Two poems by Ján Gavura, read by the poet and translator James Sutherland-Smith

In Gavura’s work the poetic persona has a strong empathy with nature, seeing it as an example of both a non-human otherness and as part of God’s creation. As a theologian Gavura regards nature and humanity as part of a post-lapsarian existence. Gavura’s natural world and the animals which inhabit it are true to themselves and the savagery they express is an aspect of the innocence they retain. His poems draw on everyday feelings of doubt, fear, disillusionment, anger, weakness or even evil thoughts and he tries to bring together these aspects of the contingent world and gain insight. Given his religious sensibility Gavura’s poems frequently incorporate a mythical dimension. This spiritual bedrock in Gavura’s poetry paradoxically opens his poetry to all readers with its acute positioning of human beings, nature and divine aspiration.

- James Sutherland Smith

JÁN GAVURA is the author of three collections, Burning Bees (Pálenie včiel, 2001), which was awarded the Ivan Krasko Prize for the best debut book in the Slovak language, the second Every Morning You Are (Každým ránom si, 2006) and his most recent collection Besa (2012) received a major prize from the Slovak Literary Fund.

JAMES SUTHERLAND-SMITH lectures in British Cultural Studies in the Institute of English and American Studies at Prešov University. He has published six collections of poetry, the last, Mouth, was published by Shearsman Books (2014). He has translated a number of Slovak poets into English and received the Hviezdoslav Prize in 2003 for his translations.