Trafika Europe’s First-Ever Literary Prizes Issue
It is with such great pleasure that I write this welcome to our very first literary prizes. Trafika Europe’s Prize for Prose and Trafika Europe’s Andrew Singer Prize for Verse have been a dream of mine since starting to work on the project in 2015 as an undergraduate student. It has been just over a year and a half since we lost former director Andrew Singer. Naturally, I had to enact this dream, and if it were not for his support over the years, I would never have been able to take over this project and continue its legacy. The Prize for Verse honors his work on this project and his creative work as a poet.
The judges’ panel had much difficulty selecting winners and runners-up because we were fortunate to receive a lot of submissions that were stellar examples of the wonderful literature coming from the continent of Europe. It is not solely the authors who play a role in this, but the amazing translators who also dedicate their time and creative energy to their work. Thanks to everyone who submitted to this prize. A huge thank you to the judges’ panel, Ági Bori, Francesca Bell, and Joseph Williams, for their time and effort in this huge undertaking. It was such a pleasure working with all of you, my comrades!
Now, with the announcement everyone is waiting for! The winner of Trafika Europe’s Prize for Prose is Black (Crnac), a wonderful novel of microchapters, by Tatjana Gromača, translated from Croatian by Ena Selimovic. Our two runners-up for the Prize for Prose are The Sons Are the First to Die, a wonderful play by Mate Matišić, translated from Croatian by Suzana Vuljevic and Giacomo Sartori’s “Copulation Therapy” from his collection Autismi, translated from Italian by Michela Martini and Elizabeth McKenzie. Two pieces full of merit that we are so happy to include in this issue are Stolp, a riveting graphic novel by Daniel Odija and Wojciech Stefaniec, translated from Polish by Anna Błasiak, and Julian Darragjati’s original short story “A Death in the Spring.”
The winner of Trafika Europe’s Andrew Singer Prize for Verse is Psalm to Saint Sabina by Radosław Wiśniewski, translated from Polish by Anna Błasiak. This wonderful poem will run you through history in such a musical manner. Our runners-up are poems from the Galician poet Olgo Nova, translated by Keith Payne, and poems from Portuguese poet João Luís Barreto Guimarães, translated by Calvin Olsen. Special mentions in this category are poems from House, Afternoon by Orsolya Láng, translated from Hungarian by Anna Bentley, and poems by Joanna Lilley accompanied by stellar paintings by the late Rebecca Lilley.
I hope you all enjoy this phenomenal, historic issue for us at Trafika Europe. Thanks to everyone who has been involved in this process; and a special thanks to all who have collaborated, read, or listened to any our content over the years. We would not be able to continue if it weren’t for all of you.
Happy reading!
Clayton McKee
Director, Trafika Europe
Some of the best new literature from Europe
Acknowledgments
We’ve got a lot of people to thank for their help in this issue. Click here for a full list of collaborators and our gratitude.
Meet the Artist
Website: http://constantinseverin.ro/
Constantin Severin is a Romanian writer and visual artist, founder and proponent of Archetypal Expressionism, a highly regarded global art movement, which he founded in 2001. A graduate of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, he has published 15 books of poetry, essays and fiction. One of his poems was included in the 2014 World Literature Today anthology, After the Wall Fell: Dispatches from Central Europe(1989–2014), aimed at popularizing post-Wende Central European literature on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 2022 he won the International Poetry Award „Aco Karamanov” in Northern Macedonia, for the English version of the manuscript of the poetry book „The Lives of the Painters” and in 2023 he was awarded the Prize ”On the trails of Orpheus” at the International Poetry Festival in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. His novels and poetry books have been translated and published in USA, India, Great Britain, Spain, France and Macedonia.
Prose
Excerpt from Black (Crnac)
by Tatjana Gromača, translated from Croatian by Ena Selimovic
The house we lived in was made of wood. To one side were wooden steps, and a small squarish extension hung off the back.
The Sons Are First to Die
Theater
by Mate Matišić, translated from the Croatian by Suzana Vuljevic
“Copulation Therapy” from Autismi
by Giacomo Sartori, translated from the Italian by Michela Martini and Elizabeth McKenzie
The only thing we had in common at that point were the childish drawings. The little houses with the spirals of smoke and the ball of the sun, the stubborn spindly little figures, the mountains like saw teeth, the sea with its little waves. No sex, no intriguing conversations, no candlelit dinners, no TV and pumpkin seeds, no outdoor cinema, none of the normal things that couples do together.
Stolp
Graphic Novel
by Daniel Odija and Wojciech Stefaniec, translated from Polish by Anna Błasiak
“A Death in the Spring”
by Julian Darragjati
Most Albanians of my generation or older could tell you this story, although of course they’d have their own versions of it. It was spring. Yes, death in spring can be banal, but I was a child then and still saw the world through a child’s eyes.
Verse
Psalm to Saint Sabina
by Radosław Wiśniewski, translated from Polish by Anna Błasiak
- Saint Sabina of Brzeg, Kolomyia, Sniatyn, Łapy, Tobolsk,
whose ID said your place of birth was Sniatyn in USSR,
even though when you were born there was no USSR
and the ruler was Tsar Nicholas, a saint by definition.
Poems
by João Luís Barreto Guimarães, translated from the Portuguese by Calvin Olsen
Ruins
left in this condition take eons to perfect
(conflagrations and earthquakes
exhibited equal eagerness and rigor
Poems
by Olga Novo, translated from the Galician by Keith Payne
Ten Poems from House, Afternoon
by Orsolya Láng, translated from Hungarian by Anna Bentley
The First Man Caught on Camera
He’s alone on the empty street.
The boulevard is bafflingly empty.
Daguerre’s camera caught him in 1838,
with a seven-minute exposure. …
Poems from Rebecca
by Joanna Lilley
Heliotrope
My flamed flaring circumference
of giant black seedshells
My yellow height rising over you