Sliding World / Gleitende Welt

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women’s poetry, journey to adulthood, existential questions, body awareness, precarity

– Most promising young author of the Urška Young Literature Festival 2019
– Nominated as the best debut book of the Slovene Book Fair 2021
– Selected for the Pranger Festival 2021
– Also available as an audibook & as an artistic game

“…one of the most vital lyrical subjects (protagonists) of all time, not only in Slovenian poetry, but also in the wider literary space.”
Diana Pungeršič, Vital Confessor and Warm-Blooded (Micro)Organisms, Literatura, 2021

Nina Medved’s debut poetry collection Sliding World brings the confession of the lyrical subject, shaped as a bildungs-narrative, which illuminates the development of a girl into a young woman.

It brings 48 poems in which, beneath the surface of tiny and airy notes on themes such as female industriousness, precariousness, attitudes to the (female) body, the processes of ageing, the decision to become a mother, attachment to home, partner love, strong currents are revealed that guide this poetry in a slide in which it is only possible to find meaning if we find the right grips. It reflects the fundamental questions of existence to which every young person in contemporary society, and especially young women, is searching for his or her own answers. The title of the collection comes from the final line of one of the poems, which acts as a gateway: from a sliding world in which social contexts and meanings are constantly shifting and unsettling with their instability; to a world that is still sliding, but in which there are also grips that make the sliding sustainable and perhaps enjoyable.
Each poem in the book begins with a ‘how’, which is not a question mark but an encouragement to the reader to co-create the poem as they read, based on their own life experiences, and a means of lifting up certain moments in the poem and drawing out its structure. The poems in the collection do not have titles, or rather one appears in the form of the last verse. The message, atmosphere of the poem is only reached when you experience it fully. All the last lines come together to form the last, 48th poem, an almost crown of sonnets.
The book has beautiful illustrations done by Meta Wraber and a foreword by Andrej Makuc. The German translation was published by Drava Verlag (2023) and translated by Boštjan Dvořák.

German

wie mich Zeitungen zuweilen
aus dem freien Lauf auskoppeln.
obgleich meine Empfindlichkeit
mit Übersättigung der Welt
und Wellengang des Cortisols mitschwankt.
wie ich trotzdem
die Leichtigkeit erlerne.
ich nicht wegen einer Fliege ausraste,
wenn Poesie geschrieben werden soll.
wie ich lange Zeit am Fenster stehe und
höflich den Ausgang suggeriere.
und nicht sicher weiß, wer von uns beiden
die unsinnigere Strategie anwendet,
seine Ziele zu erreichen:
diese Fliege, die unter der Zimmerdecke
in der Hoffnung auf die Öffnung kreist,
oder doch ich, die
ich mich in der Sprache der Insekten übe.

wie sie die Richtung wechselt
und ins Schlafzimmer hervorschießt. siehe, Fliege.
die Fliege ist da. sie dreht ihre olivfarbenen Augen,
um zu sehen, wo sie sich befindet.
wie ich gedacht hatte, dass ich in ihrer
glatten Anwesenheit leichter mit den Schatten
kämpfen werde. dass sie sie
wegmiauen werde. wie ich ihr
stattdessen einige Worte
beibrachte. Fliege. Katze. hör‘ auf.
brav.
wie man mir einige Worte beibrachte.
klug. nett. brav.
wie der Befehl dem Lob
vorausgeht. wie ich mir für mich selbst wünsche,
nur gehorchen zu können, wenn ich mich dafür
entscheide. wie ich von ihr erwarte,
dass sie immer gehorchen werde.
Fliege. weiche Pfote.
brav.

Aus dem Slowenischen von Boštjan Dvořák.

Other languages

Some of the poems from the book are also available in French, Macedonian, Greek and Czech.

Others on The Sliding World

“The sliding world persistently embodies an unpredictable, open path of inner metabolism and renewal, of meditative (self-)search and upgrading. The poet, otherwise calm and serious adult, relies on it spontaneously, but with the tireless intention of never, at any cost, “spilling over” the primordial, genuine childlike fascination with the world.”
Martina Potisk, Delo, 2020

“The poems raise fundamental existential questions, anchored either in purely private positions (of every woman and man), the search to hold on to sustainable living (even survival), checking the (im)balance on the scales between having and being, and answering the global (also ecological) question, but not in the manner of an activist engagement.”
Andrej Makuc, Holding onto sustainable living, Večer, 2020

100 Frauen.Slowenische Literatur

Jerneja Jezernik, Radio Agora, 21 October 2022

Nina Medved’s debut I Nina Medveds Erslingswerk.
Nika Škof, Radio Agora, 3 November 2020