Poetry

This is the fifth collection of a poet who is also a literary scholar and historian, Petr Hruška (1964), one of the most accurate writers to record the details of human life. His work has always pushed the borders behind which poetry has already been transformed into prose, is void of geysers of metaphors and associations. The more there is civil, naturalistic retrospection of everyday life, of regular human actions without mandatory screams or explanatory notes about hope or pretending to be obliged to be if not optimistic, then at least the messenger of change or of good news. Hruška does not play such games, but he continues to be an excellent, deliberately non-aesthetic observer who proves that even the most mundane thing is unique and vital. However, he is also somewhat wisely unconcerned, inactive, as if he wanted to tell the readers: behold, such is this world. The author was awarded the Dresden Lyric Award (1998) and Jan Skácel Prize (2009).