About the Author

Tomaz Salamun was born in 1941 in Zagreb, Croatia and raised in Koper, Slovenia. He has published more than 40 books of poetry in Slovenia and is not only recognized as a leading figure of the Slovenian poetic avant-garde but is also considered one of the leading contemporary poets of Central Europe. In 1996 he became the Slovenian Cultural Attaché in New York, and lived in the U.S. on and off until his death in 2014. His honors include the Preseren Fund Prize, the Jenko Prize, a Pushcart Prize, a visiting Fulbright to Columbia University, and a fellowship to the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He also has served as Cultural Attaché to the Slovenian Consulate in New York. Besides having his work appear in numerous journals internationally, he has had over twelve collections of poetry published in English, including THE FOUR QUESTIONS OF MELANCHOLY: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS (White Pine Press, 1996), BLACKBOARDS (Saturnalia Press, 2004), POKER (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2007), THERE'S THE HAND AND THERE'S THE ARID CHAIR (Counterpath Press, 2009), ON THE TRACKS OF WILD GAME (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012), and the posthumous collection, JUSTICE (Black Ocean, 2015). His poetry has been translated into more than 20 languages around the world, numbering over 80 volumes.