Igor Marković was born in 1988 in Leskovac, Serbia. He is a poet and columnist. From 2005 to 2012, he was one of the lead editors of the radio show “Mic Check”, dedicated to culture and urban music. He is the author of the audio poetry collection When Words Come Alive, created for people with visual impairments and published in 2023. His acclaimed poetry collection The Right to Replication was published in 2024.
Petar Penda is a literary scholar, translator, critic, and poet who teaches English literature at the University of Banja Luka. He holds a PhD in English and American Modernism, with expertise in Shakespeare, literary modernism, and contemporary Anglo-American poetry. He has authored and edited numerous scholarly works, including books on T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence, and has translated over a dozen literary works between English and Serbian. His own poetry and translations have been widely published in both regional and international literary journals. He is the author of the novel titled Oak Tree published in Montenegro and Serbia.
VIGIL
The earth sank into a netherworld dusk
It shuddered
And turned, haunted by solitude
Its words rang against the ramparts
with a howl of rusted hands
from the rooftops of entombed oaks
when it gave voice
Here, the age of heroism reigns no more!!
Stray passersby dream within me
Ignorant wardens of prehistory
Observers of bone monuments
And rearrangers of long-dead horrors
Here we are alone within transience
I will open to you my nape
when you forget the craft of breathing
And the meaning of the eternal shifting of the future
For time blindly believes in space
While death repays a debt to my throat
for keeping memories
by forgetting the Past
БДЕЊЕ
Земља утону у загробни сумрак
Протресе се
И осврну уклета од самоће
Одјекнуше од зидина њене речи
хуком зарђалих руку
са кровова укопаних храстова
кaд изусти
Овде више не царује доба херојства!!
у мени сањају случајни пролазници
неуки клисари пра-историје
посматрачи монумената од костију
И преслагачи минулог згражавања
Овде смо сами у пролазности
Отворићу и Вама свој потиљак
када заборавите занат дисања
И значај вечитог претакања будућности
Јер време слепо простору верује
Док смрт мом грлу враћа дуг
за чување успомена
заборавом од Прошлости
Fevers of the Mind 