PETAR MATOVIĆ
Serbia
Petar Matović was born in 1978 in Užice, and completed his studies in Serbian literature in Belgrade. He writes poetry and essays, publishes in periodicals and is represented in several anthologies in Serbia and abroad. His songs have been translated into several languages: Polish, English, German, Swedish, French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Latvian, Galician, Romanian, Slovenian, Slovak, Hungarian. He published the following collections of poetry: "Chamber pieces" (1996); "The suitcases of Jim Jarmusch" (2009; translated editions: "Walizki Jima Jarmusha", Maximum, Kraków, 2011, "Les maletes de Jim Jarmusch", La Cantarida, Palma de Mallorca, 2013); "Where Beavers Come From" (2013); "From the happy republic" (2017) and "Not bread, but morphine – selected songs" (Zagreb, 2019). Winner of the "Gaude Polonia" scholarship (Poland, 2013); the "Baltic Center for Writers and Translators" scholarship (Sweden, 2015); "Traduki" (Split, 2016); "Kultukontakt" (Vienna, 2017) and "Q21" (Vienna, 2017). He is a participant in a number of international poetry festivals. He is the winner of the "Treћi Trg" award (for "Jim Jarmusch's Suitcases") and the "Branko Miljkovic" award for the collection of poems "From the Happy Republic". He lives in Požega.
From the happy republic
Translation: Nikola Madjirov
The homeland cannot be erased, even in the sense that it belongs to you as a memory, as a nostalgia, it must still be run away from, as far as possible, to where the beavers come from, where life may be carried on in the semblance of some kind of normality that will not be burdened with all that the motherland has done for its own defilement and self-destruction.
With this poetry collection, Petar Matović confirmed that he is one of the most important voices of contemporary Serbian poetry, which does not represent posturing and deception. On the contrary, we are talking about a poet for whom awareness of reality is equally important as that of textuality, and this is a combination that deserves all respect.