Ivan Wernisch

It´s Easy to Walk the Tightrope

Chodit po provaze je snadné Chodit po provaze je snadné
Chodit po provaze je snadné
Meander, 2011, 70 pp
Awards:
 2011 The Most Beautiful Czech Book – Literature for children and youth: 1st place
Children’s and Young Adult, Poetry, Prose

Anthology of poems and minor prose by the classic of Czech poetry, the winner of the State Prize for Literature in 2012. This book is intended primarily for children and teenagers and therefore is characterised more by the comic than the tragic. Wernisch, whose poetry grew out of the tradition of expressionism and dada, presents himself in this work as a master of composition tricks, genre transformations and stylisations; his favourite creative approach is play and mystification. He was born in Prague in 1942, is part of the strong poetic generation of the ’60s and has published over twenty books (including, in 2010, three volumes and more than one thousand pages of recapitulation of his life’s work entitled Příběh dešťové kapky). He also translates and edits (see the four readers from the works of the “forgotten, neglected and despised” Czech authors from the beginning of the national revival until 1948).

Chodit po provaze je snadné
Meander, 2011, 70 pp
Awards:
 2011 The Most Beautiful Czech Book – Literature for children and youth: 1st place