Born in Tuzla, Milorad Pejić has been living, working and writing poetry in Sweden for decades. In this exhaustive conversation before you, Pejić talks about the recently published book All Poems published by Buybook, in which all his collections of poetry are collected, about why poetry has always had a central place and existential meaning for him and how displacement affected his life and poetic creativity.
INTERVIEWER: Ivana Golijanin
All Poems is a book that gathers all your poetry collections - five of them - published from the eighties to the present in one place. How did you decide on collected rather than selected songs?
The fact that this book was published in Buybook at all is pure coincidence. Yes, it is true that life is a living thing and the plan for such a book of "collected works" existed before, but I never even thought of looking for an "external" publisher for it. My intention was to collect and unite all five books I had written and simply print them one day in one "unified" book in Samizdat (samizdat.nu), a small publishing house that a few friends and I started about ten years ago and in which we have published about twenty titles so far, mostly "foreign" poetry from our "translation workshop". Considering that my literary opus could easily be packed into three hundred pages, it did not seem complicated to go with a smaller circulation for "my own needs" (or for posthumous) but without rushing, in five or ten years... The plans , as the poet says, are falling through. The summer before last, I happened by chance in Sarajevo and met Semezdin Mehmedinović, my old friend and friend from childhood whom I had not seen for more than thirty years. Namely, at the beginning of the war in 1992, I moved to Sweden, and he, after enduring the war, lived in the USA for more than twenty years. The reason for our meeting was not of a "business" nature, we met "how" but in the inevitable story about literature and his editorial involvement in Buybook, there was a question about the possible printing of a book of my selected poems. We easily agreed on that and I promised to transfer electronically all the songs, all five published collections. However, I mentioned that there are about two hundred songs and as an alternative, I suggested that they be published in Buybook as a whole in one single book, which we would call All Songs . It was up to him to decide and he chose this version, which I also like now, when I have all the songs in my hand... and fuller.
Your poetic debut, Vase for the Lily of the Valley (Light, Sarajevo, 1985) was very successful, after that book there were others, and you were included in the anthology of New Poetry of Bosnia and Herzegovina , edited by poet, anthologist and editor Stevan Tontić. How do you look at all that today, with the passage of time? On yourself as a poet and on the general importance of poetry in your life?
Literature was never an "occupation" for me. I don't know how I would survive with an average of five "produced" songs a year and as many of my loyal readers. For me, however, poetry always had a central place and an existential meaning all these years, regardless of what I did and how I lived. It's a nice feeling to be in a serious anthology like Tontić's, but even then it was most important and clear to me that only through poetry can I express myself precisely and in time take a stand even in situations of the deepest frustrations. I was mostly alone and unnoticed, but that was my own choice. The songs were anyway some type of discussion with oneself, a purely intimate thing, nothing "for sale". Earlier, there was something rebellious in that literary anonymity, and today, when it seems like I'm going to Buybook with the edition, I reduced the number of loyal readers to ten, I drag the poet's "calling" as a burden that I must not lower . On the other hand, the long process of carrying and finally "giving birth" to each individual song is still a kind of therapy for me, which, every time a song is released, ends like the old, traditional bloodletting treatment: pain and nausea, but also relief.
You mentioned anonymity. Does authenticity and freedom in poetry necessarily bring a certain marginal position?
In my case, the hypothesis that freedom and not belonging inevitably results in marginalization is confirmed, it is a logical answer and punishment of the environment. I have always been aware of this, but I could not adapt to the literary elite that establishes norms and rules. I chose rather the path of the lucky loser, full of risks and disappointments that reward, if nothing else, the feeling that even though I fell - I did not capitulate.
What the collection offers us is your dissection of reality, dreams and memories in small pictures, telling stories about different periods of life, different people – artists and those who are not – about life in displacement, and so on. The verses are characterized by communicativeness, precision of linguistic expression in expressing thoughts or images. And this is present throughout all the collections. Is this the result of your deliberate choice or did you simply let language “choose” you?
