Tomaž Šalamun Biography

Tomaž Šalamun is a leading name of the postwar neo-avant-garde poetry in Central Europe and internationally acclaimed absurdist Slovene poet, whose books have been translated into twenty-one languages, with nine of his thirty-nine books of poetry published in English. He has been called a poetic bridge between old European roots and America. Šalamun is a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and is married to the painter Metka Krašovec.

As members of Slovene minority in Italy (1920-1947), Šalamun’s mother's family joined thousands of Slovenes who left their homes because of the forced Italianization and moved from Italy to Yugoslavia, where he was born in 1941 in Zagreb. His father’s family came from Ptuj, where his grandfather had been a mayor. After his family moved to Koper, the local high school teachers of French language and Slovene language made him interested in language. In 1960, he began to study art history and history at University of Ljubljana. His mother was an art historian, his brother Andraž is an artist, while his two sisters are Jelka a biologist and Katarina a literary historian.

He has won a Pushcart Prize, as well as the Slovenia’s Prešeren Fund Award and Jenko Prize. Šalamun and his German translator, Fabjan Hafner, were awarded the European Prize for Poetry by the German city of Muenster. In 2004, he was the recipient of Romania's Ovid Festival Prize.