Tone Škrjanec

Slovenia, 1953

Tone Škrjanec was born in Ljubljana (Slovenia) in 1953. He finished high school and graduated in sociology at the University of Ljubljana. After being a teacher for a short period, he worked as a journalist for almost ten years. Since 1990 he has been a program co-ordinator at the Cultural Centre KUD France Prešeren in Ljubljana, where he works also as the organiser of poetry events. For several years now he has been the leader of the traditional poetry festival called The Tercets of Trnovo. He has published six books of poems: Blues of a Swing (1997), a haiku booklet The Sun on a Knee (1999), Pagodas on Wind, (2001), Knives (2002), Copper (2004) and Skin (2006). In spring, 2005, an English translation of the complete version of his book of haikus The Sun on a Knee was published in New York (Ugly Duckling Presse). In November the same year a book of his selected poems under the title Pilnowanie chwil was published in Poland and in 2008 his selected poems were published in Bulgaria. With five of his poems he also took part in the “poetry & music” CD record A Bit of Noise and a Pinch of Salt that was recorded in 2003 by a group of poets and different musicians from Ljubljana. and in the year 2007 he recorded the CD Catching the Rhythm (seven poems with music) accompanied by composer and musician Jani Mujič. His poems were translated and published in numerous literary revues and anthologies in Europe and other countries. Beside writing poetry, Tone Škrjanec also works as a translator. He translates poems and novels from English, Croatian and Serbian into Slovene. His preference goes to modern American literature (Paul Bowles, William S. Burroughs, Charles Bukowski, Gary Snyder, Frank O’Hara, Timothy Liu, Kenneth Rexroth, Jack Spicer …).