May the 14th, 2021 - As the new public tender by the Croatian Ministry of Culture and Media was met with the outrage by writers community, a Croatian poet ranting about writers ranting about the culture ministry is quite the turn of events. TCN reporter and slam poet Ivor Kruljac approves but also debates parts of the petition launched against the aforementioned ministry.

The ever-unfortunate literary scene in Croatia, which is sadly not represented as it should be neither in Croatia nor abroad, took heavy blows as a result of the coronavirus pandemic - much like the majority of other sectors. Popular literary events such as Interliber, and many more fairs ended up being cancelled, the blow to this specific branch of cultural industry that generally receives poor investments and poor profits thus became even more challenging.

To jump to the rescue, The Croatian Ministry of Culture and Media issued a public tender for both writers and translators. As Jutarnji list reported, the tender for the provision of financial aid to authors and translators for the best books and translations in 2019/2020 introduced a little novelty along with it.

''With the commissional value of the books, which in previous editions [of such tenders] was the only criterium of assigning financial support, this new tender also has a numerical valuing of literal works“, reported Jutarnji.

This numerical valuing is assessed by the number of awards, the level of participation in literal manifestations and festivals, and critical responses.

''Forty points goes to the winners of the awards: Janko Polić Kamov, Fric, Ksaver Šandor Gjalski, Edo Budiša, Vladimir Nazor, Kvirin, Judita etc. While rewards such as Post Scriptum, going to Fran Galović, Sfera, Tea Rimay Benčić etc, are worth only half of those points. Fifteen points can be received by participating in some festivals and manifestations, while the lower rank of such events is worth ten points. Ten points are also added for reviews in certain media while for others (this sometimes includes expert magazines), the critical review is worth only seven or four points,'' wrote Jutarnji List.

The literary community rebelled, and they started a petition called "The Right to Quality" against these propositions, demanding for the tender to be cancelled, which is supported at the time of writing this article with 233 signatures of Croatian writers and other concerned citizens.

''Public funding support for the best work has significant importance for the number of authors, which is why the authors themselves fought for the existence of this type of support with the initiative ''The Right to a Profession'', reads the text of the petition. The petition also welcomed the description of the criteria to improve transparency but determines that the quantification of literary value, which is a qualitative category in itself, ''disables the authors of a high aesthetic value to get the support their work truly deserves.''

Additionally, playwriters aren't even mentioned in this tender (despite grading rewards which are reserved for playwrites, poets, and essay writers, who are also in a bad position), and the winners of some of these awards will be known only after the ministry's tender closes.  

The Culture Ministry could make many, many improvements, but, having the (mis)fortune of being present on the writing and more particularly, the poetry scene for the last six years (publishing and performing at various events, publishing short stories, and for better or worse, even being covered by the media for my work) I can't say, as a Croatian poet, that the arguments are really on the side of the writer's community either.

Here are several arguments regarding to petition (in bold), as well as counter-arguments (not in bold) from the most annoying Croatian poet in the country. I have no doubt my other colleagues will most likely hate me for it, but you, the reader, are free decide what seems to have more sense. Given the fact that Croatia is a democracy, the pluralism of opinions and civilised public debate is always welcome. Despite the fact that I will not sign the petition, you should sign it yourself if you feel it to be the right thing.

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Assigning the funds by the number of sold copies of books borrowed in libraries is problematic as it's not showing the work's actual quality. Readership is affected by various factors, which don't always come because of a book's quality, but from the previous visibility of the author and the budget the publisher has.

Well, how exactly do we determine the value of literary work? I'm no literature academic, and literary academics don't really communicate these ''legitimate criteria that makes a good book'' all that well. Additionally, these books which are labelled as being good, are so boring to the average reader, and then the reader often gets insulted by ''the intellectuals'' for reading such garbage. When you look at other arts, such as music, you can see that music academics favour some music over other types but then again, some music, known as pop, is made for common people and the artists don't focus on achieving some melodic masterpiece but rather to entertain their audience or send a brief message.

Why do writers who do the same get so ridiculed by academic circles?

Why are they ignored by Croatian publishers? Why do writers then insult the readers, making literature more repulsive to the audience, and then get shocked when there isn't a lot of reading done and consequently not much money to be had from the book business? This also makes the Croatian literary offer very poor, and often its style and topics end up being very similar as a result of this unexplained criteria. In return, there's very little Croatian crime fiction, SF, fantasy, love stories, and other genres, and the readers turn to foreign writers in search of such stories (Jo Nesbo, Stephanie Meyer, J.K Rowling. Lois McMaster Bujold and many, many more). Such writing makes them popular and also visible. That's the answer as to whose work gets most bought and borrowed in Croatia, give them the cash!

