Pavel Kolmačka: Death of a mouse, the gust of wind
– Czechia
An author of five spiritual poetry collections, including his first collection titled Vlál za mnou směšný šos (A Ridiculous Tail Flapped Behind Me, 1994) and his last collection Život lidí, zvířat, rostlin, včel (The Lives of People, Animals, Plants and Bees, 2018). He also wrote the novel Stopy za obzor (Traces Beyond the Horizon, 2006) and published a collection of journal entries titled Jedna věta (One Sentence , 2012). Pavel Kolmačka was born in 1962 in Prague, where he also graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of Czech Technical University, and later studied religions at the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University in Brno. He went through several professions (an orderly in a social care facility and a retirement home, translator, secondary school teacher and others). Klára Soukupová wrote the following about his new work: “All that is happening is laid out as a fact in Life. The author merely reflects these facts in his poems: he does not judge the death of a mouse, the birch-bending gust of wind or Chinese gold mining. He describes what is happening in the world from a distance, as if he were a mere observer while others were the agents, be they people, animals or things.”