Marija Kneževic

Marija Knežević was born in Belgrade, then the capital of Yugoslavia, in 1963. She graduated with a diploma in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Belgrade. Later, she completed a Master of Arts in Comparative Literature at Michigan State University, where she also taught literature and creative writing and gathered impressions of life in the United States. She has since worked as a radio journalist, editor, translator, and of course a writer of poetry, fiction and essays.

Knežević addresses a broad spectrum of topics and tones; she is a wonderful observer of interactions and places, and her clear eye never lacks empathy, seeing as well as understanding others.  In THE GLIDER, debuting here on Poetry International, a cloud reminds the speaker of an old beloved friend:

this one who races through the darkness
Of the substrate just at dawn, naïve, convinced
That he’s invisible, it could have been you

And her poetry contains a lively thread of conversations overheard in the street or the market—and the poet participates in that life on the street, in the loving or hostile words that neighbors or strangers exchange.

The poet sees the roots of her poetry in the choral singing of ancient Greece and the rhythms of the Bible, which we know in translation. (Both her parents were musicians, which leaves a deep trace.) Perhaps even more unusual is the poet’s sense of humor, expressed in a sometimes cheerful amusement and a sometimes sharper irony. She writes about the streets of Belgrade but also the hills and shores of Greece, lovers she knew in the UK and US, and relationships everywhere. The one place in the United States that struck her as hard as Belgrade is New York City, with its mighty rivers-turned-sea.
 
Knežević calls the present an era of palimpsests and points to the importance of literary dialogues, such as that of Rainer Maria Rilke or Danilo Kiš giving advice to younger poets. Her poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies, including some translated into English and other languages. She has translated too: for example, a book of poems by Serbian-American poet Charles Simic, Kasni sat (A Late Hour, 2000), from English into Serbian.

Readers will catch the wit in some of her titles; Fabula rasa plays on the Latin tabula rasa with the term “fabula” (shades of the Russian Formalists, and signs of the student of literary theory). Prose writing – essays, stories and novels—is an important part of Knežević’s oeuvre, and some of her poems have strong narrative elements. But often they don’t. Mostly, they do what poetry does best: weaving musical sound, juxtaposing unexpected elements, and soaring above the everyday uses of language, though never so high that you can’t imagine a person speaking them.
 
Serbia does not make a cult of its poets as much as some European countries do, and today the place to find Knežević’s latest poem might be Facebook. It’s a choice to live as a poet, she emphasizes – and one for which poets may have to pay dearly – but then poetry is the fundamental form of writing.
 
Bibliography
 
Poetry:
Elegijski saveti Juliji (Elegiac Advice to Julia, 1994)
Stvari za ličnu upotrebu (Things for Personal Use, 1994)
Doba Salome (The Era of Salome, 1996)
Moje drugo ti (My Other Thou, 2001)
Dvadeset pesama o ljubavi i jedna ljubavna (Twenty Poems on Love and One Love Poem, 2003)
In tactum (2005)
Uličarke (Streetwalkers, 2007)
Šen (Divinity, 2011)
Tehnika disanja (Breathing Technique, 2015)
Moje drugo ti (My Other Thou, selected poems, 2019)
Tehnika disanja/Breathing Technique (bilingual edition from Zephyr Press, 2020)
Krajnje pesme (Local/Neighborhood poems, forthcoming)
 
Prose:
Hrana za pse (Food for Dogs, novel, 1989)
Querida (correspondence, Dear, 2001)
Knjiga o nedostajanju (The Book of Longing, essays, 2003)
Ekaterini (novel, 2005; translated into English by Will Firth, 2013)
Fabula rasa (stories, 2008)
Knjiga utisaka (A Book of Impressions, essays, 2008)
Auto (novel, 2018)
 
Serbian language links:
Interview with Katarina Saric on  Radio Beograd (January 3, 2020)
Interview with poet Ana Marija Grbič on Radio Beograd 2 (July 15, 2019)
Marija Knezevic reads: Predaja grada/Surrender of the City on YouTube