Ladislav Nebeský was born in 1937, at Jilemnice, a small town about 100 km north-east of Prague. Begining in 1939, his father was a member of the underground anti-Nazi movement. In 1940, he was arrested by the Gestapo; in 1942, he was killed in Berlin. Ladislav Nebeský spent his first 18 years in Jilemnice.
In 1955−60, he studied mathematics at Charles University in Prague. In 1962, he began working as a researcher at Charles University. This lead to full-time teaching at that school, where he became an Associate Professor in mathematics. The present academic year (2007) will be his last year there. He lives with his wife in Prague. They have one son, David.
The development of his poetry falls into two major periods: 1964−72 and 1995− ... (Beginning in the seventies, he pursued mathematics more intensively). In the first period, he was a member of a free group of Czech authors of experimental poetry; he had many contacts with other poets. In the second period, the contacts with other writers became rather rare. In the earlier period, one of the high points for him and several other Czech poets was inclusion in the exhibition Poesía Concreta International in Mexico City, 1966. Another high point was the Konkrete Poesie exhibition, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1970. Some of his early poetry was published in international magazines, and he is particularly pleased with one published in Ovum 10, Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1970.
A few weeks before the end of 1965, he discovered so called binary poems. Very simply stated, a binary poem is a constelation of artificial words, words formed by "signs" O and I; these arteficial words are derived from words of a natural language in such a way that the letters used in "natural" words are binary encoded. When he discovered binary poems he did not know that some members of Noigandres constructed artificial constelations. But they encoded whole words as units; Nebeský encoded letters as units. Binary poems and poems relative to them became the main tendency in his poetry in the years 1966−72.
Overtaken from Karl Young's profile at Light and Dust Anthology, where you also find preview from Nebeský´s poems and more (here)
This profile was last updated in 2007.