Poets are at a disadvantage from the very beginning. There are far fewer rewards for poetry than there are for prose, which means the poets can do nothing else but achieve fewer points. There's also less poetry writing in general, which means a lower amount of points coming from critical reviews. Child authors, essay writers, and comic book artists are in a worse position than poets as well.  

The above gets right to the heart of the point from the perspective of a Croatian poet. But, why is it like that, exactly? Before the coronavirus pandemic took the world by storm, there were so many poetry events filled with poets performing and the audience coming to watch them perform. Be it slam poetry, open mics, or some other poetry events, be it in the libraries, bars, or clubs, it was apparent that Croatia doesn't lack poets, nor does it lack an audience for it. These events were in the majority and were always very open to newcomers.

Social media is also filled with people, either quoting their favourite poets or posting their own, personal poetry. So, why are there no more rewards and why is there not more extensive interest from the publishers (with some honorable exceptions) to invest in poetry and keep up with the trends? Culture journalists working for various media outlets should focus more on poetry as well, and coming from TCN's perspective, poetry articles really do attract an audience, as we saw on March the 21st (assuming that reporting on poetry, an important artistic and historical heritage of the linguistic form, isn't rewarding enough in itself).

Evaluating work by the number of reviews is problematic as books that are more visible, in principle, receive more reviews. The authors whose books are published by smaller editors, who have fewer resources to invest in their promotion, are in a less favourable position. In addition, evaluating the number of reviews where three negatives are worth more than two positives is also illogical in order to evaluate the quality of a piece of work.

On top of that still, the amount of points based on the media site on which the critic is published seems to be very random. The result is the unusual circumstance in which, if the same critic writes two reviews of two different books and publishes them on two different sites, depending on where the critic published the review, one writer will receive 10 points, and the other one four even if the first review was positive, and the other one - negative.    

Again, the beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and there's no empirical way to determine which book is a good book and which isn't. If there were such a righteous empirical way of determining the quality of a book, we wouldn't have the difference between positive and negative reviews. Bad would always be bad, and good would always be good, and there wouldn't be any debates.

Take a look at the empirical field of physics and the definition of friction; ''Friction is a force between two surfaces that are sliding, or trying to slide, across each other“. This definition will always be the correct definition regardless of culture, personal preferences etc. Furthermore, positive reviews, even if done correctly by the rules of the still ''unclear criteria of literature scholars“, that wouldn't be set in stone.

When the poetry volume ''The Flowers of Evil“ by Charles Baudelaire was originally published back in 1857, the academics of the time condemned it as immoral and wrong, and of a poor quality, but today it is celebrated by the successors of that same academia, as one of the best poetry books ever. So, no writer should even care if the reviews are good or bad in terms of quality. That being said, reviews will raise a publication's visibility, attract readership, and inspire critics to write more reviews (combined with the PR done by the publisher). All of this shows the writer's ability to spark a reaction with their work. As such, whether a review is good or bad is irrelevant, but reviews do show the impact and public importance of the book, and therefore it seems to be quite the right direction to go in assessing books by the ministry.

That being said, the tender benefiting the publishing of one review in one media outlet over another is problematic if it doesn't better elaborate why some media outlets are favoured over others in the tender.

Furthermore, big publishers publish more books in larger quantities, and invest more in their promotion, and they already have a name that attracts the press. That is absolutely true. But, today, with the development of social media (which allows promotion without high expenses), and while journalists strive to discover new things, new names, new approaches - small publishers have never before been in a better position to push themselves and the writers they represent out into the public arena and develop and expand to the level of ''big players“. The only question is - do they have the will to do it?

It's not adequate that the esthetical value of a book is evaluated by attending events and manifestations. Festivals more often call upon already established authors who then have an unfair advantage. Additionally, every organiser mostly invites his own authors who again have an advantage over the others. The tender doesn't value international festivals, which causes a paradoxical situation in which the promotion in the organisation of the publisher is evaluated, but it's not evaluated when the promotion happens during an established international festival.

