- Publisher: ŠKUC
- Author: Nataša Velikonja
- Original title: Prostor sredi križišč
A Place at the Crossroads is a collection of conceptually related intimate poems, gradually opening an insight into contemporariness in which elementary human ties, from love to social ties, seem to disintegrate or have already disintegrated. This judgement is also based on the feelings of the lyrical subject, the history of love relationships, including breakups – the question of how to look at love (which implicitly involves all forms of social bonds) after experiencing disappointment, after learning not only about its transience but, above all, the illusion of the bond it contains. But the author chooses vitalism; she will not give up love, she will only give up the naïve, fetishized view on love. After several collections of socially-engaged poetry, Nataša Velikonja is going back to love, but not the concept of love as the ultimate ability to connect and synchronise; she proposes a different approach to the concept: love that does not seek to establish ties, which sooner or later turn out to be illusory, but seeks analogy in the concept of heterotopy, which can potentially be represented by the city, urbanity: to be at the centre of density, but randomly and without ties. Disconnectedness, but with presence, can become the other, potential, materially intangible, utopic, but real, in short, a game within a game, always socially undesirable and therefore dangerous, being beyond the required social norms that always demand absolute inclusion.
Nataša Velikonja
Nataša Velikonja (1967) is a sociologist, poet, essayist, translator and lesbian activist. In 1992 she obtained her BA in Theoretical Sociology from the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, and received the Faculty Prešeren Award for her undergraduate thesis. She has published seven poetry collections: in 1994, the ŠKUC Publishing House published her first poetry collection Abonma (Subscription; 1994), considered to be the first openly lesbian poetry collection in Slovenia. This was followed by Žeja (Thirst; 1999), Plevel (Weeds; 2004), Poljub ogledala (Kiss of the Mirror; 2007), Ostani (Stay; 2014), Preveč vljudna (Too Polite, 2017) and Prostor sred križišč (A Place at the Crossroads, 2021). She is the author of six books of essays and scientific paper, analysing the intertwinement of artistic, cultural, political and socio-sexual realities; she writes from a counterculture, lesbian feminist perspective. She has translated dozens of literary works of culture theory, lesbian and gay theory and radical social criticism, as well as theories of architecture, design and art history. She is also active on other fronts of culture and arts in Slovenia: she is a former editorial board member of the magazine Časopis za kritiko znanosti, former editor of the Lesbo magazine, a long-time columnist for Radio Študent, and is currently the coordinator of the Lesbian Library and Archive at the Autonomous Cultural Zone of Metelkova. She has been registered with the Slovenian Ministry of Culture as a freelance poet, art critic and translator since 1995. She is the recipient of the 2016 Župančič Award and the 2018 Kons International Literary Award, conferred on authors who are considered to have written socially transformative literature and dedicated their lives to improving social justice.
RSS
