Boris A. Novak 
Author

Poems

Original

Übersetzung

Boris A. Novak 
Author

photo © Jože Suhadolnik
* 03.12.1953, Belgrade , Serbia
lives in: Ljubljana, Slovenia

BORIS A. NOVAK (born in Belgrade in 1953) is a Slovene poet, playwright, translator, essayist and author of books for children.

He obtained his PhD in comparative literature with the thesis The Reception of Romanic Poetic Forms in the Slovene Poetry (published in 1995). In 1991 he was a visiting professor (American Bank Chair of Excellence in Humanities) at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in the U.S.A. From 1996 he has been teaching at the Department for Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ljubljana. His basic fields of research are comparative poetics (Po-ethics of the Form, 1977), medieval and Renaissance poetry, and symbolism (The Symbolist Poetry, 1977).

 photo © Jože Suhadolnik
Novak was active in the dissident movement for the democratization of the Slovene and Yugoslav society. As President of the Slovene PEN and Chair of the Writers for Peace Committee of International PEN in the nineties Novak organized humanitarian help for refugees from the former Yugoslavia and writers from the besieged city of Sarajevo which was the biggest humanitarian effort in the history of the world writers' organization. In 2002 he became a Vice-president of International PEN.

So far he has published 53 books, including volumes of poems Still-Life-in-Verses(Stihožitje), 1977; Daughter of Memory (Hči spomina), 1891; 1001 Verses (1001 stih),1993; Coronation (Kronanje), 1994; Catastrophe (Stihija), 1991; Master of Insomnia (Mojster nespečnosti), 1995; Alba,1999; Echo (Odmev), 2000, and handbooks of poetic forms Forms of the World (Oblike sveta), 1991, and Forms of the Heart (Oblike srca), 1997. He has published six volumes of poems for children. Besides numerous puppet and radio plays for children he has written several theatre texts for adults, including a drama chronicle Soldiers of History (Vojaki zgodovine), a play House of Cards (Hiša iz kart), and a tragedy Cassandra.

Novak translates French poetry (S. Mallarmé, P. Valéry, P. Verlaine, E. Jabès), American, English and Irish poetry (S. Heaney), Dutch and Flemish authors (M. van Paemel), and literature written in South Slav languages (J. Osti). In 2001 he has published a huge anthology Modern French Poetry, and now is preparing the first Slovene anthology of the Provencal troubadours.

His poems are translated into several languages. Three chapbooks were published in the U.S.A. (Coronation, 1989, Vertigo, 1992, and South-east of Memory, 1999). A bilingual Slovene-English edition Gardener of Silence (Vrtnar tišine) was published in 1990, and in 1999 a multilingual edition Absence (Odsotnost) which includes English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Czech, Croatian, and Chinese translations. His selected poems (Poèmes choisis) appeared in the French translation in 1996. Two books of his poems were published in the Croatian translation – The Sacred Light (Sveta svjetlost) in 1996, and Master of Insomnia (Majstor nesanice) in 1997, and a book of poems for children The Poem Is Travelling to the World (Pjesma putuje v svijet) appeared in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2002.

Novak has received several awards for his literary and scientific work: The Golden Bird, The Award of the Prešeren's Fund and Jenko's Award for poetry, Sovre's Award for his translation of Mallarmé's poems, and The Golden Sign of the Research Institute of the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts for his comparative studies about the verse. Novak's fairy tale The Small and the Big Moon (Mala in velika Luna) was chosen for the Honour List of IBBY (The International Board of Books for Young Readers) as one of the best books for children in 1998. In 2000 The Association of the writers of Bosnia and Herzegovina has given to Novak the international award for his poetic opus.

Publications
  • Kronanje

    Ljubljana : Mladinska knjiga, 1984

  • Stihija

    Maribor : Založba Obzorja, 1991

  • Mojster nespečnosti

    Ljubljana : Mladinska knjiga, 1995

  • Alba

    Ljubljana : Mladinska knjiga, 1999

  • Odmev

    Ljubljana : Cankarjeva založba, 2000

Awards
  • 1984 The Golden Bird

  • 2000 International award of the Association of the writers of Bosnia and Herzegovina