Closed Season

In Croatian, lovostaj means ＂ closed season＂ -- a time during the year when hunting is prohibited. Animals that are hunted by humans are allowed to relax during this time of year, not having to live in fear of being shot. The poems gathered in this award-winning collection by Monika Herceg use this symbolism to explore new ways to express the horrors women the world over have been, and are continually, forced to deal with in a painfully patriarchal world.

Monika Herceg, a Croatian poet, screenwriter, dramatist, editor, and activist, is the author of three poetry books: Pocetne koordinate (2018), Lovostaj (2019), and Vrijeme prije jezika (2020). She has received many prestigious national and international awards, including Goran za mlade pjesnike, Kvirin, Fran Galovic, Slavic, Mostovi Struge, Na vrh jezika, Biber, Zvonko Milkovic, Lapis Histriae, and European Poet of Freedom Award 2024. A physicist by profession, she spent her childhood in the village of Pecki near Petrinja. A mother of two, she lives and works in Zagreb. Marina Veverec is a student of literary translation at the University of Zadar, Croatia. Her English-language translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Exchanges, Poetry International Web, Asymptote, Verseville, Harvard Review, and Words Without Borders. She also translated Initial Coordinates, Monika Herceg’s first book of poetry to appear in English.