školská 28

Miloslav Topinka poet and essayist, lives in Prague.Seifert Prize-winner seems drawn to an unknown scale, to an unexplored language, at times undressed by Hölderlin and Novalis, occasionally seen by Pound from his cage in Pisa. “What you look for is near.” Born in 1945 in Nový Etynk, Czechoslovakia, Topinka drew inspiration from French literature and philosophy and edited the journal Letters for Literature and Discussion until it was banned in 1969. Utopia was spared, but The Rat’s Nest, his second collection of verse, was destroyed at the printer’s in 1970 - finally appearing in the early nineties along with Compared to Me, All of You Are Just Poets, a dazzling study of Rimbaud.