What do the great crises of the contemporary world—of which there have been so many, yet which we try not to see—do to us? Kauer’s poetry confronts multiple crises without surrendering to despair.

Poetry

The poet and visual artist Aleš Kauer has published new poems accompanied by his own illustrations. “How do we grasp this beast / when our words are weaker / than the bones of children under the rubble?” In these extraordinarily expressive poems, we read an indictment of a world in which patriarchal order inexplicably persists and violence against both people and nature reaches its peak. Do we even have the words to describe all these horrors? In his exploration, the poet works with diverse linguistic registers, cultural references and digital symbol codes, switching between Czech, Slovak, English and Ukrainian. The book stands out for its carefully thought- out composition and tightly unified form. In a fractured world, Aleš Kauer invokes social justice, love and compassion. His poetry is radically anti-war, feminist, and, above all, empathetic.

Aleš Kauer (1974) is an artist, poet, performer, founder of the publishing house Adolescent and member of several avant-garde music projects. He is also an organiser of cultural events and the literary–musical festival Kvílení. Kauer has provided graphic and artistic illustrations for numerous books and magazines. His poems and other writings have been published in Glosolálie, Revue Prostor, A2, Host, Tvar, and others. His poetry has been translated into English, Spanish, Polish, Ukrainian, Slovenian and Hungarian, and has also been published in international literary journals and anthologies. His most recent poetry collections have been published by Adolescent: WITHOUT/WITHIN (2014), Happyend (2020), and A Skull Burns with a Neon Dream (2025). He also publishes diary entries in limited editions, the latest being Imagine Peace, which was released in 2023.