Anthology of poetry “Žica” with the subtitle “Poetry of Southeast Europe against repression”, prepared and edited by the writer Lana Derkač, was recently published by the Croatian PEN Center.
The book features 138 poets from 12 countries in Southeast Europe. The following countries are also represented in the book with their poems: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Greece, Croatia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Romania, Slovenia, Serbia and Turkey.
Montenegrin authors also found their place in the collection, as follows: Tanja Bakić, Radoman Čečović, Rebeka Čilović, Pavle Goranović, Borislav Jovanović, Marija Krivokapić, Ljubeta Labović, Lena Ruth Stefanović, Jovanka Vukanović, Slobodan Vukanović...
Derkač explained where the wire came from as a motif.
“I have been fascinated by wire for a long time. When I think of it, the first thing I see is a barbed wire. True, it can serve as protection, as a fence. But any fence is nothing more than an isolation device used to prevent at least two beings or two sides from coming together. When we think of symbols, we most often attribute repressive characteristics to it. I have dealt with it in poetry and tried to determine what its purposes are, whether God also uses it when he has a disheveled community or a damaged landscape in front of him. If we are atheists, we think of traditional representations of God in our cultural heritage in which he is created in our image. If we are theists, we believe that we are created in the image of God (this time with a capital letter!), and not the other way around. In that case, we can also believe that we are copying him as he works with wire in some place that cannot possibly be a gloomy technopolis. Not a faceless exploitative workshop. Not a penitentiary. If we have such a point of view, we know that we are actions similar to his, albeit simplified, changed over time, refined in a way known only to the human species, and if we are talking about the camps, then we have definitely Satanized the shops with wire", Derkač points out and adds:
“The wire has not ceased to occupy me. That is why I invited other poets to present their views of that cold and vast metal tissue which, it seems to me, protects less and less, and builds the body of Evil in both height and width. It is true that many of the submitted poems do not mention the wire, but they are only seemingly distant from the given topic. While editing this book, my ability to substitute wire with other concepts has also been stretched, so that in my consciousness there is no longer a mental wire that would separate and distinguish the metal wire from the border or oppose the symbolic identification of the wire and the concentration camp. Many of the submitted poems, as expected, deal with war and refugees. One Montenegrin poet does not mention the wire anywhere, but in an original way speaks of mud, or mud, which is also a metaphorical word for today (in Hindi it denotes yesterday and tomorrow). It is not difficult to imagine a landscape intersected by limitations, regardless of whether they were physical barriers or "discontent with the presence of the undesirable in the space of the poet's language. So isn't the kal, in fact, a kind of wire? And isn't there a wire between every division? The wire is in every definition because it doesn't allow the concept to be something else. It also doesn't allow other concepts to lean into it," she concludes.
To reflect on this topic, Derkač gathered poets from the area where the Balkan PEN network operates, and the presentation of the anthology across the region is expected soon.
Bonus video:
