Gravitation

Milan Děžinský is a Czech poet and the author of eight collections of poetry. In 2018, he won the Magnesia Litera Award for poetry, the most prestigious annual literary prize in the Czech Republic. His work has been translated into English, German, and Polish, and several of his poems have appeared in US and UK magazines, including The New York Review of Books, Poetry London, Modern Poetry in Translation, The Dark Horse, and PN Review, as well as the Prague-based B O D Y. Děžinský’s poetry builds on the Deep Image tradition and shows the influence of poets such as James Wright, Tomas Tranströmer, and Sylvia Plath. He lives in Roudnice nad Labem, where he works as an English teacher and serves as a town councillor.

Milan Děžinský’s poems probe what lives in the shadows. They’re alert to the echoes and whispers of history, to what’s heard through walls, and to secrets forests keep. They speculate about the wonder of a woman’s tongue, peer into the composition of matter, question who is prey and who is predator. And perhaps most importantly, these poems are attentive to every kind of messenger: injured animals, apparitions, ‘the mathematical beauty of frost,’ a wall containing a still-trembling ‘tear of builder’s sweat.’ Deep and dark as chasms, sometimes wry, sometimes chilling, they demand repeated readings. Dear translator, can we please have some more?