Jana Radičević on Poets Square: I live between two languages

The literary program of the 37th Grad Teatar festival continued last night at Poets' Square in Budva with the guest appearance of poet Jane Radičević, who presented her new poem "Zone of Neutral Pressure".

The moderator of the evening was Jelena Knežević, literary theorist, assistant professor of German literature at the University of Montenegro and translator.

Radičević started the evening by reading the beginning of the poem "Zone of neutral pressure", and Knežević emphasized that this was her first presentation at Trg pjesnika.

"It is about a poem and verses, about a whole that is a story at the same time, but it is written in verses so that reflection and deep thinking about many things are combined. The story and narrative matrix are very clear".

Radičević added that thinking about the topic in this book led to the fact that the content itself determines the form, and not the other way around.

"That was very important to me because I know so many failed cases when it would have been done in a different way. So that text started as a big research about what water means to me, and ended in a very personal story that I wasn't even aware of when I realized that I wanted to write something about water. It started with me writing a project in which I explain why I want to deal with the topic of water, which is very broad. I was interested in what water means for us today, so I remembered those texts from geography where they threatened us that by the year 2040 there will be no drinking water and similar information. I wrote that project with which I applied to the competition for "writer of the city of Graz", which I did not even know was so renowned and difficult to get. I didn't know any of that until the moment I got it. People have been sending their texts for years and trying to get it, and it doesn't happen every day that you get support from the capital of Styria," said Radičević and revealed that along the way she realized that she had not yet processed some details from her past and childhood.

"Those details are very interesting and fun when you're a kid, but they're actually big problems that can affect your life and your family's life if you're really aware of them. It was 2010 when there were big floods in the part of Lake Skadar where I grew up. Something remained in me then that I had to process myself and write about it. After one conversation with a friend and a lot of research, everything started to flow just like water.”

Radičević also explained that it was a big challenge for her to talk about big topics from a child's point of view.

"When it happened, I wasn't sure if it was good, if it was for the reader or just for me. For the material of those first songs, I used material from my own life. It was difficult for me to become aware and understand what I had done and somehow distance myself from myself and those texts of mine as mine. There is a film about the author of short absurd stories who says "everything is fiction, that's why the possibility of identifying with real people is possible". In the end, it doesn't even matter what is real-life material and what isn't because everything can be read as fiction. Only I know what is real and what is not. That's a lot of fun for me, getting rid of those excesses and finding something that is material for fiction."

The whole work on the poem is a game with memories, she added.

"Both mine and other people's. And memories are something that fascinates me in different ways. Both as material for literature, but also as a psychological phenomenon that we cannot easily believe. We ourselves, when we remember something, correct it in relation to how we feel or to the situation in which we find ourselves. It was very interesting to me, I tried to tell the story of the origin as accurately as possible, but at the same time I was also working with memories that we cannot rely on, which is a bit paradoxical. Maybe in the end it doesn't even matter that much."

The Forum of Young Writers of KIC Budo Tomović was of great importance for Radičević as a poet, from which the Collections of Works of Young Montenegrin Artists emerged, including her. As she pointed out, Srđan Srdić, the editor of both her books, as well as Vladimir Arsenić, are responsible for her success.

"We were supposed to read a poem and hear Srdjan's opinion about it. When I read mine, he said that if I had more, he could publish it in the Partisan book. Then I collected a cycle of about fifteen, and then we worked together on the rest. That's how it happened."

Radičević wrote a poem in our language in Austria in a German-speaking area, and then her friends translated her works, which were then published in German.

"The translation is really good, there were a lot of tricky things like some games with the language, which I think they solved well. There was a lot of negotiation about the title whether it would be read or not. In the end, we decided that he would. I was really lucky. That's when people from the Cultural Center somehow secretly sent my texts to the publisher without my knowledge, and then they asked me what I thought about his publishing house. Then we all said it was great and then they told me what they did. The publisher was Christian Tannheuser, who is an illustrator and artist, who has this small publishing house that prints three books a year and really devotes himself to them. It is special in that it prints the title page on a Gutenberg press. I was so happy that he wanted to publish my text and that it even found a place in the schedule. Later I heard that it is impossible because there are no places in the next three years. That whole collaboration with him was really amazing because he put a lot of thought into every page. In the end, we decided that the front page should have that blindruk, actually his illustration of a trout swimming against the current, which is actually a zone of neutral pressure, i.e. one of the meanings," said Radicevic.

Knežević added that the book was presented at the Leipzig Book Fair, which is considered a fair dedicated more to artists and translators, and not so much to the book industry.

"There are few books from our speaking area, and especially few books from Montenegro that have been translated and presented in the German speaking area. That is very significant," she said, and Radičević explained that the book was presented at a festival in Austria with a 60-year tradition.

"It takes place in a valley in a village that seems almost lifeless, but actually during the few days that the festival takes place, so much happens there. This is where people come who take vacations to come watch the event. I couldn't believe that the hall was full, and the hall is really big. Everyone came to listen. That was hard to do. I also participated in a very interesting project called "Poetry House" in Berlin. They have been working with different countries for many years and this year they decided to dedicate the entire project and festival to the countries of the former Yugoslavia and Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It is a very interesting project. Each of us had a partner from another country, and I had a partner from Germany. Then we worked on the texts of the latter, but with the help of unfinished translations made by a translator. The idea was to come to the right solutions through that conversation, but not to know the other's language," Radičević said.

Knežević pointed out that Radičević lives transculturally, since she is a poet from Montenegro who originally writes in her native language, who knows German and lives in a German-speaking area, and who creates poetry between cultures, to which Radičević added that she lives between languages .

“Every day, amazing. It was interesting for me in Graz, as soon as I found out that I won. They called me to welcome me and there were two journalists. One of them immediately asked me if I would write in German. He put a little pressure on me because I didn't have a plan, but I told him that I didn't know, but that I started dreaming in German. Maybe that will happen."

At the end of the evening, Radičević read a poem from her first collection and thanked the Grad Teatar festival for the invitation and the audience for giving meaning to the whole evening.