* 08.06.1931, Belgrade, Serbia
† 28.07.1996, Belgrade, Serbia
Ivan V. Lalić was born in Belgrade on June 8, 1931.
His father Vlajko was a journalist, and his grandfather Isidor Bajic had been a celebrated composer.
Lalić has gained an international reputation as one of the major poets of the former Yugoslavia. When in 1983, a BBC interviewer asked Lalic how he had found his poetic voice, Lalić replied 'My childhood and boyhood in the war marked everything I ever wrote as a poem or poetry“.
Indeed, Lalić’s poetic quest into the nature of time, culture, and human perception combines a startling clarity of images and a thoughtful, highly crafted, lucid diction that places him firmly in the tradition of European and American modernism, in which he is acknowledged to be one of Europe's masters.
Ivan V. Lalić died on July 28, 1996 in Belgrade and for more than decade after his death is considered as one of Serbian poetry classic.