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Advaitam Art Movement, advaitam poetry movement, Advaitam Speaks Literary, hengul haitaal advaitam, Hengul-Haitaal, Indian Literature Today, Slovenian poetry in Advaitam, World Literarture, world poetry today
Photography Credit : Lea Remic Valenti and Robi Valenti
Katja Gorečan was born in 1989 in Celje, Slovenia.
She received a Bachelor degree in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Ljubljana, and finished her Masters studies in Dramaturgy at the Academy for Theatre, Direction, Film and Television, also in Ljubljana. Gorečan took part in a creative writing course, specializing in dramatics. This resulted in the realisation of her one-act drama “Seven girl’s questions”. In 2012 her second poetry collection “The Sorrows of Young Hana”, which was nominated for Jenko Award, the highest poetry award in Slovenia and was selected into the Biennale of Young Artists from Mediterranean Europe. She is not only artistically, but also socially engaged. She worked with patients suffering from dementia in a nursing home, and lead creative workshops with female refugees and their children, as well as has worked with youth with ID.
In 2017, her third book In some night some girls somewhere are dying was published by the Poetikon House of Poetry.
Longnight Dreaming in the Forest / Dolganoč v gozdu sanja
grandma always cries at family celebrations
grandma cries
are those memories / somebody says
are those dreams / says somebody else /
grandma cries and says /
it was terrible / me and mother were left alone / me and your great grandma longnight /
my brother was killed in the forest for slaughtering livestock /
the dwarf’s company / my father was dragged over the ground
to the cart and taken away / it was terrible /
grandma says / nobody dared approach our house /
my father was imprisoned in the old jail / beaten / interrogated /
longnight would go look at him in the field /
like a madman /
a non-human /
like trash /
grandma cries so very deeply /
many years have passed /
and now that she’s losing her memory / all she remembers is loss
Choir: longnight dreaming in the forest
a long night of a dead death behind your neck
in a long night I’m pursuing a black shadow that won’t let me sleep
in nightmares I walk the hospital looking for empty bodies
bodies of people that had not been buried
Choir: the forests are weeping / say the spirits /
the forests are weeping
and grandma hugs me
as we’re picking lavender in front of her house
I’m wandering the forests
where they had been lost
nothing left on the map
the black shadow bigger and bigger
I ran /
breathless
so that I’d catch her /
angrily
so that I’d kill her /
fuming
so that I’d slaughter her /
in madness
choke her /
calmly
and that’s when it starts to rain in the forest
the rain is falling softly, extremely softly
there was nothing left there
I fell asleep peacefully
by the fallen tree
GRANDMA IS STILL CRYING
Choir:LONGNIGHT DREAMING IN THE FOREST
A BLACK SHADOW BEHIND YOUR NECK
LIKE WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE SPIRITS
LONGNIGHT SEES HIM WATCHING
Somebody’s eyes peeking through the world
THROUGH THE WINDOW OF THE PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL
AND THEN HE VANISHES
(From a published cycle of choreo-poems One Night Some Girls Somewhere Are Dying )
************************************************************************
The Birth of a Stillborn
on that night she gave birth to a stillborn girl in her dreams
like all her mothers before her
she was in labour with the stillborn for a while
on her bed in her bedroom
there was nobody beside her
she was in labour and she was wordless
she didn’t yell
she didn’t scream
she was totally silent
when she’d released the child from her body
the child
that wasn’t breathing
wasn’t screaming,
wasn’t moving
she covered it with a white sheet
so that nobody may see
her stillborn child
that’s when her bed began to bleed
and in an instant she found herself in a white hospital
she’s lying facing away from us
the man approaches her to touch her
IN THIS MOMENT WE MUST REALIZE
she doesn’t feel anything anymore
SHE DOESN’T FEEL ANYTHING / SHE FEELS NOTHING
empty
she lies on the bed
calm
for a few minutes
rocking
for a few hours
in weightlessness
for a few days
nothing’s left anywhere
for a few months
where is the life that I’d given birth to
for a few years
for a part of her life
she covered her dead baby
so that nobody may see
she covered her dead
daughter with a white sheet
so that nobody may see
collapses with all her weight
her heart bleed
(From a published cycle of choreo-poems One Night Some Girls Somewhere Are Dying )
