Poetry Publication
Metatektur, Stuttgart / Vienna
2020
Originally written in Serbian and later translated into English, 12 Poems About Islands was published in Die Insel als Raum – Teil I: Positionen, Perspektiven und Näherungen through an open call by Metatektur.
Moving between personal memory, fiction and spatial metaphor, the poems reflect, among other things, on disappearance, scale and the strange emotional geography of islands.
Publication —
Twelve Poems About Islands published in Die Insel als Raum – Teil I: Positionen, Perspektiven und Näherungen
(Metatektur, Stuttgart/Wien, 2022), pp. 24–27
ISBN 978-3-9820370-3-5
Photos —
Metatektur
Website —
Metatektur Publication
en
1
I am not alone on the island
I came to the island to die
To spit
2
Island adventure
I am hiding
They are looking
The island is medium-sized and empty
A stone hill in a sea of water
3
I've been here three times
First to see
Then to come back
Third time to disappear on the island
4
Islands are beautiful
Monolithic and mute
The island captives are happy and unhappy
They attribute a lot to the water that inadvertently separates them from the continent
They don't know that
It's not up to the water
5
I knew a boy from the island
Who suffered and revelled on that island
He felt the whole world was out of reach
He felt he didn't belong to the world, only to that island
His name is Nuno Costa
The island is some faraway island, left, left of Spain
I told him not to worry —
Serbia is an island in the heart of Europe too
And one day we will swim across all that water
We just need to grow up a bit more
6
Black and white footage of desiccated islands
Vivid sharpness of rocks
Is there anything more
7
Oh, my island
My dear little island
To touch you with the tip of my finger
To drown you
Would you float back to the surface like a bottle cork?
8
The island is Robinson Crusoe's wooden raft
One inhabitant and naval coordinates
Islands are floating pavilions of garbage sailing towards the Venice Biennale
Islands are rubber ducks in the tub
Islands must be not big and surrounded by water
The water must be deep in comparison
The island is a submarine that protrudes only slightly
A fish in a puddle that is just a little bit dead
9
Island most empty and most full
of stories, ideas .. things that happened and things that might have happened
The island is filled with mysteries:
Secret disappearance
A secret cave
Secret people
Secret lives
The mystery of small and medium-sized islands
(because big islands do not exist)
is measured by the assumed number of caves
but much more so by the proximity of people
The further away the island
the more unusual situations take place there
If it could be swum to
that cave would never have been invented
10
On some islands, terrible things happen
Children are captured on the island of their horror and other people's pleasures
11
If the water level rises so high
that it floods
not only by footsteps and garbage tormented Manhattan
There will be only a couple of islands left —
The Himalayas, Montblanc, The Old Mountain (...)
And one small place
where all the frozen (now melted)
shit of the world is —
Mount Everest
12
Islands are drowned mountains
Silenced
Saved
In that other world
The world of water
Just as mountains and their forests host the terrestrial world
So do underwater mountains host the marine one
Corals are the skin of the island
The forests are seaweed
Those who live there are either lonely and hiding
or they live in flocks
sr
1
Na ostrvu nisam sama
Na ostrvo sam došla da umrem
Da pljunem
2
Avantura na ostrvu
Sakrila sam se
Traže me
Ostrvo je srednje veliko i prazno
Kameno brdo u moru vode
3
Tri puta sam bila ovde
Prvi put da vidim
Drugi put da se vratim
Treći put da nestanem na ostrvu
4
Ostrva su lepa
Monolitna i ćute
Zarobljenici ostrva su srećni i nesrećni
Dosta toga pripisuju vodi koja ih nenamerno razdvaja od kontinenta
Ne znaju da
Nije do vode
5
Znala sam jednog dečaka sa ostrva
Koji je patio i bio srećan na tom ostrvu
Osećao se kao da mu je ceo svet nedostižan
Osećao se kao da ne pripada svetu
već samo tom ostrvu
Zove se Nuno Kosta
Ostrvo je neko daleko ostrvo, levo levo od Španije
Ja sam mu rekla da se ne brine
I Srbija je ostrvo u srcu Evrope
I jednoga dana preplivaćemo svu tu vodu
Samo da još malo porastemo
6
Crno-bele slike i video zapisi osušenih ostrva i
ostrvskog oštrog stenja
Ništa lepše
7
Ostrvo, ostrvce milo
Da te prstom taknem odozgo
Da te potopim
Da li bi isplivalo nazad kao pampur?
8
Ostrvo je drveni splav Robinzona Krusoa
Jedan stanovnik i morske koordinate
Ostrva su plutajući paviljoni smeća koji plove do venecijanskog Bijenala
Ostrva su patkice u kadi
Ostrva moraju biti nevelika i okružena vodom
Voda mora biti veoma duboka u odnosu na njih
Ostrvo je podmornica koja samo malo viri
Riba u bari koja je samo malo mrtva
9
Ostrvo najpraznije i najpunije —
pričama, idejama, stvarima koje su se dogodile
i stvarima za koje nismo sigurni da jesu
Ostrvo je puno misterija
tajni nestanak
tajna špilja
tajni ljudi
tajni životi
Misterija malih i srednjih ostrva
(jer velika ostrva ne postoje)
meri se pretpostavljenim brojem špilja
a još više blizinom ljudi
Što je ostrvo dalje
to se na njemu odvija više neobičnih situacija
Da može da se prepliva do njega
ta špilja nikada ne bi mogla biti izmišljena
10
Na nekim ostrvima se dešavaju užasne stvari
Deca su zarobljena na ostrvu njihovog užasa i tuđih zadovoljstava
11
Ako se nivo vode podigne toliko visoko
da potopi
ne samo koracima i smećem namučeni Menhetn
Ostaće svega nekoliko ostrva —
Himalaji, Monblan, Stara planina (...)
i jedno malo mesto
gde su sva smrznuta
(tad već otopljena)
govanca sveta —
Mont Everest
12
Ostrva su udavljene planine
Ućutane
Sačuvane
U onom drugom svetu
Svetu vode
Kao što planine i njihove šume udomljavaju kopneni svet
Tako i podvodne planine udomljavaju onaj vodeni
Koža ostrva su korali
Šume ostrva su morske trave
Stanovnici su ili usamljeni i sakriveni
ili u jatima
Marina Urošević