Burning Tongues

Aleš Šteger was born in 1973 in Ptuj, Slovenia, where he grew up, then part of the former Yugoslavia ruled by Tito, which gained its independence when he was 18. He published his first collection at the age of 22, Chessboard of Hours in 1995, and was immediately recognised as a key voice in the new generation of post-Communist poets not only in Slovenia but throughout central Europe.

Notable for its moral engagement, Šteger’s poetry is acutely precise in its observation and concentration as well as multi-layered and technically versatile, ingenious and inventive, adventurous and playful yet serious in intention. Above all, his poems are incessantly curious in their investigations which the reader is invited to share – and he loves to ambush the reader with the unexpected.

His influences are mainly European, including the Serbian master poet Vasko Popa, as well as German and Spanish-language poets he has translated into Slovenian, such as Bachmann, Benn, Huchel, Neruda and Vallejo. He has added his own strand of writing to the distinctively European genre of prose poems in pieces which describe everyday objects in minute terms, only to explode in the imagination through what he perceives in them. He is also known for his prose books and experimental writing including his Written on Site pieces.

‘For anyone interested in the state of Europe, Aleš Šteger’s Burning Tongues is an indispensable read. Widely travelled, Šteger is among the continent’s most important mid-generation poets, a stylish Central European culture-maker, by turn playwright, editor, festival director, visual artist and cultural ambassador. He writes with peculiarly Slovenian playfulness about contemporary society and sensibility: the hyper-reality of his work fizzes with zeitgeist. This substantial volume is easy to read and beautifully translated.’ – Fiona Sampson, The Tablet (Summer Reading)

‘Collection of poems by Slovenia’s leading poet and a leading voice in the new generation of post-Communist poets from central Europe. Šteger will be a keynote speaker for Slovenia at the 2023 Frankfurt Book Fair.’ - Caroline Sanderson, New Titles: Non-fiction, November 2022, The Bookseller, on Burning Tongues: New & Selected Poems

Aleš Šteger was born in 1973 in Ptuj (p-too-ee), Slovenia, where he grew up, then part of the former Yugoslavia ruled by Tito, which gained its independence when he was 18. He published his first collection at the age of 22, Chessboard of Hours in 1995, and was immediately recognised as a key voice in the new generation of post-Communist poets not only in Slovenia but throughout central Europe. 

He has published nine books of poetry, three novels and two books of essays. A Chevalier des Artes et Lettres in France and a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts, he received the 1998 Veronika Prize for the best Slovenian poetry book, the 1999 Petrarch Prize for young European authors, the 2007 Rožanc Award for the best Slovenian book of essays, the 2016 International Bienek Prize and the 2022 International Spycher Prize. His work has been translated into over 15 languages, including Chinese, German, Czech, Croatian, Hungarian, and Spanish.

Six of his books have been published in English: The Book of Things (BOA Editions, US, 2010), which won the 2011 Best Translated Book Award and the 2011 Best Literary Translation into English Award from AATSEEL; the collection of lyric essays, Berlin (Counterpath, US, 2015); the book of prose poems, Essential Baggage (Equipage, 2016); the novel Absolution (Istros Books, 2017); Above the Sky Beneath the Earth (White Pine Press, US, 2019); and The Book of Bodies (White Pine Press, US, 2022). His retrospective, Burning Tongues: New & Selected Poems, is published by Bloodaxe Books in the UK in 2022.

He also has worked in the field of visual arts (most recently with a large scale installation at the International Kochi-Muziris Biennale in India), completed several collaborations with musicians and composers including Jure Tori and Vito Žuraj, and collaborated with Peter Zach on the film Beyond Boundaries.

Poet, translator, and editor Brian Henry earned his BA at the College of William & Mary and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. His collections of poetry include Astronaut (2000), American Incident (2002), Graft (2003), Quarantine (2006), In the Unlikely Event of a Water (2007), The Stripping Point (2007), Wings Without Birds (2010), Lessness (2011), Doppelgänger (2011). Brother No One (2013), Static & Snow (2015) and Permanent State (2020). An advocate for Slovenian poets and poetry, he has translated Tomaž Šalamun’s Woods and Chalices (2008) and Aleš Šteger’s The Book of Things (2010), Above the Sky Beneath the Earth (2019), The Book of Bodies (2022) and Burning Tongues: New & Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, UK, 2022). His translation of Aleš Šteger’s The Book of Things won both the Best Translated Book Award and AATSEEL’s Best Literary Translation into English Award, and his translation of Aleš Debeljak’s Smugglers received a 2011 Howard Foundation fellowship. He also received translation grants from the National Endowment for the Arts for books by Šteger, one for his collection of lyric essays, Berlin, the other for Burning Tongues. He is currently editing and translating a final comprehensive volume of Selected Poems by Tomaž Šalamun for Milkweed Editions.