The mature poetic debut of Sofija Drakulović

Sofija Drakulović's poetry collection "Confessions are Worse Than Swearing" has just been published by the publishing house Platforma knjiga from Podgorica, and is already available on the website of the online bookstore "Platforma knjiga".

Book editor, Valentina Knežević in the preface she pointed out that this is the first book by a young Montenegrin poet. Drakulović brings an authentic and recognizable poetic voice that is shaped on the border between everyday experience and its linguistic articulation. Starting from fragments of urban reality, intimate confessions, bodily sensations and fleeting scenes, the author builds poetry that explores the instability of identity, the loneliness of modern man and the limits of language in an attempt to express what remains elusive.

“This poetry offers no solutions or consolation, but insists on the act of speech, even when it falls apart. In this persistent attempt to articulate the elusive, between the image that tries to hold onto reality and the language that fails to encompass it, its deepest meaning is formed,” Knežević observed.

A bookshop Tanja Stupar Trifunović She wrote that the collection contains “a freshness, a passion for words and their possibilities.” She also points out that these poems are “little anthems of small everyday victories and defeats, of the courage to be honest and vulnerable in a world that chronically lacks these qualities.”

The statement emphasizes that the collection "Confessions are Worse Than Curses" represents the mature poetic debut of the author, who, through an honest, humorous and at the same time restless view of reality, opens space for new readings of contemporary Montenegrin poetry.

Sofija Drakulović was born in 2002 in Podgorica. She is a master's student at the Faculty of Philology in Nikšić, in the Serbian Language and South Slavic Literatures Study Program. She has been a member of the Young Writers' Forum of the Cultural and Information Center "Budo Tomović" since 2022. She won the second prize for the best poetry collection at the Slovo Gorčina festival in Stolac, and was also a finalist in the poetry competitions of the Slovo Gorčina festival and the Ratković Poetry Evenings in 2024. Her poetry has been published in the magazines Strane, Čovjek, Bludni stih, Astronaut and the Gazette of the National Library "Radosav Ljumović".