The term ''the presenting of the book“ is problematic for multiple reasons. First and foremost, the majority of these festivals don't present the book (and its a problem to prove that by participating in these festivals, the book was actually presented). Last, but not least – this is discriminatory towards authors of a weaker state of health, who are older (with the risk of the novel coronavirus still large) or busy with family and work obligations and are unable to travel.

Festival organisers do discriminate against writers, but whose fault is that exactly? Are these festivals organised by the Republic of Croatia, by the Ministry of Culture? If they are, then it's problematic, but if these festivals aren't organised by the ministry, then this whole petition is barking up the wrong tree. If the festival organisers aren't willing to be more fair and open to new names, then we, the writers, need to show solidarity with our colleagues and negotiate with festival organisers to invite our colleagues who are less presented to participate. If you're a writer/publisher seriously concerned with this issue, but you're among the lucky ones who get invited, use your position to help others out a little.

On the other hand, it's too bad international festivals aren't valued in the tender, and the ministry should work more in helping Croatian writers become more visible on the international scene. Regarding ''vulnerable writers, the old, the sick, and those too pre-occupied to attend'', they should be presented by their publishers, and an additional problem is that often the expenses of travelling to festivals aren't covered for the writer, and their participation costs money.

Awards such as the VBZ award, the Dragutin Tadijanović award assigned by (HAZU) etc aren't mentioned in the tender. Relevant international awards Croatian authors frequently are awarded, such as the Bridges of Struga (Macedonian award), the European Union Literature Award, the European Poet of Freedom, etc, are also ignored.

Every single award, be it Croatian, European or international, should be valued in the tender, but VBZ really shouldn't be. For those who don't know, the VBZ award is the annual award for the best-unpublished novel, and the winner sees their manuscript published, and there is a financial 100,000 kuna prize that goes with it too. With a huge monetary prize and the chance to have that piece of work published, why would VBZ be part of a tender whose goal is to financially help those writers who have run out of money?

The bigger problem is the question of how fair are these awards in the first place. Are they transparent? Are there no biases from the judges appointing these awards? Interestingly enough, there used to be an award called ''Kiklop'', which was given to the most purchased book in Croatia, but was cancelled in 2009 because the winning book by Nives Celzijus (about what's it like to be the wife of a Dinamo footballer) was considered by writing community to ''not be intellectual enough''. When in reality, for a book that can appeal so much to the Croatian readership, in a country that doesn't read much, such rewards should still be respected.

The final item of the tender that tries to consider the books that went unnoticed isn't going to accomplish too much. From the whole tender, it's visible that the emphasis is being placed on the work that received the most media attention and follows the old principle - The more attention something gets, even if it isn't good attention - the better.

Again, books should be visible to the public, and visibility should be awarded. The majority of publishers seem to see the distribution of a writer's work as their only job, and then they're surprised when despite distribution, the books just sit there not being snapped up by eager readers. Knock on doors, contact people, contact the press, everyone. Prepare a decent press release. Scream from the rooftops that you published a book from the top of your lungs and afford your writer the attention their work deserves. With the aforementioned development of social media, there's truly no excuse to be lagging in that respect today. Then, you'll get the media attention, and half of this tender would not be problematic at all. The problem is the policy of publisher's work and not the criteria by the ministry for this particular item.  

Overall, the Ministry isn't without sin in this saga, but the Croatian writing community (particularly publishers, and event organisers) also needs to act differently to benefit the writers themselves, especially the new generations (and poets, stop forgetting the poets!).

Poets and writers deal with language, and you can learn more about the ins and outs of the Croatian language on our TC page.

For more about culture in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

November 20, 2020 – Although slam poetry is not so common in Croatia, its scene is very much alive. A young journalism student Ivor Zvonimir Kruljac talks about his experience as a slam poet and about slam poetry in Croatia.

When I met Ivor five years ago, he was a freshman at the Faculty of Political Science in Zagreb, studying journalism. As much as I remember, Ivor was a very talented writer and a keen journalist. But what I didn't know about Ivor is that long before journalism, he had a passion for poetry.

"I started writing poetry when I was 15 (in 2012) as advised by my chemistry professor to practice my handwriting. I liked poetry as a way of expression and the writing itself to the point I wanted to pursue it as work," explains Ivor, adding that thanks to writing poetry and articles for the school newspaper, he ended up in journalism. He later honed his journalistic talent in the student newspaper Global, web portals Time Out Croatia and the Norwegian Standard, and some other publications.

