How to survive a pandemic other than through poetry?

Poetry

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Radek Malý decided to play an unusual game in order to keep his sanity at a time when the world around him seemed to be shaking at its foundations. He got hold of an old typewriter and a bundle of used punched cards on which he wrote over 400 poems. It became the distinctive diary of the “plague year”, also portraying the breakup of traditional values, family relationships and the poet’s private anxieties. For the book, the editor Olga Stehlíková selected poems representing all the different shades of Malý’s poetry in order to attractively showcase the various themes and to make sure none of them overshadows the others. A harmonious book emerges that surprises with its openness, sexuality and humanity.

 

Radek Malý (1977) is a poet, specialist in Czech Studies, translator and pioneer in live poetry and poetry for children. He has won several major literary awards including the Jiří Orten Award and two Magnesia Litera Awards. He translates the poetry of Georg Trakl.