Tomaž Šalamun

Tomaž Šalamun (Zagreb, 1941 – Ljubljana, 2014) was a Slovenian poet and a leading figure of the postwar avant-garde in Central Europe, with an international reputation. His books have been translated into more than twenty-five languages, and his work is often read as a bridge between old European roots and American poetry.

He came from a family of scholars: his mother was an art historian, and his brother Andraž became a painter. As a child he moved with his family from Zagreb to Ljubljana and later to Koper, where local teachers of French and Slovene sparked his interest in language. He studied art history and history at the University of Ljubljana, graduating in 1965. He worked as a curator at the Moderna galerija and joined the OHO art group alongside his brother.

He began publishing in the literary magazine Perspektive in 1963, and his irreverent work unsettled both ideological and aesthetic camps. His first book, Poker, appeared in 1966 and marked a clear break: he dropped inflated lyricism and sentimentality in favour of abrupt images, wordplay and language treated as material. The period that followed became known among critics as «the Šalamun period».

From the early 1970s he spent long stretches in the United States, where he taught and took part in arts programmes, and he travelled to Mexico, which shaped his sense of vulnerability. His later books kept free association and an exuberant imagination, though intimacy and reflection on time grew more prominent in his final collections. His poetry is hermetic and demands effort from the reader, a price he accepted for the inner freedom he sought.

His legacy lies in widening the range of Slovenian poetry and bringing it into dialogue with international movements. He received Slovenian and foreign prizes and was a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.