Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun (1941–2014) was one of Europe’s most prominent poets of his generation and was a leader of the Eastern European avant-garde. He was born in Zagreb, Croatia and raised in Koper, Slovenia. Early in his career he edited the literary magazine Perspektive and was briefly jailed on political charges. He studied art history at the University of Ljubljana, where he found poetry suddenly, as a revelation, describing its arrival in a 2004 interview as “stones from the sky.” His work has appeared in over seventy journals and magazines internationally and he has published fifteen poetry collections in English. Šalamun was a member of the Slovenian Academy of Science and Art and lived in Ljubljana, Slovenia, until his death in late 2014.
Photo credit: Joze Suhadolnik
