{"product_id":"martek-vlado-pre-poetrypb","title":"[10\/06\/26] Martek, Vlado: Pre-Poetry","description":"\u003cp\u003eWorld Poetry, paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTranslated by Ainsley Morse\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: October 6, 2026\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVlado Martek’s ars poetica combines minimalism and conceptualism in a theoretically-driven wrestling match between the materiality of writing and the metaphysics of poetry. \u003cem\u003ePre-Poetry\u003c\/em\u003e collects Martek’s short poems, mini-essays, and visual and performance works from the late 1970s and early ’80s. Martek’s work of this period builds on the strategies of the Zagreb-based Group of Six Authors and other representatives of the second generation of conceptual art and experimental poetics in Yugoslavia. For Martek, “pre-poetry” engages the material foundations and physical effort of the work of poetry. In a certain sense analogous to “non-art” in visual arts, pre-poetry also calls attention to throwaway phrases, linguistic cliches and ambiguities, and the visual aspects of language. Rejecting generic categories of visual and concrete poetry, \u003cem\u003ePre-Poetry\u003c\/em\u003e reveals Martek’s intriguing connections with poets and conceptual artists from other parts of the world and marks the first major English-language publication of his poetic output.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt once a radical condensation and total expansion, Vlado Martek’s “pre-poetry” is the point of singularity at the intersection of the apices of two temporal cones: everything leading up to the moment of inscription and the pure potential of everything that can follow. Occupying an impossible position, pre-poetry offers poems that come before the poem, the materiality of the conceptual, and the very real labor of abstract idealism itself. Emerging from a \u003cem\u003ecrise de vers\u003c\/em\u003e in Balkan poetry in the 1970s, \u003cem\u003ePre-Poetry\u003c\/em\u003e has much to teach us in our own cultural moment. —Craig Dworkin\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the work of Vlado Martek, language shuttles between conventions—of genre, materiality, and authorship—and a bubbling mass of aspirations and longings. With this attentive translation, his restless, passionate writing is at long last available in English. —Adair Rounthwaite\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVlado Martek’s \u003cem\u003ePre-Poetry\u003c\/em\u003e proceeds from the proposition that “every poem is preparation for itself.” In this quiet, blank atmosphere preceding any manifestation of poetic language, Martek finds poetry’s magic as well as its tools: pencils, preparation, refusal, honesty. With wit, rigor, and open antagonism toward not only the literal state but the forms that the state uses to replicate itself in poetry, this profound collection looks into the abyss behind the poem and finds—surprise!—the poem: “Too bad \/ that poetry is \/ everything.” —Brandon Brown\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn both his poetry and his texts, Martek questions what poetry in fact is, how poetry is possible to begin with, how it comes into being and what poetry makes poetry. —Dubravka Djurić\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45407467175959,"sku":"9781954218499","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/files\/1785663978-900.jpg?v=1786826410","url":"https:\/\/open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com\/products\/martek-vlado-pre-poetrypb","provider":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","version":"1.0","type":"link"}