Poetry  |  English sample translation available

Vojtěch Vacek’s second collection, Reflectagon, presents the author’s work from the last five years. As well as lengthy stories and adventures in the form of poems, it includes short lyric impressions and plays on words. They are all linked together by the colourful, sensuous language and by the way they form part of a single fantasy universe bearing an almost painful resemblance to our own. The structure of the language gradually disintegrates as the book goes on, and the reader comes to recognize that not everything that appears to be solid necessarily remains intact. The design of Reflectagon is enhanced by Alžběta Uhlíková’s colour illustrations.

The collection won the 2022 Jiří Orten Award.

“Vojtěch Vacek’s Reflectagon is a vibrant, colourful collection. It explores concepts, people, animals, objects and situations with childlike abandon. Although the author’s playfulness and rich imagination are undeniable, there is nothing arbitrary here: everything is subject to a special dreamlike logic or experience that each of us subliminally carries within us.”

– Božena Správcová, writer and member of the 2022 Jiří Orten Award jury