An unusual hobby

However, in the last few years, he has been engaged in writing slam poetry, and regularly participated in slam poetry events in Croatia, where he performed some of his poems, both in Croatian and in English. Slam poetry is not as popular in Croatia as it is in America where it originated, so it’s not usual to hear that someone in Croatia is writing slam poetry.

By definition, slam poetry is an artistic event in which poets themselves read their poetry in front of a live audience and judges. It originated in the 1980s in Chicago as an expression of rebellion against classical poetry that was considered elitist and rigid. The aim was to bring poetry, which was intended for an academic audience, closer to a wider popular audience.

"The slam poetry scene in Croatia remains underground, associated with alternative culture, but it's alive and vibrant. More and more people in Croatia are familiar with slam poetry. Famous Croatian theatre and movie director Mario Kovač is one of the people who started slam poetry in Croatia 20 years ago," says Ivor.

Ivor Zvonimir Kruljac / Photo Nilas

The topics may be various, from social, political, to personal, but what's more important, the poems must be interpreted energetically and passionately on the scene to attract the audience’s attention. In contrary to "ordinary" poetry, slam poetry strives to initiate a live audience's reaction, and it is graded and awarded by that audience. Also, rhyming is considered juvenile, and free verse is more appreciated.

Ivor says his verses are sometimes funny, light, and cheerful, but sometimes are even depressing and angry, with a swear word or two. Apart from poetry in Croatian, he publishes poems in English exclusively on the site Medium, where he freshly published a new poem called "Tripful thinking". The feedback on his poetry among other poets was mixed at first, but over the years, his slam poetry found more and more space at various poetry events in Croatia.

"There is certainly an audience for my poetry, backed with sites that publish my work and with people coming to slam performances. Writing poetry really is a hobby to me and I'm not trying to make money from it, so that gives me the liberty of not really bothering with the question of whether people like my poems which is the perk of truly free artists," considers Ivor, adding that he wants to live from decent and fair journalism, which is his profession.

'The most genuine and subjective way of expression'

Although he considers slam poetry a hobby, he already published three books of poems. At his recent performance in Zagreb's club Močvara, he presented his third digital book of poems named "Intelektualna kruljenja" (translated as "Intelectual growling", as growling is also a wordplay on his surname in Croatian, but it loses a bit in English translation).

He was accompanied by two fantastic musicians, Daisy Dives (a truly fantastic Croatian dream-pop diva) and Dino Saurić (indie musician), but only after his recitation, because, according to the rules of slam poetry, it is forbidden to have a musical accompaniment.

Ivor Zvonimir Kruljac at one of his last slam poetry performances in Zagreb's club Močvara, wearing a protective suit that professionals use while they disinfect areas, which was his way of expressing respect for them and showing responsibility in a fight with the coronavirus pandemic. / Photo Nilas

His new poetry, just like his previous two books "Nebuloze" ("Nonsensicals") from 2017 and "Psihodelije" ("Psychedelics") from 2018, is published as a free digital copy. As he says, he would continue to write poetry even if there are no ways of publishing it or having any public reach.

"I always hope that by presenting my work publicly, people might find consolation, entertainment, and other good feelings to make their day better. Basically, poetry is the most genuine and subjective way of my expression," says Ivor, whose books were quite recently even added to the digital collection of the National and University Library in Zagreb.

Slam poetry in Croatia

Although it has its roots in America, slam poetry competitions are held around the world. In Croatia, the 6th championship in slam poetry was held this year, and the winner was Hrvoje Mimica under the artistic name MC Deda. As the state champion, he will represent Croatia at the European slam championship in Maribor. Along with Zagreb's club Močvara, where the state championships are held, the co-organizer is an art collective from Split named DADAnti, led by Croatian slam poet Franko Bušić. Apart from Močvara, slam poetry nights are also held in clubs such as Vinyl and former Jiggy bar.

Ivor says he had the honour to perform with other fantastic slam poets: Dino Tremens, Zlatko Majsec, Dijana Ćurković, Aleksandra Mandić, Luka Antić, Željko Barišić, Hrvoje Bubić, and many more.

"Slam poetry community is a safe place where your poetry can be joyful, rude, polite, hilarious, angry, depressing, and everything else. The leading philosophy is 'don't worry about its quality, it only matters that it's yours', and quite often we give a chance to people in the audience to come on stage and join us with reciting their own poetry," explains Ivor.

This year, the organizers of slam poetry events are paying attention to compliance with epidemiological measures and so far, they have not recorded any infections at their events.

To read more about lifestyle in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.