Biography Essay

Vesna Parun is indisputably the grande dame of Croatian poetry. She, like other poets of the postwar period, was influenced by the outstanding figure of the prewar era, Tin Ujevic, who stands at the threshold of pre- and postwar Croatian literature. In the subsequent period, the 1940s and 1950s, it was the work of Parun and Jure Kastelan that determined the new course for modern poetry in Croatia. Parun has published more than thirty collections of poetry, more than ten books of poetry for children, many plays and radio dramas, journalistic prose, and translations from Slovenian and Bulgarian. Her own poetry has been translated into Bulgarian, Czech, English, French, German, Russian, Slovakian, and Slovenian. The breadth and depth of her poetry, and the deeply feminine perspective that she brought to it, make her the Anna Akhmatova of Croatian literature. She has received many prestigious literary awards...