Simona Kopinšek: ANTAHKARAN AND OTHER FACES OF BEAUTY – book presentation

Thursday 3 June at 7 pm, KIBLA Multimedia Centre, Maribor - the presentation of the book Antahkaran in drugi obrazi Lepote (Antahkaran and Other Faces of Beauty) by Simona Kopinšek. The discussion with the poet was conducted by Nino Flisar.

In Eastern religious and philosophical texts and practices, and in related popular, more or less in-depth and in most cases Western-thought infused esoteric texts, Antahkaran holds many related meanings, all of them stating it represents a certain (rainbow-coloured) bridge, be it between the physical and the spiritual, between the span of mind and its transcendence, or between the mind and the so-called higher mind. The debut collection by the young poetess, who used the aforementioned concept in the title together with Other Faces of Beauty, takes us into worlds of poetry where the poetess touched things hardly noticeably, at other times tips mountains of faraway lands with a hidden power or deepens the river and the streets of her hometown. When entering she doesn't cross the threshold, as there is no difference between outside and inside, and the height and separability of distances are invisible and intangible. This is why the reader's horizon and history of reading never touch this unusual and mysterious poetic world, rather, it is the poem that reaches through their skin almost timelessly with its fingers, before they even internalise what has been read.

Simona Kopinšek is a poetess who has attracted attention in literary circles in recent years. Her poetry originates in her admiration of nature and worship of life. She uses both to weave poetic sketches, insightful considerations of her path in life. As an author she has presented her work at several solo literary events and many group performances. She has initiated and co-created the intermedia project The City (of) Whispers, which emerged as a simultaneous integration of words, sounds and images. So far her poetry has been published in magazines Dialogi, Lirikon and Nova revija. Her poems as translated by Željko Perović have been published in the Sarajevo-based Album magazine and in the collection of the Second literary encounters in Sarajevo, The Gravitation of words (Gravitacija riječi). In 2008 she was the winner of the Poetry Carrousel competition, held in Maribor. She is known in Slovenian media as a journalist working for the RTV Slovenia cultural section - Maribor Television, she has been organising and hosting major literary events and is considered an excellent interpret of poetry.

The event has been organised in cooperation with Pivec publishing.