Her poems have been translated into fifteen languages and have appeared in diverse publications and anthologies in Slovenia and abroad. She is considered one of the most prominent authors of her generation. Her collection, We\u2019ve Long Waited on the Rain<\/em>, was nominated for the Veronika Award in 2016, and so was her latest collection Attractions<\/em>. Attractions<\/em> was also nominated for the Jenko Award, one of the most prestigious literary awards in Slovenia. The collection Why Mention Achilles<\/em> was published in Spain in 2012. It was also published in Italy in 2009, and in Croatia in 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alja Adam regularly participates in literary festivals at home and abroad. In addition to poetry, she writes essays, fairytales, and scholarly articles. She also focuses on research and development of innovative educational programs for children and adults, where she blends creative writing practices with Gestalt therapy and yoga.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/p>\n\n\n\n I first contacted Alja Adam in 2018, as I was preparing another article on Slavic poetry in translation for the ATA\u2019s publication SlavFile<\/em>. I was the SlavFile<\/em>\u2019s poetry feature editor from 2011 to 2023 and introduced a number of Slovenian poets over the years. I was fascinated by Adam\u2019s poetry and excited to begin our collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After this initial work, the poet invited me to translate a selection of her poetry and prose excerpts for the project The Tree of Life,<\/em> which featured a collaboration between the poet Adam and the Finnish artist Ulla Aatinen. Their collaboration culminated in an exhibition of Adam\u2019s poetry and prose excerpts (both in the original Slovenian and the translation into English) in conjunction with Aatinen\u2019s art. The exhibition took place in Ljubljana, Slovenia in late fall 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the years, Alja Adam and I have collaborated on a number of other projects and presented her poetry at diverse literary events in Slovenia and abroad. We are currently awaiting the publication of an e-book of her poetry in my English translation. I have enjoyed working with the poet and look forward to new projects in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/p>\n\n\n\n All the poems presented below, except for \u201cHaunted House\u201d, come from her latest collection Attractions<\/em> (2020). \u201cHaunted House\u201d was published in the collection We\u2019ve Long Waited on the Rain<\/em> (2015).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Adam\u2019s poetry is characterized by a beautifully natural and unpretentious style yet filled with rich and deeply complex metaphors. Each of her poems embodies a unique experience that leaves a deep impact on the reader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The critics have especially praised Adam\u2019s ability to blend past with present, when examining her own experiences and those of her ancestors. She repeatedly acknowledges the profound impact of the past on the present and is particularly concerned with traumas transmitted from one generation to another. This is where her interest in Gestalt psychotherapy becomes especially evident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through the intricacies of human relationships, past traumas, and insecurities, Adam explores the essence of the self and its complex relationship with the world. Her poetry endeavors to \u201cmake the invisible visible\u201d, \u201cdefy a system that pushes us into darkness\u201d and \u201cfill the cracks in the walls with her voice\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Translating Adam\u2019s poetry has been an enjoyable and inspiring experience. Translators are first and foremost readers. Thus, I am confident that the readers of this article will embark on their own journey as they explore Adam\u2019s poetry below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Translation and introduction by Martha Kosir Alja Adam (1976) is a poet, literary critic, and Gestalt psychotherapist. She graduated from the University of Ljubljana with a degree in Comparative Literature and Sociology of Culture. She earned her doctorate in 2007 in Gender Studies and Feminist Literary Theory, likewise from the University of Ljubljana. Alja Adam […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/LD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/LD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/LD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/LD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/LD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/LD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":563,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/LD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions\/563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/LD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/LD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/LD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
HI\u0160A STRAHOV<\/strong>
Dobro je imeti korenine,
dokler jih lahko nosi\u0161 s seboj.
(Gertrude Stein)
<\/em>
Nervozno pogledujem skozi okno.
Rumena jutranja svetloba nenadoma izgine,
kot da so ptice zdrsnile
prek nevidnega stikala na nebu
in ugasnile lu\u010d.
