Večera bez politike
Mile Stojić (b. 1951), a Bosnian poet, published Dinner Without Politics in 2005 – one of the most respected collections from his post-war opus, awarded as a manuscript in the Foundation's Publishing Competition.
The title evokes a desire for a moment of peace: a dinner without politics, conversations about war, nationalism and the past – just an intimate encounter, a hug, a whisper in the hair (“I simply want to hug you like water hugs a pine tree”). However, this desire is illusory: war, exile, loss of homeland and identity fractures penetrate every poem.
The collection is a lyrical diary of an exile: Herzegovina in memories (rudimentary nature, childhood, smells), Vienna as a cold exile, Sarajevo and Bosnia as wounds that do not heal. The poems are short, precise, with a touch of irony, black humour and bitter lucidity – Stojić writes about a lost generation that built a utopia of social justice, but experienced war and exile.
The style is mature, without pathos: the verses are rhythmic, picturesque, with repetitions and metaphors of water, stone, snow. Critics point out the ease of storytelling in verse, impeccable mastery of form, and uniqueness – the identity of literary and real-life existence. This is Stojić's "best achievement so far" – an elegy for the lost, but also a resistance to silence and oblivion through poetry. The book is an important voice of exiled Bosnian-Herzegovinian lyric poetry in the 2000s.
One copy is available
