Burning Tongues
New & Selected Poems
A selection of new and previously published poems from a key voice in the new generation of central European post-Communist poets.
Aleš Šteger's poetry is multi-layered and technically versatile, ingenious and inventive, adventurous and playful yet serious in intention, and above all, incessantly curious in its investigations which the reader is invited to share – and he loves to ambush the reader with the unexpected.
Notable for its moral engagement, his poetry is acutely precise in its observation and concentration, and could also be described – in very broad terms – as surrealist. His influences are mainly European, most notably the Serbian master poet Vasko Popa and the French surrealist Francis Ponge, whose mantle he could be said to have taken on in prose poems which describe everyday objects in minute terms, only to explode in the imagination through what he perceives in them.
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 seven books of poetry, three novels and two books of essays, and his work has been translated into over 15 languages, including English, with translations – mostly by Brian Henry – including The Book of Things (BOA Editions, US, 2010), Essential Baggage (Equipage, 2016), Above the Sky Beneath the Earth (White Pine Press, US, 2019), The Book of Bodies (White Pine Press, US, 2022) and Burning Tongues: New & Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, UK, 2022).
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