The Bosnian War ended in 1995, but scars from the conflict remain present in many everyday lives. Feeling abandoned by government and the state, some have turned to art and artists to find coping mechanisms and ways of healing.
Bosnian poetry often finds an audience beyond its state borders, in Serbia, Croatia, and Montenegro, thanks to their shared language. Its roots, too, are multinational: for centuries, Bosnian poets wrote in the Persian and Arab tradition due to Ottoman occupation. The poetry selection below, however, feels more influenced by the American confessional tradition that has shaped so many contemporary poets, rather than ancient, local schools.
We’re the kids from the neighborhood
that will never end up
on postcards.
To our parts tourists do not venture.
We don’t win presidential elections in a run-off.
And no language do we speak better than our mother tongue.
We do not know that our twin brothers live
in all of the cities of the world.
To our parts tourists do not venture.
There is nothing well known here:
an elementary school,
a supermarket, and an old walnut tree long cut down.
To our parts tourists do not venture.
And we have nothing to show them.
Except ourselves.
Born in 1979, Adisa Bašić lives in Sarajevo. She is a poet and a professor of literature at University of Sarajevo.
The facades are cracking, flaking like sloughed skin,
stained with mould,
embraced by the boughs of the tree of heaven
that plant is solace
a sure sign the world is stronger than us
it’s the mouth of nature
swallows us together with our houses when we shut our eyes
we never sleep not at all
we fear being eaten
lost in that green sea
where you cannot make out the roads, the road signs,
the signage by which to recognise our home
and know that we should enter,
turn on the light, the stove, the telly, the fridge,
all the things that buzz when lit,
and know that we are alive,
we gods of small things,
ontologically perfect rulers of electrics,
we stab the night through our window panes
let it bleed in the streets until morning
all is well, all things in their place, we comfort ourselves
until the rain starts
and the tree of heaven crawls through the cracks
rutting the asphalt, gnawing at the walls, undercutting the houses
whilst we, fallen gods,
unaware of the love afforded to us,
yearn for a world tender enough
to embrace us
Born in 1972, Senka Marić is a poet and bestselling novelist from Mostar.
An old woman sits in the corner spins wool and mumbles
this thread is for the beginning of the world
look blood still drips down the fibre’s line
and fish spawn in the soft womb’s wall
in a far-away sea
look how heads ripen
and time picks them and glasses are filled and emptied
and the clock strikes on a wall
Flies hang their traces
the art of adding yellow spots on the glass wall and things
She can’t see well but her sight catches the other side
she speaks fluently and long in the world’s ears
which doesn’t want to grow old and learn of itself
full of infantile old men with tight skins
and bloodshot eyes
towards huchens
which swim on the water’s surface
thinking naively it is dark in the dim depths
and light on the surface
While false clairvoyants lift skirts
and move faces to freshly printed papers
While false prophets put on robes
and preach restraining from unripe fruit
and material goods
with heavy pockets touching the floor
(it is hard too hard to serve you Lord)
while children dream of a better world
breaking legs on too high thresholds
their fathers set for them
while all happens by a mysterious plan
old woman talks with spin fibres feigning madness and tells the truth
for only mad people can still
let themselves fall into disfavour of futile truths
about this world
where people gently slide towards their own emptiness
cleaning rooms and whitening the teeth by the way
smiling dully at soft cotton of the new time
putting lumps of wax in ears so not to hear
not to be disturbed in their nap
by the boring nagging of the old woman
like a TV set you can’t turn off
nobody pays attention to horrible Pythia
who doesn’t want to shut up
You silly gammer in a girl’s robe which hangs on a wrinkled body
there are no duties for old women anymore
nobody needs your prophecies and visions
abandoned prophets
sit behind every corner
it is not decent to use opiates at your age
shower of scorns
No rulers bow their heads coming to her
now they ask for mercy of another god thinking they can bribe him
as his officials
someone is bold enough to push her from the stool
she carries everywhere
Pythia gets up and brushes off the dust
Glittering of her eyes scares all but children
They embroil in her dress and rejoice at her colourful clothes and are happy
with a terrible tone of her prophecy
giving each of them a thread of the spin
and whispering in their ears
children save the world
From rotten and greedy old people
Born in 1977, Tanja Stupar Trifunović is a celebrated poet and novelist based in Banjaluka. As a young refugee from Croatia, she has experienced war first-hand.
They told you shrapnel made men
celestial, that’s why you joined
the army. In midsummer, when weathervanes
carousel, you pull your silence
taut over our house. Nothing bad
will happen to us now, not with you
standing sentinel at the edge
of our sleep, guarding
against the peace thieves.
In the living room you and I mummify
waiting for the rains to pass.
Dust settles on our eyelids, the choleric
mahogany. Should you ever speak, I’d tie
my hair to the hooves of your voice,
I’d have my death by dragging
out what the water dreams sunk. I’d ask
if you’ve seen the moles
in the garden, the bird nest
under the eaves. I’d ask how many
you captured. How many did you kill?
Born in 1992, Selma Asotić currently lives in New York and writes in English.