Naida Mujkić (1984) is a bosnian poetess. She is passionnately in love with language, and poetic frame of her poetry, as critics said, can not be described in just one sentence. She won first prize at literary festival Slovo Gorčina – the most important award to young poet in the collection of unpublished poems in her country (2006). She holds master’s degree in graduate school, ‘Theory and Practice of Postmodern literary study’, and for many years she teaches Literature at Faculty of Philosophy. She also writes for STAV Magazine. She is a member of PEN Center BiH and Global Poet Network from South Korea. For two months she was an Artist in Residence at Museumsquartier Wien (Austria, 2016.).
Books of poetry:
Fluctuations/ Oscilacije, Zoro, Sarajevo-Zagreb, 2008.
Love bonds of moguls/ Ljubavni šarti mogula, Buybook, Sarajevo-Zagreb, 2015.
Saffron/ Šafran, Centar za kulturu i obrazovanje, Tešanj, 2016.
So far, her poems have appeared in many places in the world, as well as in some of the influentual magazines (such as: Lichtungen, International Times, Poezija, Izraz, Razlika/ Differance, Republika poezije…). Her second book was presented at the Buch Wien (Vienna, 2015), and also at the Literaturhaus Graz (Graz, 2015). Her poems are elected in the Anthologies of contemporary bosnian poetry, as well as in the anthologie of Balkan’s youngest generation of poets. She participated in several international poetry festivals.
CRUCIFIX
I wanted to come in, but mother
pulled my sleeve which was a sign
to stay
by the invisible line, next to fallen fruit
that we used to make fig schanpps.
Father brought ten wooden sticks and halved them
With his knee. I added him every one of them
But the first one. Then, with his hands, he pressed them
Into the earth.
Moisture was absorbed by the ropes that I cut
That morning before water for the coffee got boiled.
We tied it up on all sides. Mother told us
To watch the leafage. I used
The moment, when she and father
Started to stretch it, and
Threw two into my dress.
Now, I had to be even more careful.
I fixed a ribbon around my waist. They squirm
In my navel like the sentences that I was tying
Around pegs.
RED ONIONS HISTORY
I
Behind accordionist in a beret,
wet cigarette butts are falling down,
like barrel covers. And the sun.
I turn toward the man that sits
at the next table.
But, he was not that man.
There were no
bags underneath his glasses. He leaned
over postcards in front of me.
I was listening to
his calmness. When he waved to
accordionist, I stood up.
Smell of fried sugar
swallowed my shadow. But those could be
clouds.
Man wanted to see the sea.
His mother sleeps at the bottom of it.
Her hair is foamy, like the blood in a spittle.
His hair is gray.
He wanted to see the sea,
but people on the rocks
were sticking sticks into
the buckets with dead fish inside.
He wanted to ask them something.
Do they still crush
red onion with their heels? They turn on them
like trapeze artists around rope.
Or it drop
through their palms.
II
I remember sweat drops, sliding
down the glasses – that he pushes
along the root of his nose
And the red petals spread
over stones
I took the stone,
and not the petal
I wanted him
to put that stone into his
inner pocket – to lose it
and forget this day
I remember blisters – on both
of my pinkie fingers
And that I didn’t took of
my ballet shoes – what would he
do with my wounded feet.
And flies besieging banana carts,
proving, through their movements,
that every one of them is individual –
first example from the holy book.
I remember the laughter
between the walls of the street
in which we got lost.