Kako nevidno narediti vidno,
se upreti sistemu, ki nas potiska v temo?
Pravijo, da smo izgubljena generacija.
Ker vsak dan nekdo ostane brez dela,
se selimo v tuja mesta, da bi pre\u017eiveli,
in posku\u0161amo ohraniti svobodo,
tako da nosimo svoje korenine s seboj.
A korenine pogosto zamenjujemo
z debli, listjem in vejami,
zato smo telo iztrgali iz zemlje,
postalo je brezte\u017eno kot molekule zraka,
kot kemijske ena\u010dbe,
ki smo se jih v \u0161oli u\u010dili na pamet.
Ker nas niso peljali v gozd
in nam niso pokazali,
kako polo\u017eiti dlan vetru na hrbet,
kako uloviti zvoke narave,
se pri\u017eeti k lubju dreves.
Pravijo, da moramo
vso razse\u017enost svojega bivanja
posrkati v mo\u017egane, v dolge verige tkiv,
nabrekle celice zgodovinskega spomina,
v katerih se razmno\u017euje strah.
Mislim, torej sem?
Ali raje dopustim ko\u017ei, da odpre pore?
Da pod veke zdrsnejo zadovoljni obrazi otrok,
ki se v kleti brunarice sredi travnika
igrajo hi\u0161o strahov, in se naselim v dotik dlani,
v pregib prepletenih prstov,
ko me deklica prime za roko
in pelje po stopnicah navzdol,
kjer zakri\u010dim
in s svojim glasom zapolnim re\u017ee v steni.
<\/pre>\n\n\n\nHAUNTED HOUSE<\/strong>
<\/strong>What good are roots if you can't
take them with you?\u201d
(Gertrude Stein)
<\/em>
I look nervously through the window.
The yellow morning light suddenly disappears,
as if the birds had slithered
over an invisible switch on the sky
and turned off the light.
How to make the invisible visible,
defy a system that pushes us into darkness?
They say we are a lost generation.
For every day someone loses work,
we move to foreign cities to survive,
and we try to preserve our freedom
by carrying our roots with us.
But we often replace those roots
with trunks, leaves, and branches;
we had ripped our bodies from the ground,
they became weightless like air molecules,
like chemical equations,
that we learned by heart at school.
They did not take us to the woods,
and they did not show us
how to pat the wind on its back,
catch the sounds of nature
and press against the bark of the trees.
They say our brain has to
import the entire dimension of
our existence into long strands of tissue,
into swollen cells of historical memory,
inside which fear breeds.
I think, therefore, am I?
Should I let my skin open its pores instead?
Make children\u2019s happy faces slide under the eyelids,
children, who play haunted house in the basement
of a log cabin in the middle of a field.
Should I settle into the touch of a palm, into the fold of
intertwined fingers, when a girl grabs my hand
and takes me down the stairs,
where I cry out
and fill the cracks in the walls with my voice.
(From the collection: We\u2019ve Long Waited on the Rain<\/em>, 2015)
<\/pre>\n\n\n\nDVOJNICA<\/strong>
V\u010deraj je zmanjkalo elektrike,
robovi stolov in mize so skoraj izginili,
in druga jaz, moja dvojnica,
ki po finski legendi prebiva v svetu spodaj,
se mi je naselila v telo kot no\u010d.
Osvobojena merjenja
svojih korakov, \u010dasa do ve\u010derje,
sem tipala po prikolici
in predmeti so uhajali
iz rok kot curki.
Kasneje, ko so napeljavo popravili,
in so se ljudje porazgubili v sanjah,
sem za\u010dutila bole\u010dino od pasu navzdol:
rasel mi je ribji rep,
a nikakor se nisem uspela
pognati v spanec.
<\/pre>\n\n\n\nDOUBLE<\/strong>
Yesterday, there was a power outage,
the edges of the table and chairs almost disappeared,
and that other me, my double,
who, according to the Finnish legend, resides in the netherworld,
settled into my body like the night.
