Nenad Trajković (1982) is a Serbian poet, essayist, literary critic and translator. He graduated from Faculty of Law, University of Kragujevac, Serbia. He has published four collections of poetry ‘Traces’ (2008), ‘I Take You to the Museum’ (2011), ‘Wind From The Tongue’ (2016, for which he got ‘The Rade Tomic Prize’) and „The Thinner Line of Endless“ (2019). His work have been published widely in literary magazines (‘Poem’, edited by Fiona Sampson, etc.), anthologies (‘Von A bis Z - Acht Jahrhunderte serbis’, translated and edited by Johann Lavundi, ‘World Poetry Almanac’, edited by Dr Hadaa Sendoo, etc.) and newspapers in Serbia and abroad. Translated into English, German, French, Polish, Macedonian, Slovakian, Russian, Bulgarian, Spanish, Greek, Hungarian and Romanian. He has translated and edited three collections of poetry from Macedonian into Serbian. In 2013 he received the award given by the Bulgarian publisher ‘Melnik’. In 2015 he received the award ‘Rade Tomić’ for the best poetry manuscript in Serbia and has been nominated for the most prestigious Serbian literary awards such as ‘Branko Miljković’ and ‘Lenkin prsten’. In 2018 he wins at the ‘Facebook Poetry Festival’ (Serbia) sharing the first place with Indian poet, Arvind Joshi. He is a founder and editor of an international literary manifestation ‘Pisanija’ and a member of Serbian Literary Society. He lives and works in Vranje, Southern Serbia.
On The Wire
in a village my father comes from
the toilets were outside
their paper on a rusty wire
when I first entered them
I found Emily Bronte
whom my grandfather had tried to hang there
it was unpleasant
to be there with a lady
so I took her out in my arms
in the morning
I was shown a suitcase full
of convicted writers
ready for hanging
and these were the first people
I ever freed
Mediation In Prostitution
the minute you see a member of the party
whether in the parlament or in public media
praising his leader constantly and irreversibly
you know it must be love that has its price
and you have to go to the toilet inevitably
this fatigue makes you smell
his rotted breath coming out of the screen
that chills you to the bone
and you can see that your captured voice
dressed in the national will
has been a civilization lie
you’ve accepted tacitly again
you turn off your TV
and give a legitimate right to the person
chosen to spit on people
to carry your words inside brothels
because it all ends with whoreing
ama et fac quod vis
Infanticide
on the grave near the old village road
letters did not exist
people said it was a small Gypsy tomb
in which all the Gypsies from the missing mahala[1] were placed
so one night when the super full moon has shown itself the villagers saw
the headless woman at the top of the hill giving birth
and throwing her child on a stone slab
to eat all the letters
abstractum pro concreto
Translated by Danijela Trajković
[1] Mahala is originally Arabic word محلة, mähallä, which meant settling, occupying, but nowdays in the Balkans means a part of a town or village.
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