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Kosovo
A burning
paper Goethe
prays
in Serb
for four hundred dead children
In Schiller's stone eye
gleams a tear of mercury
There's a Gypsy weeping
for a little Romany fairy
at the bottom of the Adriatic
Blood
has an irresistible color
of the bluish dusk of the sky
from which falls
light and glitterings
like a gust of May rain
to fertilize the wounded earth.
Pavol Janik was born in 1956 in Bratislava, where he also studied film and television
dramaturgy and scriptwriting at the Drama Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts (VSMU).
He has worked at the Ministry of Culture (1983-87), in the media and in advertising. President
of the Slovak Writers' Society (2003-07) and the Secretary-General of the SWS (1998-2003, 2007 - ).
He has received a number of awards for his literary and advertising work both in his own
country and abroad.
Notable Collections of poems: Nezarucene spravy (Undelivered Reports, 1981), Zrkadlo na konci leta
(A Mirror at the End of Summer, 1984), Do videnia v mnoznom císle (Goodbye in the Plural, 1985), Hura,
hori!, (Hurrah, It's Burning! 1991), Niekto ako boh (Someone Like God, 1998), Bud vona tvoja (Thy Scent
Be Here, 2002), Kmitocet tvojich bokov (The Oscillations of Your Hips, 2002)
Collections of aphorisms: Dobra zrada nad zlato (Good Advice is
Worth More Than Gold, 1996), Satanovisko (Satan's Place, 1999), Pes hore bez, 101 psin
(A Topless Lark, 101 larks, 2000), Spinave cistky (Dirty Purges, 2002)
Dramatic works: Tuctova komedia (Commonplace Comedy, 1986), Sukromny striptiz
(A Private Striptease, 1993), Maturitny oblek (A School Graduation Suit,
1994), Nezna klauniada (A Tender Farce, 2004).
Pavol Janik's plays in Canada : A collection of three plays by the Slovak
dramatist Pavol Janik has been published in a Canadian university
periodical, the Toronto Slavic Quarterly, under the title of "Dangerous
Comedies" translated into English by Heather Trebaticka. The periodical is available on-line: http://www.utoronto.ca/tsq/09/index09.shtml
Email: Pavol Janik
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