Výlet nekončí – Jilemnická Elenn

The sculptor Ellen Jilemnická, alongside her visual work, has also been creating meditative, introspective poetic reflections since the 1960s, which she has only partially published in magazines or in exhibition catalogs. With her literary expression, she ranks among the prominent contemporary artists who, in the privacy of their studios, also write poetry that reflects their life and artistic experience. Similar to Adriena Šimotová, Běla Kolářová, or Eva Švankmajerová, Jilemnická creates poems filled with imagery and specificity, aiming for lyrical phenomenology and simultaneously for the poeticization of the world. The selection presents three poetic cycles from the 1960s and 1970s: Shouts, From People Objects Grow, and The Trip Doesn't End, which expressively move within the context of Czech poetry of the 1960s. However, the author did not abandon poetry even during the 1990s. From that time comes her yet unfinished lyrical cycle of records and reflections, aptly titled Post scriptum. In it, classical poems, written as always by Jilemnická in free verse, alternate with prose forms, with active letters and exclamations directed at another person, continuing a broken dialogue. In earlier texts and in quite recent records, the author manifests as...