Klóketen – Lauerová Sylva (2022)

The illustrated poetry collection Klóketen by Sylva Lauerová returns to the poetry scene, and as we are used to from her, she refuses to please the general poetic taste. It captures the state of the soul and mind in sober, minimalist sketches, speaking to us in the language of Zen images or uncompromisingly glossing over stories from the surrounding world. Klóketen is the third poetry collection by this commercially very successful novelist (Hračka, Jumaroro, Sexy strategie, Tichošlap). It bears the subtitle Notes from Maturation. The title, inspired by the language of the now-extinct South American tribe of the Ona Indians, refers to a novice undergoing a challenging initiation ritual into adulthood. This is how the writer sees herself, her life, and the lives of others in recent years, repeatedly turning to the dark side of human existence, full of doubts, sadness, nostalgia, and resignation. The book is divided into three conceptual parts: short meditative pauses encouraging deeper exploration of the conveyed message, a selection of the author's works in both Czech and English, and the lyrical-epic poem Klóketen, returning to the painful theme of the significantly overlooked genocide of the indigenous peoples of South America. To shape the final form of Klóketen, Sylva invited...