Free from measuring
my steps and time until dinner,
I felt around the camper
and the objects escaped through
my fingers like running water.
Later, when the power was restored,
and the people got lost in their dreams,
I began to feel pain from the waist down:
I was growing a fish tail,
yet I failed to plunge
myself into slumber.
(From the collection: Attractions<\/em>, 2020)
<\/pre>\n\n\n\nSTARKA<\/strong> \t\t\t\t\t\t
Re\u0161uje svet.
Sklonjena pod kupom knjig,
\u0161e vedno verjame, da je mogo\u010de znanje
preme\u0161ati kot karte,
izvle\u010di eno samo, dolgo izgubljeno.
V otro\u0161tvu jo je njen pijani stric,
po kvartopirski no\u010di pretepel
in jo posku\u0161al vre\u010di skozi okno.
Kadar govoriva o zablodah sveta,
me nestrpna preglasi,
kot, da me potiska proti oknu.
Zagrizla je v lastno meso
in ne zmore razkleniti \u010deljusti, nasilja.
Kar je izgubila v otro\u0161tvu,
je trepetalo kot kovanec:
vrtel se je po tleh,
dokler se ni v mraku sobe ustavil.
<\/pre>\n\n\n\nOLD LADY
<\/strong>
She is saving the world.
Stooped under a pile of books,
she continues to believe that knowledge
can be reshuffled like a deck of cards,
by pulling out a card long-lost.
In her childhood, her drunk uncle
beat her and tried to throw
her out of the window after a long night of gambling.
When we speak about the fallacies
of the world, she impatiently shouts me down
as if trying to push me toward the window.
She bites into her own flesh
and is unable to unclench her jaw, the violence.
What she had lost in her childhood,
twirled like a coin:
it spun on the floor
until it stopped in the twilight of the room.
(From the collection: Attractions<\/em>, 2020)
<\/pre>\n\n\n\nOBI\u010cAJNE STVARI
<\/strong>
Stvari se uni\u010dijo, obrabijo,
zarjavijo, popokajo,
izgubijo obliko.
Midva vsak na svojem koncu sveta
loviva izgubljeno,
na zmajanem stolu pijeva vino iz odkru\u0161enega kozarca,
zreva v nebo:
na robovih je natrgano kot pisemska ovojnica.
Nekega dne preneha boleti,
kjer zeva praznina,
se vrtin\u010dijo sne\u017einke, sredi poletja.
Ni tako neobi\u010dajno
zapisati \u017eeljo z roko,
jo odposlati v pri\u010dakovanju jutra,
ponovno nazdravljati z nekom, segati v besedo,
se v nerodnosti, naglici, med vsakodnevnimi opravili, spotakniti:
\u0161ele, ko pohodim tvoje prste,
vem, kje stoji\u0161.
Ta misel me pomirja kot sne\u017einke,
dva zmajana stola na balkonu sredi poletja.
<\/pre>\n\n\n\nORDINARY THINGS
<\/strong>
Things get destroyed, worn out,
rusty, cracked,
they lose their shape.
Each at our own end of the world,
we pursue what has been lost,
on a wobbly chair, we drink wine from a chipped glass,
we stare at the sky:
its edges are frayed like an envelope.
One day it stops hurting,
in the middle of summer,
snowflakes swirl in gaping emptiness.
It is not so unusual
to write down a wish by hand,
send it in anticipation of the morning,
toast with someone again, interrupt a conversation,
stumble in awkwardness and haste while performing daily tasks:
only when I step on your toes,
I know where you stand.
This thought calms me down like snowflakes,
two wobbly chairs on a balcony in the middle of summer.
(From the collection: Attractions<\/em>, 2020)
<\/pre>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/LD\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Alja-Adam-4.jpg\")
<\/td>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/LD\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Photo-MKosir-.jpg\")
<\/td><\/tr>Alja Adams<\/td> Martha Kosir<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"