Kristina Hočevar

Na zobeh aluminij, na ustnicah kreda (Aluminium on Teeth, Chalk on Lips) is Kristina Hočevar’s fifth book of poetry. This collection earned Kristina Hočevar the Jenko Award for the best poetry book of the past two years; the book was also nominated for the Veronika Award. The bold, personal poetics that Kristina Hočevar continues and builds upon in this book previously earned her the Golden Bird Award (2010); the collection Repki (Tails) was also nominated for the Veronika Award.

At the level of internal and external form, as well as at the thematic level, Aluminium on Teeth, Chalk on Lips is clearly in close proximity to its predecessors, while at the same time representing a break, or at least a marked turn, in Kristina Hočevar’s poetic opus. The poetry in this collection emerges from her probing the most basic, existential foundations on which individual identity rests, which therefore gives rise to the most fundamental of existential questions for the reader. Somehow, the natural consequence of this is that in this book – much more pronouncedly than in the previous author’s collections – Kristina Hočevar penetrates into the ephemeral. Aluminium on Teeth, Chalk on Lips could be regarded as a book of fundamental, all-embracing questions at the thematic level, and as an uncompromising book of a sophisticated, highly articulate but also playful poetic language at the expressive level.