dream Horse, 2013). She is the co-translator (with Ana Jelnikar) of Look Back, Look Ahead, Selected Poems of Srečko Kosovel and co-editor (with Richard Jackson) of A Bridge of Voices: Contemporary Slovene Poetry and Perspectives. Her poetry, translations and essays have appeared in Verse Daily, Cortland Review, Mid-American Review, Salamander, Slovene Studies and elsewhere. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes. A fourth book of poems The Current is forthcoming in 2026.
