Though the Sky Is Embroidered by a Zigzagging Bat: Selected Poems by Olga Stehlíková, translated by David Vichnar PRE-ORDER

Olga Stehlíková’s poems fashion new worlds, recognisable as our own planet, but not quite as we’ve seen it before. Her images are continually surprising, the language even more so, the humour pitch-dark. David Vichnar’s vibrant translations ably convey the unconventionality of the original Czech in poems that never stray from deep human concerns and anxieties: a camera takes the place of a crucifix above a hospital ward door, a face reflected in a swimming pool is struck out by a “gentle plastic duck”, and when the poet asks “What does a head replay at the moment/ of falling headlong off a staircase/ as long as a bridal veil?”, she also dares an answer. Literary critic Karel Piorecký writes, “Olga Stehlíková’s poems present a unique quality of intensity and complexity. They combine strength of intellect and the insights of literary tradition with a relaxed playfulness and humour. Rationality and irony play a strong role in them, but always combined with a subtle sensitivity and empathy for the fate of humanity in the turbulence of the contemporary world.”