Slovak Literature in English Translation

Ivan Laučík  (1944 – 2004) was a Slovak poet. A student of history and Slovak language, for most of his life he worked as a school teacher in or around his native town of Liptovský Mikuláš.  In 1963, together with the poets Ivan Štrpka and Peter Repka, he founded the group  Osamelí bežci (Solitary Runners), who professed unlimited self-expression. Their manifesto Návrat anjelov (The Return of Angels) was deemed too radical for the communist censorship and did not appear until 1968, the year when Laučík’s first poetry collection, Pohybliví v pohyblivom (Moveable within the Moveable, 1968) was also published. His second collection, Sme príbuzní na začiatku (We Are Relatives in the Beginning) came out in 1970, but for the next 20 years during the ‘normalisation’ era, his work was banned. The collection Na prahu počuteľnosti (On the Threshold of Audibility) appeared in 1988, followed by Vzdušnou čiarou (As the Crow Flies, 1991) and the long poem Havránok (1998). After the Velvet Revolution Laučík briefly entered politics as a member of the regional parliament and director of the regional board of education before returning to teaching.