I had no concepts, models, theories or structures to follow when writing. I would not have had enough discipline for that. I did not receive any literary education, but rather developed my style instinctively, by feeling. I am in fact a self-taught poet who did not follow the "literary fashion" and therefore, uninformed, did not fall under any influences or conform to literary authorities. Alone with language. In one poem that was written after the last published book and which is therefore not in All Poems (it belongs to the letters that were not sent ), I definitely underlined not only the literary but also the "general line" in relation to the hypocritical world, took early retirement and moved from civilization (the university town of Lund) to the wilderness where I now live in peace surrounded by black forests. I am writing myself off from people! It is more humane to be a beast / among beasts than a costume in the midst of gray / bones floating, like over a chess / game, over a chamber of premature babies / that, after being released from the incubator, scurry like / crabs before being thrown into a cauldron of boiling / water. / Bombard, bombard, monsters, kill fountains, / cemeteries and hospitals, I have nothing more to do with people! / I break up with you, my friend, professor / of freedom whose tongue was as sharp as a striking pin / and today in TV debates you allow your / words, like in front of a curling stone, to be targeted and / polished to lead it into the cage with the softest possible / collision on the ice. / I cleared with the people! The times of rebellion and resistance have passed and Kerr will sleep with the mutt again.
What do you think, are consistency and a recognizable poetic voice and style the hallmarks of good poetry? Is it possible to write about everything in the same way or is it necessary to develop new styles and new language tools for new topics?
I didn't think about it that often before, but now that all five of my collections are "lined up" in the same book, it's clear that the style has changed. Especially between the first and the next four collections. I guess that comes with experience, or rather, aging. The tool (language) has remained the same, but in this area, as in any craft, over time, some new solutions and changes come about in terms of using new materials and trying out new designs. It is visible, for example, that the time distance between the first and second books is much greater than between the others that came later, so this thesis about the development of new styles could be correct.
"I snuck out of my homeland in a trunk (in the manner of /innocent Vito Corleone) carrying only /my mother tongue with me", are the lines from this book. Your poetry is largely rooted in spatiality from which other themes are further analyzed. For Brecht, exile is a state in which a person speaks loudly, but no one listens to him, and where he makes mistakes in his language, but there is no one to correct him. What is your attitude towards the language and how does the mother tongue define us, and how does the one we learn far away from our homeland?
I'm glad you mentioned Brecht. That's exactly how I feel in my exile. But not only in exile, but in general. And why? Because people in the time of today's fascism that has reigned over the world again (and it is exactly the same as in Brecht's time) prefer to choose one of the big lies for their truth rather than small true stories from the West or the East . The only difference is that no one bans books (and almost no one burns them), but the time of alleged freedom of speech and freedom of expression in today's kitsch democracies has developed a type of much more dangerous, subtle censorship: ignoring. I would compare freedom of speech and expression in today's democracies to the belching of fish in an aquarium or the screeching of parrots in cages. The sharper the stick, the more severe the tyranny , Duško Trifunović would say, if I remember correctly. I am convinced that Brecht, who is still ignored by literary elites close to their governments (for understandable reasons), would have found such modern, “democratic censorship” more difficult. And the question of how my mother tongue defines me and how the one I learn far from home is a bit more complicated than it seems. I believe, however, that you understand when I say that I find it harder to be ignored in my mother tongue than in Swedish.
Leaning on the previous question, the lyrics of the song "Exile" - I simply got up from the table and/ crossed the minefield to the eternal hunting grounds of exile. When you don't have a homeland/it doesn't matter if you live in it. - summarize a fatalistic understanding of the homeland. What is your attitude towards Bosnia and Herzegovina and how much has it changed over the years spent in Sweden?
I am a Bosnian-Herzegovinian poet, although I have spent more than half my life in Sweden. This belonging is determined by my mother tongue, and besides, regardless of my age, I have spent eight of my nine cat-like lives in Bosnia. The time spent outside Bosnia has not changed my attitude towards the homeland of my mother tongue. Among the many mixed feelings, however, disappointment with Bosnia dominates, the one in which we fought over the big lies we chose as our truths, but also this one today in which my children's peers have no perspective. Disappointment, therefore, ages and dries up with age, but it does not lose its weight .
Hyperborea is your name for Sweden, your “reserve homeland.” For Crnjanski, Hyperborea is a place of support, a sense of peace offered by the northern countries. What is your relationship with the country you live in?
Yes, I have long considered Sweden, which I came to in 1992, to be my reserve homeland. A beautiful country and a gentle people. My enthusiasm for this country has gradually faded and in just the last few years has turned into deep disappointment. Sweden, which was neutral for two hundred years, sold its soul to the devil a few months ago, and just these days has also given away a large part of its sovereignty to the Empire. And all of this happened in a hurry, with almost no debate, through aggressive media management in a country that otherwise prides itself on its democracy and ignoring every reasonable voice that opposes it. I felt five or six years earlier that this would be the case and even then I predicted and wrote that Hyperborea would (also) become a vassal of the Empire . Today it is a country of double standards: on the one hand it preaches humanism and on the other, at the same time, it incites war and is happy to join alliances that need to bomb somewhere in order to defend our "values". Brecht doesn't like that...
