In the Room with the She Wolf

by Jelena Dinic

Jelena Dinic came to Australia during the collapse of the war-torn former Yugoslavia and her poems are created from fractured landscapes. Winner of the 2019 Adelaide Festival Unpublished Manuscript Award, this collection beautifully charts the territory where cultures, languages and family life intersect. Dinic publishes in both Serbian and English.

Genres: Poetry

84 pages, Paperback

Published April 1, 2021

Reviews

[Stef Rozitis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A rare and enviable talent to layer meaning without it being hard for the reader to get a sense of it (I might have missed some nuances). Also wonderful to see that this is a local poet, from the same poetry collective I belong to...I don't think I've met her though.

Hide and Seek was chilling in its matter of factness. It finished with The Sea Fever which again has the darkness, the awareness of suffering in it but in between there are children playing and growing up, adult relationships, food...the whole thing really. And bombs falling on a homeland.

"Cross Cross
Don't you understand past tense?
You had a house.
You had friends" (3)

The whole collection is well worth reading and savouring...but I am jealous of this poet's skill.

[Karine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Beautifully written however I felt like an outsider looking in and couldn't relate to much of what the author was trying to say.