Spiritual and personal, therapeutic and passionate, angry and subdued. The poetry collection Remove a Bone is a collection which can be read in many ways.

Poetry

After eleven years, the poet Marcela Linhartová has brought out a new poetry collection. It describes painful minor personal tragedies, yet her poetry has a quietness about it which is more than just therapeutic in character. There is much here that is only implied through words; Linhartová always strives for economy of expression, sometimes sounding almost Old Testament in tone. Her poems transcend the individual to become more generally applicable. Are they about the plight of a dissatisfied woman in the modern world? Or more of a dialogue with the world? The poet is not petulantly angry at the world around her. Instead, she directs her silent screams, rage and defiance into her poems. They describe states and crises, and even if they do not give absolution or advice on how to carry on, they can help just by identifying these states. This is a collection which is often expressive and relentless, but from the outset it also expresses the internal struggle between threat and intimacy.

Marcela Linhartová (1980) graduated from the Faculty of Education at the University of South Bohemia with a degree in Czech and art education, and formerly worked in this area at a primary school. She is now in her fifth year of teaching foreign students at a language school in České Budějovice, where she has written course materials on Czech grammar, spelling and stylistics. She enjoys creating new Czech language materials for foreigners and using them in her teaching. She is a member of a group called Kukai which holds regular meetings and to which she has contributed haiku poems. She also plays the accordion. In 2006 she published her first collection, the successful Bylas u toho… (You Were There…), and three years later her second collection, Zpívat bláznům (Singing to Fools). She lives in Mokré near České Budějovice with her husband and two children.