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Jelena Dinic

A tribute to Charles Simic (1938–2023)

Australian Book Review
Thursday, 16 November 2023

In this week’s ABR Podcast, Jelena Dinić pays tribute to Charles Simic, the Yugoslavian-born American poet, essayist, and translator, who died earlier this year. After her own poetry received an award in 2020, Jelena Dinić initiated a correspondence with Simic in Serbian, two writers ‘born in a country that doesn’t exist anymore’. Jelena Dinić’s writing in Serbian and English has been published in several literary journals and anthologies. Listen to ‘”Come closer and listen”: A tribute to Charles Simic (1938–2023)’, published in the November issue of ABR.

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Published in The ABR Podcast

It took me years to gather enough courage to introduce myself. Finally, deep into the Covid lockdown and a few months after receiving an award for my first collection of poems, I began my correspondence with Charles Simic by sending him an email to share the news, as if he were a family member, the one who would understand. He replied warmly, kindly, and in Serbian: ‘Draga Jelena …’

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Published in November 2023, no. 459

In an impressive first collection, the South Australian poet Jelena Dinić incorporates her Serbian heritage and memories of war-affected Yugoslavia into an Australian migration narrative of clear-sighted beauty. William Carlos Williams wrote in the introduction to Kora In Hell: Improvisations (1920): ‘Thus a poem is tough … solely from that attenuated power which draws perhaps many broken things into a dance giving them thus a full being.’ Although far from improvisational, Dinić’s poetry compositionally integrates both fragility and strength as it draws together diverse experiences of war trauma, cultural displacement, the petty administrative routines of immigration departments, a Malaysian writing fellowship, Australian icons (such as the rainwater tank), folklore, and bathing in the Adriatic Sea.

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Published in April 2022, no. 441

Close Contacts

Jelena Dinic
Monday, 21 February 2022

My husband has returned. A traveller whose flight was cancelled has found his way home. He slowly unpacks while I make space for the unexpected.

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Published in March 2022, no. 440

In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Jelena Dinic reads her poem 'Alterations to the little black dress' which features in the 2016 South Australian anthology.

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In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Jelena Dinic reads her poem 'Handbag' which features in the 2016 South Australian anthology.

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In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Jelena Dinic reads her poem 'Babysitting' which features in the 2016 South Australian anthology.

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In this episode of Australian Book Review's States of Poetry podcast, Jelena Dinic reads her poem 'The Silence of Siskins' which features in the 2016 South Australian anthology.

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A little pin-up
three fingers
above the knees.

Behind the curtain
a dress-up game –
pretty things come undone.

He chalks lines
on raw stitches.
I catwalk.

My body fits the timeless black.
'You can live in it, or die'
smile the lips full of needles.

Do I look a little dead
with black fabric
on bone-pale flesh?

for my grandfather

 

He circles my arrival
on the calendar.

It is late November
and it doesn't snow.

A wooden pallet
hardens his bed.

He dreams of grandmother.
He doesn't want new dreams.

Two siskins in cages –
their song frozen like the air

that other November
when she lost her heart

c ...

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