How have the northern regions influenced your poetry? Bosnia or life in the north – what is more inspiring for your verses?
As far as inspiration is concerned, there is no difference between Bosnia and Sweden, since my songs are mostly about neither Sweden nor Bosnia, even when many titles, such as Tuzla or Tuottar, directly refer to the logic of geography. Tuzla and Tuottar are just two different packaging for products that have little to do with either Tuzla or Tuottar, but deal with the eternal issues of losing and searching for identity, the betrayal of "human" principles, in short, the absurdity of life. And if I had to decide what is more inspiring for the lyrics, I would say: I was born under the dog star and I can do without Tuottar, it is sad without Tuzla .
World poetry of all times writes about love and death, but all poets in their own way. And you, among other things, deal with these big topics. In what way are they present in your poetry?
Death is probably the most mysterious human "experience" and it is natural that we deal with it the most during our lifetime in every profession. The same is true in literature, which has countless fantastic hypotheses. I myself have not been spared from pondering this phenomenon, and besides being convinced that death primarily causes pain in the physical sense, I have tried on several occasions to approach this secret, in its metaphysical part, from the inside. Now it seems to me that I went the furthest in my first attempt when, in Vase for a Lily Plant, I formulated how I came to know death: as if it were a room, locked and somehow familiar, which I do not know whether I will enter or have been there before. I think, however, that death is most dramatic in the context of suicide, so in a few poems I dealt with it not as the final outcome but as a "means". Love also causes pain, so in that context it is a grateful literary theme. It works best for me in the context of unrequited love:
Cry, but what! You who had no strength
to say No ! You who are against your will
said Yes ! You will wear both in the archipelago
your irreplaceable gain .
What predecessors is your poetry based on?
For example, many years ago, as I was discovering them, I loved two Greeks: Cavafy and Seferis. Eliot fascinates me to this day, and it's good that you mentioned Brecht. Thanks to the excellent translations of Marko Vešović and Omer Hadžiselimović, the poetry of the greatest (of course ignored) American poet Robinson Jeffers has been "saving" me in recent years.
Some of the lyrics of the poem Crusades seem to me to be still alive today. You are good boys, you die well for our cause/ on bank accounts. Filthy flags of plunder and ruin. , while you begin the collection True Stories , published in 2023, with the epitaph/verse The world will soon collapse, let it collapse, it is no harm . Tell me how you see this time today, continuously marked by conflicts that produce a social stagnation and backwardness. Can poetry help us understand the world or help us be better or more compassionate?
The world is inevitably headed for its doom and that's really not a shame. I see no reason to save him either! Damn the world when what is happening in Gaza is completely normal! Even that is no longer valid: the song kept us going, thank you. Poetry is helpless in terms of understanding the world and the only thing left, which makes some sense and in which poetry can still help us to some extent, is to try to understand the reasons for our own downfall. This is the only thing I deal with in my poetry, especially in the last collection of True Stories .
What are you reading right now? What books keep you busy? How important is reading to writing?
I'm not going to lie: I haven't read anything in months. I am too busy with liberating work on a remote, dilapidated farm to which I moved five months ago, breaking away from the world. However, I ordered from Buybook and the other day I received a book of poems, All Songs , so I read them like someone else . A beautiful book, somehow alive in the hand... And the songs aren't bad either. It's almost like reading her inspires me to write.
I agree! Why do you write poetry? - is the question you answered in the poem "Why do I write poetry": to add another insignificant/nuance to the millions of the same answers/to the millions of eternally the same questions/unanswered , and to cause the readers the same nausea you have while writing it. What then is the function of poetry and is there any point in writing it at all?
Poetry definitely cannot change anything. Because even if there were something dangerous in it that could change the situation (for the better), the regimes would immediately attack it as a conspiracy theory and call on obedient subjects to energetically and democratically ignore that “something”. However, poetry is a human freedom that cannot be suppressed and, if nothing else , can be accidentally unbuttoned on the shoulder like an accordion and stretched out into the laughter of a hyena . For these reasons, I think that writing poetry is not pointless. Especially if you have at least five loyal readers who understand why the world is falling apart and as long as every new poem you send makes them feel at least a little nauseous.