Svetlana Makarovič

Svetlana Makarovič
Svetlana Makarovič in August 2011 at Ljubljana Town Hall
Born	(1939-01-01) 1 January 1939 (age 78) Maribor, Slovenia
Occupation	Writer, poet, actress, illustrator and chanteuse
Nationality	Slovenian

Svetlana Makarovič (born 1939) is a Slovenian writer of prose, poetry, children's books, and picture books, and is also an actress, illustrator and chanteuse. She has been called "The First Lady of Slovenian poetry." She is also noted for borrowing from Slovenian folklore to tell stories of rebellious and independent women. She is well-known adult and youth author. Her works for youth have become a part of modern classic and youth canon, which both hold a special place in history of the Slovenian youth literature. She won the Levstik Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2011.

Makarovič finished secondary school for pre-school teachers in Ljubljana. In the early 1960s she began with study of various humanistic sciences (psychology, pedagogics, ethnology and foreign languages), she played piano in various cafes and for a short period she was a secretary and teacher for children with special needs. In 1968, she finished her study at Academy for Theatre, Radio, Film and Television. She was an actress in the Ljubljana city Theatre and the Slovene National Theatre. She is a freelance writer since 1970.

Makarovič started publishing her works in magazines and newspapers in 1957. Her first poem, In the Black Pavement (Slovene: V črnem tlaku) was published in the magazine Mlada pota ("Young Paths"; 1952–1962). Other poems and magazines, in which she published, were: Naša sodobnost ("Our Contemporaneity"; 1953–1963),Tribuna ("The Tribune"; 1951–),Problemi ("Problems"; 1962, 1963), Perspektive ("Perspectives"; 1960–1964), Sodobnost ("Contemporaneity"; 1963–) and Dialog ("The Dialogue").

Her first poem collection, called Somrak ("Twilight"), was published in 1964. This one, as well as her all other works in the second half of the 1950s and early 1960s, follows the predominant path of the Slovenian lyric poetry from Intimism to Modernism. In the collection Kresna noč ("The Midsummer Night"; 1968), she expressed her personal poetics based on traditional poetic forms. Her folk poetry-based poems present a new expression of existential crisis of modern man. In the beginning of the 1970s, her poetry became more harsh in terms of form. Tragical and balad mood was the prevailing one. An example is the collection of poems Bo žrl, bo žrt ("Will Eat, will be Eaten"; 1998). Creative peaks came with her collection Srčevec ("The Heart Potion"; 1973) and the anthology Izštevanja ("Count Out"; 1977). Her poem anthology, Samost ("Aloneneness") was self-published in 2002.