• Publisher: ŠKUC
• Author: Brane Mozetič
• Original title: Sanje v drugem jeziku

Dreams in Another Language take Mozetič’s poetry back into the field of the intimate, but we need to emphasise that his poetry is too complex to be read as either solely political or solely intimate – both spheres, the private and the public, constantly in- tertwine in his writing, as, for example, in the poem »Vietnam«, in which childhood memories mix with the then political iconography and the contemporary topic of the refugee crisis.

Dreams in Another Language are poems that are mostly dedicated to the author’s deceased friends, lovers and acquaintances, among whom we find such famous names as Tomaž Šalamun, Aleš Debeljak, Jean Genet or Juan Goytisolo. As such, the poems are pervaded by a certain amount of sadness and gloominess, but these are not elegies – the characters seem alive or still living, which is why the memory material is not in the forefront; their separation from the world of the living is determined primarily by the dream logic, which the poems follow in spite of being written in the realist lan- guage, and the speaker’s mostly failed attempts to communicate with the dead.

About the author

Brane Mozetič

Brane Mozetič (b. 1958) is a Slovenian poet, writ- er, editor of the Aleph and Lambda book series and translator from French (Rimbaud, Genet, Foucault, etc.), best known as an author of homoerotic litera- ture. His oeuvre extends to 15 poetry collections, a book of short stories, three novels and six children’s picture books. He has edited four anthologies of LGBT literature and several presentations of con- temporary Slovenian literature. He has more than fifty books in translation, his poetry collection Ba- nalije (Banalities, 2003) alone being translated into twelve languages, making him one of the most translated contemporary Slovenian authors. He also organises translation workshops, readings of Slovenian authors abroad, a small literary and music festival Living Literature, the Ljubljana LGBT Film Festi- val, etc. His last translated book Unfinished Sketches of a Revolution, Talisman House, 2018, was a finalist for the Lambda Award for gay poetry.