Gradimir Gojer is a Bosnian theater director, writer and actor who was born in Mostar, in 1951. He studied and earned a degree in directing and literature from the University of Sarajevo. He has directed in some of the largest Bosnian theaters and many of the regional ones, such as in Belgrade, Serbia; Bitola, Macedonia and Split, Croatia.
He has received a number of awards at various international theater festivals and served as vice president of the Social Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the Siege of Sarajevo (1992–1996), he remained in the city and continued working prolifically in the theater scene. He worked for the organization of the Sarajevo War Theater in addition to serving as a director and art manager of Kamerni Theatre 55. He was also a minister in the Bosnian government and recipient of the International Peace Center award for his artistic accomplishments.
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JORDAN SHIFTS THE SLOEŠTICA
Never did Hemingway over open seas
Both conquered and unconquerable,
Nor did Gundulić on the azure Adriatic,
Shift the water’s flux, channel the roar
And its flow into a concordant sequence
Never in their lifetimes did they so prevail
Yet Jordan reined in the meek Sloeštica,
Birth canal water, life water, received
Beneath the bridge by histrionic call.
The poet shifted, displaced
The watercourse to the infinity of Paradise,
From the bridge winged a shriek of pain
And a victory versa over the bewilderment of the world,
With the unseeing of the powerful, the frailty of the weak.
Jordan shifted the Sloeštica, drawing
Its sacredness, its course into the flow, budging the flame of celestitude
Dedicated to Jordan Plevneš and his brother, the late Vlada Cvetanovski, with gratitude for introducing him to the Sloeštica River |
| A LETTER TO SHERSHENOVICH
In a little flask, liquid
That might embitter life;
In the wood stove crackle the last
Of news printed in a month
Which passed long ago; long ago,
When everything was different,
Slow, like a cat which
Purrs in the corner of the room and returns
Films of its own wanderings.
I write you a letter with unsure
Hand, sure that it goes off
Into uncertainty and dreams
Forgotten in a marvelous grace.
I write to the last of the caste
Of passion, I write I am tired and,
At a late hour and early in the
Century, I write and doubt
Where I’ll be off to come morning:
Into infinity or that realm,
Known so well to you.
I write quite unsure
Of my own catalogue of pictures,
Of the realm which arrives unannounced,
To my experience entirely unknown
And in a marvelous grace immersed. |
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A WOMAN AMID MONDRIAN’S CUBES
Red, white, blue, yellow,
Endures Mondrian’s kaleidoscope,
And in its midst a woman with white hair,
A wondrous fay-like woman.
I dream this horizon of Mondrian’s,
With the woman with white hair,
When waking and sleeping, all the time.
It catches me, too, in dread insomnia.
Red, white, blue, yellow.
The kaleidoscope spreads across the world,
And the woman with white hair from thought
No way can she, never can she, exit. |
Translated by Ellen-Elias Bursać
From the book: Gradimir Gojer Svjetline Laništa, Gariwo, 2018.
(Lanette’s Radiances)
