archipelago books, March, 2022

FINALIST FOR THE PEN AWARD FOR POETRY IN TRANSLATION

Infused with movement, Maja Haderlap’s distant transit traverses Slovenia’s scenic landscape and violent history, searching for a sense of place within its ever-shifting boundaries. Avoiding traditional forms and pronounced rhythms, Haderlap unleashes a flow of evocative, captivating passages whose power lies in their associative richness and precision of expression, vividly conjuring Slovenia’s natural world – its rolling meadows, snow-capped alps, and sparkling Adriatic coast. Belonging to the Slovene ethnic minority and its inherited, transgenerational trauma, Haderlap explores the burden of history and the prolonged aftershock of conflict – warm, lavish pastoral passages conceal dark memories, and musings on the way language can create and dissolve borders reveal a deep longing for a sense of home. At its core, distant transit is an ode to survival, building a monument to traditions and lives lost.

Praise for Maja Haderlap

Maja Haderlap's poetry and prose combine poetic brilliance with explosive political power. — 2018 Max Frisch Prize jury

The desire to abolish borders, to free confined discourse, is inscribed in these poems as an ambivalent back and forth between escape and groundedness. — Ilma Rakusa, NZZ

Poems in words without borders here, here and The Hudson Review

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Also by Maja Haderlap: Angel of Oblivion